bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
More Sinned Against Than Sinning
Authors: Thackara James
Published: October 2007

Eighteen years ago, Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli scientist working at Dimona nuclear facility, revealed that Israel had an atomic bomb project, a secret that had clouded US—Israeli relations since the days of Kennedy and Ben Gurion, and might have involved collusion between the countries. Vanunu was kidnapped in Italy, returned to Israel and sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment, nearly 12 of which he spent in solitary confinement. In April this year, James Thackara went to Israel for Index on Censorship to greet Vanunu on his release from Ashkelon Prison. Ursula Owen interviewed Thackara on his return.James Thackara has had a long involvement in nuclear issues and the Vanunu case, and is the author of America's Children (Chatto & Windus, 1984), a novel dealing with the Manhattan Project and the fate of Robert Oppenheimer
Index
Authors: Dupont Veronique , Holden Samuel , Holland Patrick , Kendle Andrew , Klopfer Franziska , Newsham Gill , Pembroke Beatrice , Pfaffenhöfer Sara , Pollard Jason , Rawlingson Melanie , Rottman Sigrun , Stewart Daniel , Stojanov Jugoslav , Wiggles-worth Robin , Jayasekera Rohan , Schmidt Natasha
Published: October 2007

A censorship chronicle incorporating information from Agence France-Press (AFP), Allafrica. com, Alliance of Independent journalists (AJI), Amnesty International (AI), Arab Press Freedom Watch (APFW), Article 19 (A19), Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM), the BBC Monitoring Service Summary of World Broadcasts (SWB), Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Studies (CEHURDES), Centre for journalism in Extreme Situations (CJES), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), Democratic Journalists ' League OlitHI), Freedom House, Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC),Human Rights Watch (HRW), Inter American Press Association (IAPA), Indy- media, Institutefor War & Peace Reporting (IWPR), Instituto de Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS), the United Nations Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN), the International Federation of Journalists (IFJlFIP), Journaliste en danger (JED), International Press Institute (IPI), the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), Network for the Defence of Independent Media in Africa (NDIMA), Network for Education and Academic Rights (NEAR), International PEN (PEN), Pacific Islands News Association (PINA), Pacific Media Watch, Periodistas Frente La Corrupcion (PFC); Press Freedom Foundation (FLIP), Radio Free EuropelRadio Liberty (RFE/ RL), Reporters Saris Frontieres (RSF), Southeast Media Organisation (SEEMO), Statewatch, Transitions Online (TOL), World Association of Newspapers (WAN), World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC), and other sources including members of the International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX).
Islam in Europe
Authors: Göle Nilüfer
Published: October 2007

CAN WE IMAGINE A EUROPE THAT ENABLES US TO DEVELOP A COMMON CITIZENSHIP DRAWN FROM SECULAR LIBERAL PLURALISM AS WELL AS FROM THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE?
Not the Way of the Buddha
Authors: Fawthrop Tom
Published: October 2007

A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL COMEBACK FOR BUDDHISM IN CAMBODIA, BUT A WAY TO GO IN LAOS AND NOTHING IN SIGHT IN VIETNAM
God in China
Authors: Hilton Isabel
Published: October 2007

AFTER THREE DECADES OF TRYING TO DESTROY RELIGION, CHINA'S COMMUNIST PARTY HAS DECIDED IT MIGHT BE A GOOD THING AFTER ALL
Let It Be Seen
Authors: Malina Moraczewska Marta
Published: October 2007

ARTISTIC DIRECTORS IN POLAND'S GALLERIES ARE RUNNING SCARED OF VIOLENT PROTESTS AND DEMONSTRATIONS ORCHESTRATED BY THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT
Writing for ‘samizdat’
Authors: Gorbanevskaya Natalya
Published: October 2007

The Russian poet and first editor of the samizdat ‘Chronicle of Current Events’, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, who left the Soviet Union in December 1975 and now lives in Paris, gave a reading of her work at the 1976 International Poetry Festival in London. While over here, she paid a visit to the Index office, where she was interviewed by Michael Scammell.
The case of Vasyl Stus
Authors: poet Persecuted
Published: October 2007

Vasyl Semyonovich Stus is a noted poet and translator who first fell victim to official wrath twelve years ago, in 1965, when he took part in a meeting in Kiev to protest against the suppression of Ukrainian literature and culture. As a result of that gesture, Stus was forced to abandon his doctorate, his poems were banned, and in 1966 he was sacked from his post at the State Historical Archives in Kiev. Stus found a job on a building site, but was dismissed for ‘working outside his profession’. He continued to protest publicly against the persecution of other writers, including his fellow-Ukrainian Valentyn Moroz, who was arrested in 1970: Two years later Stus was himself arrested arid charged with ‘the distribution of false ideas harmful to the Soviet order’. In September 1972 he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment and three years' exile.

