bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Black Hole
Authors: Sarafis Marion
Published: October 2007

Only recently has it become possible to debate openly and without fear of prosecution the facts surrounding the Greek Civil War John Torode, writing in The Guardian, 10 February 1982, showed that advice in conformity with the Churchill-Stalin agreement was then still being given to Greek official delegations to Moscow.
How Bias Maims African History
Authors: Duodu Cameron
Published: October 2007

And how the UNESCO General History of Africa is countering the preponderant European view
Africa — Silent Continent?
Authors: Ki-Zerbo Joseph
Published: October 2007

The oral tradition provides outlets for dissent which have been blocked by today's rulers
At Home and in Exile
Authors: Mushatat Raad
Published: October 2007

The personal account of an Iraqi writer: ‘Everything is controlled by the Ministry of Information… If you show signs of talent in the field writing or art… you become a state artist or an artistic consultant for the Ministry of Information’
The Death of Vasyl Stus
Authors: Svitlychna Nadia
Published: October 2007

One of the leading Ukrainian poets of his generation, Vasyl Stus died in a prison camp in September 1985. Nadia Svtlychna, a friend for over 20 years, recalls some of her encounters
Never again?
Authors: Cox Robert
Published: October 2007

‘It was the climate which achieved the silence that so aided the military… Victims of state terrorism, or relatives of people who had disappeared or been arrested, were treated like lepers. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with them.’
The Nurse and the Poet
Authors: Kyncl Karel
Published: October 2007

The extraordinary story of the poet Ivan Blatny, Czechoslovakiga's first non-person
Radio Trottoir
Authors: Keita Touré
Published: October 2007

In Mali, as elsewhere in Africa, the rumour machine is kept busy
‘Toe the Line or Get Out’
Authors: McParland Kelly
Published: October 2007

Editor sacked ‘because he printed articles other papers suppressed ’
Not a Rosy Picture
Authors: Wauthier Claude
Published: October 2007

A quick guide to the failings and aspirations of the media in Africa — and the West
Tanzania ‘Licenses’ Journalists
Authors: Duodu Cameron
Published: October 2007

The Tanzania News Agency, SHIHATA, began ‘licensing’ all local and foreign journalists from 1 July 1985, with the full authority of a 1967 law that empowers the Agency to issue press cards to newsmen. The card costs 40,000 Tanzania shillings (about $250).
Secret party leads to arrests
Authors: Duodu Cameron
Published: October 2007

Ngugi wa Thiong'o named as leader of secret party by Kenyan MP
Is there a cultural thaw?
Authors: Alt Noamy
Published: October 2007

What do the changes in Soviet cultural policy mean — and how far is the relaxation likely to go?
Fear and freedom in Turkey
Authors: Laber Jeri , Henkin Alice
Published: October 2007

‘The constitution is being violated every day with the complicity of the authorities and the public’
My 28 days in captivity
Authors: Mukela John
Published: October 2007

‘Nothing was said, but I knew all too well, Admit nothing. Reveal nothing. Protect the source, Yet, in reality, journalists had disappeared and had been murdered…’
Clash of cultures
Authors: Alegría Claribel
Published: October 2007

The invaders impose their own ‘superior’ culture, but popular indigenous culture survives, as this summary of the Salvadoran experience shows
A modern animal farm
Authors: Cheng Li
Published: October 2007

A remarkable short story from one of the unofficial journals circulating at the time of China's ‘Democracy Movement’
Judge on trial
Authors: Klíma Ivan
Published: October 2007

‘He knew the case inside out, and he also knew that a double, particularly brutal murder called for the death penalty: a life for a life. He ought therefore to turn the case down, but was that not just what they were waiting for—waiting for him to do something of the sort—so that they could get rid of him.’
Start of the season
Authors: Sorokin Vladimir
Published: October 2007

Unsettling short story by one of Russia's younger writers whose work has never been published in the Soviet Union and is known there only in samizdat
Reports of famine are prohibited
Authors: Kilongson Mike
Published: October 2007