The following account of his experiences in jail Was compiled by Malva Landa and Toryana Khodorovich, who simultaneously launched an appeal for clemency. The account has been slightly edited and abbreviated by Index?
Cambodia's Total Revolution
Authors: Tan Lek Hor
Published: October 2007

This account of the intellectual background to the Cambodian revolution, and of one Cambodian's intellectual journey into and away from the revolutionary camp. is by the Index Asia researcher, who was intimately involved.
The Spanish Media Since Franco
Authors: Chislett William
Published: October 2007

The following is an edited extract from a longer report on developments in the Spanish media since the death of Franco, written for the Writers and Scholars Educational Trust by William Chislett, who spent several years in Spain as a correspondent for the London Times and other newspapers. The complete report has just been published and is distributed by Index on Censorship at £3 (including postage).
What are Rights?
Authors: Hampshire Stuart
Published: October 2007

Human Rights ed. by Eugene Kamenka and Alice Ehr-Soon Tay Edward Arnold 165 pp £7 (£2.95 paperback)
A Time and a Place
Authors: Kheifets Mikhail , Chandler Robert
Published: October 2007

Goldberg is called in by the KGB, who want him to renounce any intention of emigrating to Israel. After a protracted session, Goldberg finally succumbs and agrees to write a leter of renunciation to his relatives. The KGB officials hand him pen and paper. Under their watchful gaze Goldberg begins his letter to his uncle in Haifa:

‘Dear Uncle Yoram,

‘I've been meaning to write to you for absolute ages. At last I have found a time and a place…’

For Mikhail Kheifets, author of A Time and a Place, from which the extract below is taken, the time was the summer and autumn of 1976 and the place the ‘Dubrovlag’ prison camp in Mordovia (USSR). Sentenced in September 1974 to four years in strict regime labour camps for compiling the works of the exiled poet, Joseph Brodsky, and writing an introduction to the collection, he was released in April of last year and is now serving a two-year term of exile in Kazakhstan.
Media problems in the Comoros
Authors: Nabwa Ali
Published: October 2007

The street distribution of mimeographed leaflets has become a way of life for the opposition in the Comoros, an Indian Ocean island group (population, 300,000) north-west of Madagascar. The archipelago has virtually never had a written press and the only way that the population can express their grievances is through bi-lingual leaflets. These are usually produced in French on one side and Shingazija (a variant of Kiswahili written in Arabic characters) on the other. In this article Ali Nabwa, former press attaché to ex-President Ali Soilih, and former head of the External Service of Radio Comores, describes the recent history of the media in the Comoros. It is an example in microcosm of the problems faced by many excolonies in Africa.
Index on Censorship
Authors: Baranczak Stanislaw
Published: October 2007

The author, a Polish poet and literary critic who is one of the editors of Zapis, wrote the following piece for the twelfth issue of the unofficial literary quarterly. Zapis 12 will be published in London this spring.
Letter to my Friends Overseas
Authors: Laabi Abdellatif
Published: October 2007

bdellatif Laabi was born in Fez, Morocco, in 1942. He took a degree in French literature at Rabat University, and until the time of his arrest in 1972, he taught French at the Lycée Al Laymoune in Rabat. Laabi is a leader of Morocco's Marxist-Leninist Frontiste movement. In 1966 he founded the radical literary revue Souffles, first published in French and later in French and Arabic. In 1971 he founded another magazine, Anfas ( in Arabic). Both Souffles and Anfas were important influences on the new generation of writers and poets in Morocco, and both were banned when Frontiste members were rounded up in 1972.

Arrested on 27 January 1972 along with a number of teachers, students and other intellectuals, Laabi was tortured, imprisoned, given a provisional release, then re-arrested and transferred to the secret detention centre at Moulay Cherif in Casablanca. He undertook a series of hunger strikes before he was granted a trial in August 1973, when he was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for conspiracy against the state. After being held at Casablanca and later at Kenitra, where he spent several months in solitary confinement, Laabi was transferred to a prison hospital in 1978, suffering from severe rheumatism ( with a risk of paralysis) and eye problems.

Laabi's long poem Letter to My Friends Overseas, excerpts of which we reproduce here, was sent out of prison part by part, ostensibly as separate letters to twenty different ‘friends overseas’. The poem was later assembled and published with Laabi's permission by the Paris magazine La Nouvelle Critique, in its issue of August-September 1978. Other poems by Abdellatif Laabi are available from Inéditions Barbare publishers, Paris.
The ‘disappeared’ in Argentina 1976–1980
Authors: Coad Malcolm
Published: October 2007

We publish below a list of writers and journalists abducted by the security forces and numbered among the ‘disappeared’ in Argentina since 24 March 1976, the date of the military coup that installed General Jorge Rafael Videla in power. Two eye-witness accounts illustrate the way in which such abductions usually take place. Finally, Robert Cox, editor-in-exile of the daily newspaper Buenos Aires Herald, describes how independent-minded journalists and the families of los desaparecidos ( ‘the disappeared’) have been affected. The material is introduced by Index on Censorship's researcher on Latin America, Malcolm Coad.
Cambodian Holocaust
Authors: Lek Hor Tan
Published: October 2007

Chroniques de guerre … et d'espoir by Norodom Sihanouk Hachette/Stock Paris 303pp

L'Utopie meurtrière: un rescapé du génocide cambodgien témoigne by Pin Yathay Robert Laffont Paris 415pp

Cambodge: la massue de l'Angkar by Boun Sokha Atelier Marcel Jullian Paris 256pp

Before Kampuchea, Preludes to Tragedy by Milton Osborne George Allen & Unwin 197pp £5.95

Survive le peuple cambodgien! by Jean Lacouture Editions du Seuil Paris 142pp
Poet in opposition
Authors: Brown Stewart
Published: October 2007

For several years tensions in the former British colony of Guyana have been running high. Since the late 1960s Prime Minister Forbes Burnham and his party, the Peoples National Congress, have been accused of keeping power through a combination of fraudulent elections, the sponsoring and equipping of private armies of thugs (often linked to religious cults such as that of the notorious Rev Jim Jones and, currently, the ‘House of Israel’ led by the self-dubbed' Rabbi Washington'), the manipulation of the ugly racial divisions between those of African and Indian origin, and the harassment of the opposition. This last has included restrictions on the press, by interrupting newsprint supplies and intimidating printers, and outright murder.

A number of recent events have brought the situation to a head. On 14 February 1980 the PNC-dominated National Assembly approved a new constitution which gives Burnham the position of Executive President and virtually unlimited powers. At the beginning of June the trial finally began, after two postponements, of three leading members of the left-wing opposition Working Peoples Alliance - academics Drs Walter Rodney, Rupert Roopnaraine and Omawale - accused of burning down the PNC headquarters in Georgetown in July 1979. Such were the doubts about the fairness of the trial, which the authorities had decided should be held summarily before a judge rather than by jury, that several international human rights agencies, including Amnesty International, the UK Parliamentary Human Rights Group and the United States National Council of Churches, sent observers. In the event, lack of evidence and radical inconsistencies in that which was presented, resulted in a further adjournment until August. The trial was accompanied by widespread arrests in various parts of the country, the erection of roadblocks, house searches and heavy-handed police operations to prevent demonstrations.

Finally, on the evening of 13 June, days after the trial was adjourned, Walter Rodney was killed when a bomb exploded in his brother's car in Georgetown. Despite official denials all the indications were of assassination by a government-sponsored death squad. There was world-wide outrage, including statements by Commonwealth leaders Michael Manley and Robert Mugabe. Rodney's death deprives Guyana of one of the world's foremost specialists in African and Caribbean history, as well as of an able political leader, whose young and growing party has made considerable strides in overcoming racial antagonism.

In the article which follows, Stewart Brown, an English specialist in Caribbean literature and himself a poet, looks at the writing of Guyana's leading poet, Martin Carter, and, through his work, at the general situation of the writer in the post-independence Caribbean.
Murder on the campus
Authors: Coad Malcolm
Published: October 2007

A grimace of bitterness and impotence is spreading among the members of the University of San Carlos. The horror of war and the pestilential presence of death invades our lecture-rooms, our places of study, our consultancy rooms, our offices, our clinics. Never before have the corridors and buildings of the University been so filled with anguished, fearful, reticent, paranoid people … For we know, without fear of mistake, that walking into our classes, playing the role of students, teachers and ancillary workers, are the armed agents of government repression.
A hundred flowers or poisonous weeds?: Fluctuations blight the Chinese cinema
Authors: Hilton Isabel
Published: October 2007

In 1966 film production halted; it was seven years before a feature film was shown again
State terror and exile: Never has the cinema been so false and dull
Authors: Solanas Fernando
Published: October 2007

Argentina's most famous film director describes the terror, threats, bombings and kidnappings
Death of Jorge Cedron: Tribute to a leading film-maker
Authors: Cortazar Julio
Published: October 2007

A tribute to the maker of Operation Massacre, one of Argentina's most famous films

On 1 June 1980, Jorge Cedrón, one of Argentina's major film-makers, then in exile, committed suicide by stabbing himself four times in the heart, while in the Quai des Orfevres Judicial Police Station, in Paris.

Accompanied by his wife, Marta, Cedrón had gone to the police station to report the kidnapping of his father-in-law, St Saturnino Montero Ruiz the ex-mayor of Buenos Aires, which had taken place in Paris on 25 May. The abduction had been carried out by men with Argentinian accents.

While his wife was in Argentina attempting to raise money for the ransom, Cedrón had remained in Paris with their five-year-old daughter. Under threat himself from the kidnappers, he was in a bad psychological state. His friends believe that the police station, and the interrogation of himself and his wife by the police after they had reported the abduction, proved too strong a reminder to Cedrón of his experiences, and those of colleagues and friends, in Argentina.

The following tribute to Jorge Cedrón is signed collectively by a group of his friends, including the novelist Julio Cortázar, Jean-Paul Carrière, Anatole Dauman, Paco Ibañez, Jacqueline Lenoir, and Antonio Segui.
Profile
Authors: Chahine Youssef
Published: October 2007

A profile of Egypt's foremost director whose films have often been banned
New broadcasting law
Authors: Caistor Nick
Published: October 2007

Iraqi Democratic Writers: List of writers, musicians, painters, actors and directors who have left Iraq to escape persecution
No place for the African: South Africa's education system, meant to bolster apartheid, may destroy it
Authors: Vizikhungo Mzamane Mbulelo
Published: October 2007

I was only in my third year at school when the Bantu Education Act came into effect in 1956. By the time I went to university in 1967, segregated universities, which had been established in terms of the Extension of University Education Act of 1959, were already a fact of life. In this article I have set out to examine the relevant acts and their application, to show how the system affected me and my contemporaries and how reaction against the system set in among us.