As you read this many thousands of people are starving in southern Sudan. Any journalist who dares to report the fact that these people are dying faces imprisonment and torture.
The case of Mike Kilongson
Authors: Griffin Michael
Published: October 2007

‘I am not going to side with any political movement. I am going to remain a free man. I am going to remain a journalist.’
My temptation
Authors: Havel Václav
Published: October 2007

The banned Czech writer discusses his two most recent plays: Largo Desolato and Temptation
The journalist's right to criticise
Authors: Wickremasinghe Suriya
Published: October 2007

The conduct of the country's foremost political leader was 'immoral', 'undignified', and amounted to 'the basest opportunism'. So wrote journalist Peter Michael Lingens about Bruno Kreisky, former Federal Chancellor of Austria. Thus started a long chain of litigation commencing with a private prosecution for criminal defamation in the Regional Court of Vienna in 1975, and culminating in a unanimous and forthright judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
'It's hard to be optimistic'
Authors: Volkov Oleg
Published: October 2007

Oleg Volkov, a member of the Soviet Union of Writers, has earned high honours for his literary work. In this remarkable article — too outspoken to be published in his homeland — the 87-year-old writer draws on his experience of Soviet history — including 27 years in prisons, camps and exile — to reflect on the current policy of glasnost or 'openness'
A black man with a white shadow
Authors: Depestre René , Caistor Nick
Published: October 2007

Though the Haitians finally freed themselves of the Duvalier dynasty in February 1986, the country's future remains uncertain. A National Council of Government is trying to channel the effervescence of political, press and intellectual activity into a democratic system which Haiti has not known for decades. Generations of Haitian writers have been forced to go to France, Canada or the United States to publish their work freely. One of their leading poets, René Depestre, has now settled in Paris after almost thirty years in exile. In 1982 he published a collection of short stories, Alléluia pour une Femme-Jardin (Gallimard) from which this story is taken.
Guarani: rhetoric and reality
Authors: Bareiro Saguier Ruben
Published: October 2007

Paraguay is a bilingual country in which 50% of the population speak only Guarani. But the Guarani language and way of life are suffering from a kind of cultural amnesia on the part of the authorities.
Vladimov's dog
Authors: Kyncl Karel
Published: October 2007

‘One sometimes despairs of ever being able to convey the facts of life in the Soviet bloc to people living under different social systems, who judge the world by their own democratic and liberal standards’
Eighteen years of tyranny
Authors: Anonymous
Published: October 2007

The legal, judicial and arbitrary measures which have so tied the tongues of those who would criticise President Siad Barre that in December 1986 his share of the vote was 99.9%
The Moscow peace seminar: Historic moment?
Authors: Krivova Irina
Published: October 2007

A member of an unofficial Soviet peace organisation — the ‘Group to Establish Trust’ — managed to speak at a seminar run by the Soviet Peace Committee. Her account illustrates the difficulties of testing the limits of Gorbachev's policy of glasnost and it was published in Moscow in the first issue of a new unofficial magazine entitled — appropriately — Glasnost
The experience of a generation
Authors: Ibrahim Sonallah
Published: October 2007

An Egyptian novelist recalls how his first novel was born, and how it was banned and then cut. Now, twenty-one years after its first appearance, the novel has been published complete.
Gloomy future for journalists?
Authors: Sam Albert
Published: October 2007

African governments accuse Western news media of giving a distorted and biased view of African affairs. Have European-based magazines specialising in Africa altered the situation?
The indiscreet thoughts of Academician Fang
Authors: Munro Robin
Published: October 2007

Fang Lizhi lost his university job after supporting student demands for democracy. Yet within six months he was able to go on a trip to Rome. Furthermore he met the editor of a ‘reactionary’ Hong Kong magazine — banned in China — and gave a remarkable interview, reaffirming his belief in democracy, students and intellectuals. Robin Munro sifts through the interview.
Ghana's culture of silence
Authors: Ankomah Baffour
Published: October 2007

The writer, a former editor of The Pioneer who had to flee after publishing an article about the state of his country, challenges Jerry Rawlings to call off the attacks on the press and live up to his promise of glasnost.
The lynx
Authors: Yuryenen Sergey
Published: October 2007