The Bantu Education Act was passed in 1953, a year before the Supreme Court of the USA decided against segregation in American schools. ‘My department's policy is that education should stand with both feet in the Reserves and have its roots in the spirit and being of Bantu society,’ Dr Verwoerd, as Minister of Native Affairs (which took over the control of African education), told the all-White Senate in 1954. There is no place for him (meaning the African) in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour.
The Fire is Wrong
Authors: Galeano Eduardo
Published: October 2007

Events in Mani (Yucatán, Mexico) in 1562
Ballad of the Carolina poplar
Authors: Conti Haroldo
Published: October 2007

To Teresa Bruzzone, who lives among the trees
Good Writing is Like a Bomb
Authors: Farah Nuruddin
Published: October 2007

An extract from Sardines
An Island in the Totalitarian Sea
Authors: Maximov Vladimir
Published: October 2007

Books, faith and culture enable people to resist propaganda and tyranny
China's Intellectuals
Authors: Goldman Merle
Published: October 2007

It may be less easy for the leadership to stifle dissent in the future
Against silence
Authors: Timerman Jacobo
Published: October 2007

Jacobo Timerman was until recently one of Argentina's most distinguished newspaper editors. Born in Russia in 1923, he emigrated as a child with his family to Argentina, where he was later found the Buenos Aires daily La Opinion. He became a fierce opponent of the human rights abuses under the military regime which took power in 1976. In April 1977 Timerman was abducted and held prisoner for 30 months by agents of the Argentinian army. He was not found guilty of any of the accusations laid against him. The torture and savage anti-Semitism he was subjected to are described in his recent book, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number. Exiled from Argentina in September 1979 following his release, he has spoken out on behalf of those who have been silenced or who continue to suffer from human rights violations in Argentina.

Jacobo Timerman now lives in Israel; in November 1981 he was the guest of honour at the annual lunch of the Writers & Scholars Educational Trust in London, on which occasion he delivered the following address.
Polish publishing 1980-81
Authors: Pszenicki Chris
Published: October 2007

In the years before the birth of Solidarity bridges were being built by courageous people in Poland to remove the artificial divisions in their culture. Those divisions flowed from the split of Polish culture into the approved ‘official’, the censored ‘unofficial’ and the taboo foreign — i.e. works produced by Poles in exile.

In August 1980 everything changed. Here Chris Pszenicki, a leading Polish specialist in London, summarises the effects of the Gdansk agreements on the ‘three strands of Polish culture’ and explains the struggle over the recent new censorship Act.
The wisdom of the Ayatollah
Authors: Tabeeb Borzuyeh
Published: October 2007

According to the teachings of Ayatollah Khomeini, a body of stagnant water is clean and a cleansing agent if it has a minimum volume of three and a half cubic vajabs (open hands), giving it a weight of 384 kilograms. This in Islamic terminology is a Qor. Recently two professors at the University of Teheran sent ‘religious queries’ to the Ayatollah on this subject and asked for his verdict. Such queries are known to be answered by Khomeini personally as they constitute religious jurisprudence. Professor A asked: ‘In a body of stagnant water, the exact equivalent of a Qor, a dog has urinated to the amount of 20 grams. Is this water clean or unclean?’
The new crusaders of the USA
Authors: Metz Tracy
Published: October 2007

In the American city of Minneapolis members of a religious sect recently organised a public burning of works of ‘messengers of Satan’. By that they meant records by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and other youth idols. In other cities library personnel have been plagued by citizens demanding that certain ‘immoral’ books be removed from public collections. In the United States today there is a virtual crusade being waged against immorality, one that has been gathering momentum since Ronald Reagan became President.
Afghan intelligentsia 1978-81: For four traumatic years all independent thinkers have been under attack.
Authors: Hyman Anthony
Published: October 2007

The intelligentsia in developing countries is the hope and future of the Third World. As a social class it tends to be small, expensive to train, and extremely vulnerable to those in power. In times of crisis, whether in the case of political upheaval in their own country or during foreign invasion and occupation, intellectuals usually suffer an inordinate degree of repression and are often sacrificed. This is what happened in Cambodia and Iran in recent years, and it is happening in Afghanistan today. In the following article Anthony Hyman looks at the changing fortunes of Afghan intellectuals over the past four or five years.
News from Equatorial Guinea: Under Franco, Spanish papers were forbidden to publish reports about the only Spanish-speaking country in Africa
Authors: Pennell Richard
Published: October 2007

Why the world heard little about the tyrannical regime of the former President-for-life, Francisco Macias
Poems smuggled from Vietnam: An appeal, and 377 poems, from one who has spent 20 years in detention
Authors: Thien Nguyen Chi , Tan Lek Hor
Published: October 2007

A poignant cry for help from a Vietnamese writer who vanished shortly after he smuggled a collection of his poems out of the country

According to an Amnesty International report published last year, the Vietnamese government admitted that up to 40,000 people had been detained in re-education camps in South Vietnam following the communist take-over in April 1975. Emigré groups, however, put the number of detainees much higher.

None of the detainees is known to have been tried in a court of law and only a few are reported to have been released in recent years. In a reply to an Amnesty International Memorandum dated September 1980 on the legal procedure of detention, the Vietnamese government's explanation was that ‘re-education without judiciary condemnation is an extremely humanitarian system which is very advantageous to them [the prisoners], compared with the usual system of trials before a court’. Another explanation given by the authorities was that ‘in Vietnamese psychology the absence of judiciary condemnation spares the person concerned a tarnished judiciary record (casier judiciaire) which may adversely influence his whole life and that of his children, especially in matters related with his professional activities: for instance, an imprisoned curate cannot deliver sermons after his release. The regime in re-education camps differs from that in prisons, and the duration of his loss of freedom is also shorter’.

As for North Vietnam, the number of political prisoners either in re-education camps or in prisons has never been made public. There are reports of many who have been detained since the fifties and the sixties. Nguyen Chi Thien is one of them. He is a poet and was first detained in 1959 for speaking against the authorities. He is reported to have spent the past twenty years of his life in various prison camps. In 1979 a collection of 377 of his poems (more than 4000 verses) was smuggled out of North Vietnam. In a covering letter, reproduced here, he implored the world outside to publicise the conditions in the prison camps that he experienced himself and described in his poems. Nguyen Chi Thien's present fate or whereabouts are unknown. The poems were first published in Tien Vong Tu Day Vuc, edited by Nguyen Huu∗∗∗ Hieu (7706 Random Run Lane, 102, Falls Church, VA.22042, USA).

We would like to thank Mr Nguyen Huu Hieu for providing the English translation of some of the poems. We also publish here the text of Nguyen Chi Thien's letter and an official report on the Vietnamese government's policy of ‘cultural purification’ — see ‘Wiping out decadent culture’ by Tran Tho.
Wiping out decadent culture: A cultural commissar's official report on the progress of ‘purification’ in South Vietnam.
Authors: THO TRAN
Published: October 2007

A Vietnamese ‘cultural commissar’ reports on the success achieved in destroying undesirable publications, films, and other ‘decadent cultural products’

One of the major tasks facing the Communist authorities after their victory in April 1975 over South Vietnam was how to deal with culture and the arts, which they classified as ‘neo-colonialist, decadent, pornographic and counter-revolutionary’. A programme of ‘purification of culture’ (thanh loc) was soon adopted. This included the classification of books and other publications in public and university libraries (see Index 4/1978). A significant number of publications and authors (Vietnamese and foreign alike) were confiscated and banned. Private cinemas and theatres were closed down. This was also true of private newspapers and publishing houses. And many writers were put in prison or re-education camps (see Index 6/1978).

The programme of ‘purification of culture’ was later extended to private bookshops, teahouses, discos and private households. The following is the progress report of the programme by Tran Tho, a cultural commissar, published in Tap Chi Con San (communist magazine), the ideological organ of the Vietnamese Communist Party, in October 1981.
Zaire prison poem: Student protests in Kinshasa have been met with repression
Authors: Myango Witanene Kapuku Jules
Published: October 2007

‘Anguish’ — one of the poems written by the author while in prison following his participation in the 1980 student strikes
The chilling impact of US libel law: In view of widespread alarm, what protection does the Constitution offer?
Authors: Kaufman Henry R.
Published: October 2007

In another article on the subject, a distinguished American lawyer finds that, despite problems, ‘freedom of the press is not seriously jeopardised’
UNESCO and press freedom: the next round: The state of play in the debate about a ‘new world information order’, and what the next move should be
Authors: Righter Rosemary
Published: October 2007

‘The West cannot expect the pressures for a new information order to subside’ — the author urges coordination between those who are concerned for press freedom
UNESCO and press freedom: The Acapulco conference
Authors: Bullen Dana
Published: October 2007

Report on the latest meeting to discuss the ‘new world information order’ written by the Director of the World Press Freedom Committee

In the preceding article, Rosemary Righter brought the story of UNESCO's attempts to bring about a ‘New World Information Order’ up to the Acapulco conference in January this year. Dana Bullen, former Foreign Editor of the Washington Star newspaper, now Executive Director of the World Press Freedom Committee, attended the conference and here he describes what took place.
Profile: Mauricio Rosencof: One of Uruguay's most brilliant writers has been tortured and detained without trial since 1972
Authors: Ulive Ugo
Published: October 2007

A leading theatre director and friend of the imprisoned playwright describes his life and career in the context of the turbulent history of modern Uruguayan theatre
Helping artists is a crime
Authors: Floyd David
Published: October 2007

Helping artists is a crime, the tragic story of Yevgenia Gutkina, an art enthusiast, whose efforts to help Russian artists have landed her in a labour camp
In praise of Aunt Censorship
Authors: Grusa Jiri
Published: October 2007

I lived with old Aunt Censorship for years. I was so close to her that I could see the pores in the skin on her face. I have known intimately the strange fears she engenders. I have grown accustomed to looking behind her back to see whether she's holding a cane, a pistol, or a piece of candy. Auntie and I have known each other so long I feel obliged to say at least something good about her as well. Of course she's a sadistic old maid. Her womb is utterly barren, yet her desire for children, and for everything that lives and is playful, is all the more powerful. She is obsessed with a mania for bringing order to things — and her order leads to the graveyard. Of course she calls it education, not interment. And I must admit that she has something to teach us.
Unofficial cassette culture in the Middle East
Authors: Khalafallah Haifaa
Published: October 2007