An extract from the novel Son of the Empire
Glasnost: Eastern Europe
Authors: Brod Peter
Published: October 2007

In spite of all the pressures to conform with the Soviet model, the Communist countries of Europe show great variety in their media policies and in their application of glasnost
Two poems
Authors: Mtshali Oswald
Published: October 2007

From Fireflames, which is banned
PEN'S work for imprisoned writers
Authors: Fraser Antonia
Published: October 2007

’The idea that writers imprisoned for their writings or opinions should be defended by other writers was implicit in the concept of PEN from the very beginning, though few, if any, of the forty-one writers who attended the inaugural dinner in London in 1921 could have foreseen the importance it would assume in our benighted twentieth century’ Michael Scammell, ex-editor of Index on Censorship and recently retired Chairman of International PEN'S Writers in Prison Committee.
The Medellín ‘death list’
Authors: Deas Malcolm
Published: October 2007

The list has 34 names — 14 of them belong to journalists, writers or television people. Two have been murdered, 10 have gone into exile. Who wrote the list? And why is there so much violence in the country?
I feel I have to go back
Authors: Akhmetov Nizametdin
Published: October 2007

A poet of Bashkir nationality, Akhmetov was just 18 when he was put in a labour camp. In 1987, nearly 20 years later, he was released and arrived in West Germany. Now he plans to return to his country. Sally Laird interviewed him.
Cameroon's forbidden topics
Authors: Ankomah Baffour
Published: October 2007

As the ex-President's name cannot be uttered, all kinds of devious euphemisms are used. President Biya himself uses the expression ‘mon prédécesseur’ or ‘the other man’
The individual in China
Authors: Ross Lester , Silk Mitchell
Published: October 2007

In spite of rebuffs, China's reformers are still in charge, as the recent 13th Congress confirmed. We look at the present state of political and economic reform, the rule of law, and individual rights
Better out than in?
Authors: Tan Lek Hor
Published: October 2007

The Far Eastern Economic Review has been virtually banned from Singapore — like Time, Asiaweek, and the Asia Wall St Journal. Its editor Derek Davies accuses Singapore of breaking its pledge; Lee Kuan Yew is suing. Meanwhile The Economist and US News & World Report are leaving. What's happening?
Through the loopholes
Authors: Akhalwaya Ameen
Published: October 2007

The editor of The Indicator, an ‘alternative’ newspaper, describes the difficulties of publishing news in today's conditions
Josef Lada, before and after
Authors: Kyncl Karel
Published: October 2007

What is the difference between 1977 and 1987 in Czechoslovakia?
Interview
Authors: Timofeev Lev
Published: October 2007

The editor of the independent journal Referendum explains the role of his publication, and why the authorities are softer on him than they were. ‘On the one hand there are still several hundred political prisoners. On the other hand those of us who have been released are at present able to operate relatively freely.’

In February 1987 Lev Timofeev was prematurely released from camp as a result of a government decree, under which a large number of political prisoners were amnestied. Together with Sergei Grigoryants, another ex-political prisoner, he set up the unofficial bulletin Glasnost last summer. Grigoryants now edits Glasnost, while Timofeev has started his own journal, Referendum. He also leads the independent ‘Press Club Glasnost’, which organised an unofficial conference on human rights in December 1987. The Press Club is planning to set up a form of open university, using a number of highly-qualified ex-political prisoners as teachers.

I interviewed Lev Timofeev in Moscow in January. As we talked in his study, a neat portable computer - which had come from abroad but quickly learned to speak fluent Russian - was printing out the fourth issue of Referendum. S.L.
The space of prose
Authors: Sinyavsky Andrei
Published: October 2007

Let's hope for fulfilment of the prophecy that was written in cuneiform on a clay tablet in ancient Babylon: ‘The gods have grown angry at Babylon. The end of the world is approaching. Children have ceased to obey their parents. And everyone wants to write a book’.