In the Arab world ‘cassette tapes replace official radio and video tapes replace official television’
Radio and revolution: The importance of broadcasting in Central America
Authors: McIntosh Jane
Published: October 2007

Radio plays an increasingly important role, being used by revolutionary groups to inform and educate
Poland's lost generation: Two interviews with prominent Polish film-makers
Authors: Holland Agnieszka , Pobóg-Malinowski Tomasz
Published: October 2007

Two leading Polish film directors describe the difficulties — and triumphs — of filmmaking in their country
Czech interlude: The rise and fall of censorship 1953-68
Authors: Havliĉek Duŝan
Published: October 2007

For a very short time in the spring of 1968, the Czechoslovak press and other media enjoyed a considerable measure of freedom hitherto unthinkable in a Soviet-style Communist dictatorship. With the ‘normalisation that followed the Soviet intervention in August of that year, the media returned safely into the hands of the Party, the supervision of the printed word as well as of radio and television being as rigorous today as it was in the Stalinist fifties.

In a recently completed 164-page study. The Experience of Prague Spring 1968, the author — himself a Czech journalist now living in exile in Switzerland — analyses the role of the mass media in Czechoslovakia, showing how the ruling Communist Party controls them, and at the same time how that control was weakened and finally almost abolished during the period of liberalisation. This is an edited extract from his study.

Dusan Havlicek was born in 1923 and joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1942, during the Nazi occupation. Imprisoned for his underground work two years later, he took up journalism after the war and worked in the Institute of Theory and History of the Mass Media at Prague's Charles University. In 1968 he was appointed head of the press, radio and television department of the CP Central Committee. In 1969 he was sent as a CTK (Czechoslovak News Agency) correspondent to Geneva, where he asked for political asylum. He is the author of a number of works on the mass media.
The press in Uganda
Authors: Englefield David
Published: October 2007

Journalists have been among the first casualties of President Obote's sensitivity to criticism
Finding New Ways to Bypass Censorship
Authors: Gilder Barry
Published: October 2007

How apartheid affects music in South Africa
Separate but not independent
Authors: Sapiets Marite
Published: October 2007

How the Soviet Union deals with the Church
A Czech Winston Smith
Authors: Šimečka Milan
Published: October 2007

A dissident writer on his country's real-life experience of 1984

George Orwell's famous novel about the horrendous future in store for all of us appeared just too late to achieve publication in Czechoslovakia: that country was being converted to a one-party totalitarian state when 1984 came out in England, and not surprisingly it has remained on ‘the index’ or black list of Prague's rulers ever since.

Very appropriately it is to make its belated appearance in Prague this year, in a samizdat typescript translation. This is accompanied by a long introductory essay by one of Czechoslovakia's best-known and most interesting dissident writers, Milan Šimečka, who explains how he discovered staggering similarities between George Orwell's fiction and his own life experience. 1984 thus finds quite a different resonance among Czech readers than it could ever hope to do in its author's own country. For in Prague, many of Orwell's fantastic-sounding flights of the imagination have been everyday reality for the past 35 years.

Here is a brief extract from the first part of Šimečka's graphic account of ‘Czechoslovakia, 1984’.
Jakubisko, London and Smith
Authors: Tosek Vladimír
Published: October 2007

‘The regime has done well to censor my films,’ says Jakubisko
Mistake
Authors: Havel Václav
Published: October 2007

A sketch by Czechoslovakia's top banned playwright

Václav Havel, the well-known Czech playwright, was released from prison in March 1983, after he had served almost four years on charges of ‘subversive activities against the Socialist state’ of Czechoslovakia. The ‘subversive activities’ were his signature on the Charter 77 manifesto (he was one of the three original spokesmen of Charter 77), his membership of the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS) and his numerous plays and essays which, in his own country, appear only in samizdat editions. (Some of his works, including his play ‘Audience’, have been published in Index on Censorship.

Our previous issue, Index 6/1983, contained the first interview given by Havel to a foreign journalist after his release from imprisonment.

The following sketch is Havel's first literary work written since leaving prison. Its world première took place at the end of November 1983 in Stockholm and is published here by permission of Rowohlt Theater-Verlag, Reinbek.

The Stockholm performance was introduced by Václav Havel himself, the tape-recorded message he sent from Prague being played to the audience. The message appears on page 15.
Winnie Mandela in Brandfort
Authors: Meer Fatima
Published: October 2007

The meaning of a ‘banning order’ becomes clearer in this interview between two remarkable women: a recently unbanned Indian sociologist and Winnie Mandela, who has been detained or banned every year (except one) since 1962
Grenada, we will never know
Authors: Massing Michael
Published: October 2007

The discrepancies between the official version of the conflict and the observations of reporters on the spot
Mister Taylor
Authors: Monterroso Augusto
Published: October 2007

Short story by a Guatemalan author living in Mexico

Guatemala's last authentically democratic government under Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown in a US-backed coup in 1954. Since then there has been a succession of brutal military regimes and unrepresentative civilian governments. Violence against opponents, and against the indigenous peoples who make up 60% of Guatemala's population (for whom integration into national life has often meant extermination), is reported to have cost more than 150,000 lives in the past 30 years; it reached a paroxysm in the 1980s under the regimes of Generals Lucas Garcia and born-again Christian Ríos Montt. The latter ruled for 17 months in 1982–3, during which time Amnesty International reported many thousands of people killed by either the army or army-controlled ‘death squads’. In August 1983, Ríos Montt was deposed by his defence minister Mejía Víctores. Despite promises of reforms and elections, the large-scale killings and ‘disappearances’ have continued. In recent months the targets have been those considered a threat in the towns – labour leaders, university staff, and journalists.

Augusto Monterroso, like Alaide Foppa who is also featured in this issue, is a Guatemalan intellectual who has found it impossible to live and publish his writing in Guatemala. He has lived in Mexico for many years, where his work is published by the Editorial Joaquin Mortiz, which was established by someone who was himself a refugee from the Spanish Civil War, and who has adopted a courageous policy of publishing work by many Central American exiles. This story is taken from the collection Obras Completas (y otros cuentos) Complete Works (and Other Stories).
Inside: Poems from prison and an interview
Authors: Cronin Jeremy
Published: October 2007

Jeremy Cronin, then a 27-year-old lecturer in the philosophy and politics department of the University of Cape Town, was arrested in July 1976 and sentenced the following September to seven years' imprisonment (Index 1/1977). He was charged under the Terrorism Act and the Internal Security Act for having carried out African National Congress (ANC) underground work for several years. In sentencing him the judge said:

‘So far as you are concerned, Cronin, I get the impression from the political statement you made from the dock yesterday that you are quite unrepentant. I do not suppose that the prison sentence I am going to give you is going to reform you.’

Cronin was released a few months early in May 1983, bringing with him a large number of poems written in prison: some had been jotted down and escaped the prison authorities, others were memorised and written and worked on after his release. A collection of these, entitled Inside, was published in February 1984 by Ravan Press in Johannesburg (distributed in Britain by Third World Publishers).

On the publication of Inside Stephen Gray, Professor of Literature at the University of Witwatersrand, asked Jeremy Cronin about conditions for writing poetry in prison in South Africa, about opportunities for his poetry reaching an audience, and what he sees as the main challenge for white poets in South Africa. We print his interview below, together with a selection of poems from Inside.
Chinese writers break new ground
Authors: Jenner W. J. F.
Published: October 2007

The ‘spiritual pollution’ campaign is over; writers are concerned with how society is run, the need for reforms, the assertion of human values, with the depiction of life as it really is, with pleas for compassion and understanding
Orwell's 1984 through Soviet eyes
Authors: Glenny Michael
Published: October 2007

‘Not one of the Western interpreters of 1984 has summoned up the wisdom, courage, or honesty to admit that Orwell was describing present-day capitalism', says Viktor Tsoppi
The Polish Cultural War
Authors: Nyczek Tadeusz
Published: October 2007

‘The biggest dilemma is how far can one cooperate — or, what is cooperation with the authorities?'
Chinese contradictions: Intellectual liberalisation in 1983 was almost reversed when the leftists sprang their short-lived but powerful ‘anti-pollution’ campaign
Authors: Heng Liang , Shapiro Judith
Published: October 2007

The excerpt that follows is taken from Intellectual Freedom in China After Mao, With a Focus on 1983, a report by Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro, with a foreword by Arthur Miller.

Liang Heng, who came to the US in 1981 and took an MA degree at Columbia University, and American Sinologist Judith' Shapiro married in China in 1980, when Shapiro was teaching at Hunan Teachers' College. They are the authors of Son of the Revolution ( Chatto & Windus, London), the story of Liang's growing up during the Cultural Revolution. He is now Editor-in-Chief of Zhishi Fenzi ( ‘The Chinese Intellectual’), a new magazine published in Chinese in the USA for visiting scholars and students from China.

The 214-page report concentrates on the climate for independent thinking in China during 1983 and on the nature of official constraints on intellectual freedom. The report was published in July 1984 by the Fund for Free Expression. The Fund set up the Helsinki Watch and the Americas Watch and is the US sponsor of Index on Censorship. Intellectual Freedom in China After Mao is available (price $10) from the Fund at 36 West 44th Street, New York NY 10036.
Stifling the gay word: Anomaly in the law leads to persecution of small booksellers
Authors: Field Michele
Published: October 2007

Michele Field, formerly Literary Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, is a freelance writer and journalist living in London.
Teatro Vivo
Authors: Vivo Teatro
Published: October 2007

The four members of Teatro Vivo formed their theatre group in Guatemala in 1977, but were forced to leave the country in 1980. The popular theatre movement of which they are part worked closely with local communities to explore and find artistic expression for their basic problems. Such a concept of art was seen as politically subversive. According to autumn 1984 figures published by the Guatemalan Human Rights Committee, over 35,000 people, the vast majority of them indigenous peasants, have been killed in the past 17 years of military repression.