The following speech, slightly edited here, was given at the conference in Denmark in March 1988.
My detention in Abu Dhabi
Authors: Khamees Dhabiya
Published: October 2007

‘Being a woman and a writer made my case most unusual, especially as I was the first political prisoner in the United Arab Emirates who was not a foreigner.’
Quagmires and quicksands
Authors: Tlali Miriam
Published: October 2007

The chief of police in Pretoria said, ‘Miriam Tlali should expect to be treated like that because she is an enemy of the state’. Here she recounts what led to the midnight raid on her house
Aunt Lila
Authors: Moyano Daniel
Published: October 2007

A short story by an Argentinian writer who now lives in Spain
Trademark Territory
Authors: Dorfman Ariel
Published: October 2007

‘Chile: 25% unemployment’ Official statistic A short story by one of Chile's most well-known writers
Who's Afraid of Wole Soyinka?
Authors: Maja-Pearce Adewale
Published: October 2007

A journey through West Africa
The Censor Comes to Nigeria's Observer
Authors: Ezeh Peter
Published: October 2007

For the first time the decision as to what goes into a newspaper has been openly taken away from journalists and given to a government representative
Last Days with John Kugblenu
Authors: Adjei Mike
Published: October 2007

I always remember a question he asked me when I sent an article to him in the office. After reading the article he said it was good, but it would get us into trouble. Then he asked me: ‘Mike, do you think it's worth dying for this country?’
Black Journalists Under Apartheid
Authors: Moseki Mojàlefa
Published: October 2007

‘Whenever I look back to 1981, the year I entered journalism, I never fail to regard my decision as a “death-wish”. What else could have lured me into such a dangerous field?’
The Register of News Agencies
Authors: Harber Anton
Published: October 2007

Less than a week before they were due to be applied, Stoffel Botha, the Home Affairs Minister, ‘temporarily’ suspended for ‘practical considerations’ the restrictions described here by the co-editor of the Johannesburg Weekly Mail
The culture of press freedom
Authors: Lloyd John
Published: October 2007

It was from out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil as two twins cleaving together leapt forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom in which Adam fell of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil. As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of evil?… since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely and with less danger scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason?. And this is the benefit that may be had of books promiscuously read.
Victory for press freedom
Authors: Maliakan Joseph , Tan Lek Hor
Published: October 2007

Last month, following nationwide protests from journalists, editors and publishers, the Indian government withdrew its controversial Defamation Bill and announced that a national debate on the defamation issue would be intiated. The government's decision, announced by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi at the end of September, was greeted with jubilation by members of the press and public. The Bill, which would have considerably weakened the position of defendants in defamation cases, had been introduced into the Lok Sabha (the lower house of Parliament) on 29 August without any prior consultation with the press, and was passed next day with very little debate. The haste with which the Bill was passed was widely seen as the government's latest attempt to impose censorship on the media, especially on investigative journalism. Here a journalist on the Indian Express and lndex's Asia specialist look at the Bill and the controversy it provoked.
Bold new voices in the GDR
Authors: Heller Frithjof
Published: October 2007

Over the last five years a number of unofficial journals have sprung up in the GDR, many of them published openly by independent peace, environment and human rights groups. The authorities have reacted by arresting and expelling many of the activists involved — but face a new spirit of determination among the younger generation. A Swiss journalist reports.
Now playing at Goskino
Authors: Rosenberg Karen
Published: October 2007

Some of the most exciting films to emerge under glasnost have come from the non-Russian republics. But attitudes to artistic experiment remain conservative — among the public as well as the bureaucracy. Here an American critic who attended a film festival in Tbilisi looks at the fate of avant-garde cinema in Georgia and Ukraine
Who'd like to speak?: A literary debate in Siberia
Authors: Meilanov Vazif , Sumner S. J.
Published: October 2007

Vazif Meilanov (b. 1938), a mathematician and author of the samizdat book In the Margins of Soviet Newspapers, was arrested in January 1980 for demonstrating in defence of the exiled physicist Andrei Sakharov. Meilanov was sentenced to 7 years in a ‘strict regime’ camp and 2 years in exile for ‘anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda'; a further conviction while he was in camp added an extra 6 months to his sentence. Glasnost and Sakharov's release notwithstanding, Meilanov is still serving his term of exile in the remote settlement of Namtsi in the Verkhnevilusky region of Yakutia, Siberia.

It was there, in the local library, that he attended a bizarre public discussion on Children of the Arbat by Anatoly Rybakov (see preceding article: Glasnost bestseller), Meilanov's lively account of this discussion, published here in an abridged version, first appeared in Russian in the Paris newspaper Russkaya Mysl.
Transforming reality
Authors: Freire Paulo , Schelling Vivian
Published: October 2007

One of the key figures in the Popular Culture Movement, Paulo Freire is the founder of a revolutionary educational method which brought literacy — and political awareness — to thousands of the poor in Brazil. His books, which have played a key role in adult literacy movements throughout the world, have been banned by many dictatorial governments, including those of South Africa and, most recently, Haiti. Forced into exile from his own country following the right-wing coup in 1964, Freire finally returned in 1980. In São Paulo he talked to Vivian Schelling about his work
Iran in the British media
Authors: Asari Farzaneh
Published: October 2007

By bombarding us with images of Iranians as radically different from ourselves and governed by different values, the British media become accomplices in the Ayatollah's 'apartheid' vision of the world and his suppression of dissent at home
Islam, the West, and human rights
Authors: Arkoun Mohamed
Published: October 2007

'One of the things the Rushdie crisis demonstrates is that the West isn't prepared to listen to the voice of Islam as Islam expounds itself, argues the Sorbonne's Professor of Islamic Thought
Whose tongues are tied?
Authors: Rich Vera
Published: October 2007

An officially-commissioned report suggesting that 'urgent action' is needed to protect the Byelorussian language has been banned in Byelorussia as too explosive
A Satanic sermon
Authors: Dhondy Farrukh
Published: October 2007

The following are extracts from Farrukh Dhondy's address at the opening of the 8th International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books, on 9 March 1989. Farrukh Dhondy is an author who comes from what is now Bangladesh.
Duoduo's view from death
Authors: Lee Gregory
Published: October 2007

One of China's leading young poets was in Tiananmen Square on the day of the massacre. He flew to Britain the day afterwards, where he was interviewed for Index
Publishing for the future
Authors: Frunza Victor
Published: October 2007

Writer Monica Savulescu talks to her fellow-exile about the one-man publishing house he has set up in Denmark
'Animal can't dash me human rights'
Authors: Anikulapo-Kuti Fela
Published: October 2007

'They want to scare me off coming home ... I must go home'. Jane Bryce interviews the musician who has been jailed twice for his criticism of the Nigerian government
How the Chronicle lost two editors
Authors: Carver Richard
Published: October 2007

After successfully exposing a government scandal, the Editor and Deputy Editor of the Chronicle of Bulawayo were transferred elsewhere
Displaced person
Authors: Fogden Barry
Published: October 2007

The poem which won first prize in the Skoob/Index poetry competition
The trouble with NOT having censorship
Authors: Demszky Gábor
Published: October 2007

Karel Kyncl talks to the head of the Budapest publishing house, AB Beszélö Ltd
The slow death of the rule of law
Authors: Gunasekara Prins
Published: October 2007

A lawyer describes the breakdown of order all around him in Colombo which led to his own flight when terror knocked at his front door
Unbelievable story of waiters
Authors: Day Barbara
Published: October 2007

I served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal, translated by Paul Wilson (Chatto & Windus £l2. 95)
Trouble in happy valley
Authors: Gillespie Marie
Published: October 2007

A new kind of wizard haunts the de-industrialised valleys of South Wales, and he's finding plenty of willing apprentices
Myths, lies and urban warfare
Authors: Silver Steve
Published: October 2007

When is a no-go area not a no-go area? According to television and newspaper reports, walking through the Oldham districts of Glodwick, Coppice and Westwood should be a very dangerous business indeed. Lurking on street corners, Asian gangs wait to attack white people. So they say
The new battleground
Authors: Davies Simon
Published: October 2007

The mass collection of DNA is the latest in a litany of incursions into personal privacy and the United Kingdom has become the guinea pig for the burgeoning DNA industry. The UK Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 overrides earlier safeguards by mandating the indefinite storage of samples, notably those provided 'voluntarily', and extending access to these beyond police and other law enforcement agencies
List to the right
Authors: Fauset Claire
Published: October 2007