The following article was written by the members of Teatro Vivo and first appeared in the Third World Popular Theatre Newsletter No 1 (January 1982). It describes one particular example of the kind of work they were involved in prior to their exile from Guatemala. Since then, they have toured North America and Europe, putting on plays such as El Mundo de los burros ( The World of Donkeys') which convey to an international audience the daily struggle for existence in Latin America and the need for change.
Clampdown on Drama
Authors: Waidhura Livingstone Njomo
Published: October 2007

Is Shakespeare a suitable hero for Kenya?
Theatre on a String
Authors: Day Barbara
Published: October 2007

‘Kafka is no longer staged in Prague, but behind the scenes he can be found everywhere’
The Blue Angel
Authors: Uhde Milan
Published: October 2007

Milan Uhde, born in 1936, is a Czech essayist, poet and playwright. He has also written extensively for radio, film and television, and fringe theatres in Brno, where he still lives. Since 1969 his work has appeared only in samizdat or abroad.

His ‘monodrama’ The Blue Angel was purposely written in the most simple theatrical form to allow performance without a stage — for instance in private flats. (Printed in Czech in Listy, Rome.)
Flying Through the Fear Barrier
Authors: Bartoszewski Wladyslaw
Published: October 2007

The story of the TKN — the Society for Academic Courses, known as the ‘Flying University’ — which was set up to counter the omissions and distortions in state education. ‘Our greatest achievement was breaking the barrier of fear, bringing people together for the purpose of self-education, and simply sustaining the will to carry on.’

Two distinguished representatives of the thriving ‘alternative culture’ in Poland visited the USA and Britain respectively last year. One spoke about the activities of the ‘Society for Academic Courses’ which is responsible for university lectures in private apartments, trying in particular to set the record straight as regards Polish history; and the other spoke about the successes of the leading Catholic publishing house which has just celebrated its 25th anniversary.

Professor Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, while visiting the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, gave an interview to Marek Nowak, the full text of which appeared in Studium Papers (Ann Arbor) 3/1984; a condensed version is printed below.

During a visit to London, Jacek Wozniakowski described the work of the Znak publishing house, of which he is the Director. (See box ‘Znak: Making people's voices heard.’)
Why the Press is Tame
Authors: Scriptor
Published: October 2007

‘No newspaper has printed even one critical word about the heavily loaded question on which a referendum was held at 18 days notice’…
Curbing Free Thought
Authors: Farhad
Published: October 2007

Martial Law regulation number 33 punishes indulgence ‘in any political activity by words, signs or visible representation’ with 7 years jail and 20 lashes. There are plans to ban women from driving, voting and holding most jobs.

∗ A television playwright, fairly popular in official circles, wrote a line in his TV play: ‘It is human nature. Man wants change.’ The line was expunged from the play without the knowledge of the writer or the script editor.

∗ Four television cameramen of Rawalpindi-Islamabad television centre were sacked for irresponsibly commenting on the ‘referendum’ speech of General Zia-ul-Haq in December 1984.

∗ A censor committee insisted on deleting a close-up of a tearful eye in a film commercial saying that it was erotic. Another committee, set up to vet scripts of stage-plays, proudly claimed that it not only objected to certain lines of dialogue but that they also made ‘positive suggestions’.

∗ A government circular advises government departments, libraries, educational institutions and autonomous institutions that they should subscribe only to listed ‘balanced’ newspapers (all published by the government-owned National Press Trust). The government also decides to base the granting of government advertisements on the ‘responsible’ attitude of the newspapers rather than their circulation.

∗ Author-advocate Mushtaq Raj was detained under Martial Law for writing a book which attempts to find common ground between religion and Marxism.

∗ The Law of Evidence was promulgated and women were declared unfit to become witnesses to commercial deals on their own. A business contract must be signed by two men, or by a man and two women.
A Letter to My Friends
Authors: Fernando Cardenal M
Published: October 2007

Nicaragua is the only country in the world with three Catholic priests occupying ministerial posts. Ernesto Cardenal, the poet, is Minister of Culture; his brother, Fernando, is Education Minister; and Miguel D'Escoto is Foreign Minister. The fact that they are participating in the Sandinista government, which in November 1984 won over 65% of the vote in the first election since the revolution of 1979, has brought the three into conflict with the Catholic Church hierarchy in both Nicaragua and the Vatican. The conflict came to a head at the end of 1984, when the priests were called upon to choose between what the Church authorities defined as their religious vocation, or continuing to work in the Nicaraguan government. This was justified under a new Canon Law No. 285 adopted in November 1983, which explicitly stated that priests could not carry out: ‘Public posts that entail the exercise of civil authority’. The three ministers all chose to remain in their ministerial posts, and were expelled or suspended from their orders. In his Letter to My Friends, an abbreviated version of which follows, Fernando Cardenal, who has been Education Minister since July 1984; explains why he considers his expulsion from the Jesuit order to be inspired more by political than religious concerns, and justifies his wish to continue working in the government. The issue raised within the Catholic Church goes beyond the fate of these three priests, however, and should be seen in the context of Pope John Paul II's attempts to control the ‘theology of liberation’ movement which has made such an impact in Latin America. (See Peter Hebblethwaite, ‘Liberation and John Paul II’, Index on Censorship, 5/83). The Pope seems determined to return the Church to a conservative interpretation of its duties towards the poor, staying away from any identification with them in any particular historical situation, whereas Father Cardenal feels that the Church must engage in the struggle on behalf of the poor whenever and wherever it can. As Leonardo Boff, another ‘liberation theorist’, put it: ‘A Church for the poor is not enough; it is imperative that it be a Church with the poor, until it becomes the Church of the poor’.