Viewed in conjunction with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, the new Terrorism Act 2000 is further evidence of the government's indifference to fundamental freedoms
A case of mistaken identity
Authors: Petley Julian
Published: October 2007

What went wrong between the UK media and a report on 'multi-ethnic' Britain?
Music to hate with
Authors: Löow Hélene
Published: October 2007

Aided by the Internet, racist music has made inroads on European youth culture
Invisible citizens
Authors: Bates Stephen
Published: October 2007

All European countries have their far-right groups but few have been as successful in recent years as the Vlaams Blok, the right-wing nationalist - and separatist - party in Belgium
Portrait of a town
Authors: Samson Michel
Published: October 2007

Vitrolles, a small town in south-eastern France, is the far right's shop window in the region. In this year's municipal elections, voters re-elected the incumbent mayor on her record in office, knowing - and approving - what to expect
Who's afraid of Europe?
Authors: Drakulic Slavenka
Published: October 2007

A committed European voices new-felt doubts about the 'European project'
Madness and mercy
Authors: Rideau Wilbert
Published: October 2007

In 1961, nineteen-year-old African-American Wilbert Rideau was sentenced to death for the murder of Julia Ferguson, a white bank teller in Lake Charles, Louisiana, In a succession of trials, three all-white juries sentenced him to death. The sentence was commuted to life in 1972, after the US Supreme Court temporarily halted executions. In December 2000, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Rideau had 'established a prima facie case of racial discrimination in the process used to select the grand jury that indicted him'. It ordered his conviction be 'reversed' and the 1961 indictment 'quashed'. He remains in prison.
Nice little earner
Authors: Greene Judith
Published: October 2007

Arrests and convictions are on the rise; profits from crime are there for the taking; Wall Street is bullish on prison stock. Get in on the ground floor of this booming industry now
Sleeping sickness
Authors: Rice Speedy
Published: October 2007

Incompetent and cynical lawyers pave the way to death row
Seizing the spotlight
Authors: Gonnerman Jennifer
Published: October 2007

A stand-up comedian uses the media to fight the drug laws
The price of white denial
Authors: Wise Tim
Published: October 2007

Yet one more school shooting and suburban white America continues to bury its head in the sand, blind to the violence that is destroying their children
Outpost of the gulag
Authors: Dow Mark
Published: October 2007

Outside the gulag proper, the US Immigration and Naturalization Service holds 23,000 deportees, thousands of whom have no home to be returned to and little prospect of release
Singing to the deaf
Authors: Pasko Grigory
Published: October 2007

On 20 June, the Russian environmental journalist Grigory Pasko stood up again before the military court in Vladivostok, charged for the second time with treason. If convicted, he faces a prison sentence of 12-20 years. Pursued by the Russian authorities for almost four years, Pasko was an investigative journalist with the Russian Pacific Fleet paper Boyevaya Vakhta. He was initially arrested on 20 November 1997 and accused of passing of classified documents to the Japanese television network NHK; he claims he was prosecuted for blowing the whistle to Japanese media on Russian nuclear waste-dumping in the Sea of Japan (Index 3/1999, 1/2001, 2/2001). After 20 months in prison awaiting trial, he was acquitted of treason, found guilty of 'abusing his authority as an officer' and sentenced to three years' imprisonment. He was released under an amnesty but recharged after the Military Collegium of the Russian Supreme Court overturned the verdict of the lower court and called for new hearings on 21 November 2000. Index presents the first English translation of excerpts from his prison diary. JVH
Down the Welsh road
Authors: Jones George
Published: October 2007

Should the linguistic rights of the Welsh-speaking minority dictate the educational syllabus of the English-speaking majority?
Freedom of technical information
Authors: Park Robert L.
Published: October 2007

Efforts to emasculate the Freedom of Information Act have been unrelenting
Free for not all
Authors: Aufderheide Patricia
Published: October 2007

Conservative groups and commercial interests are competing for US television air time but fair play has no provision
Women in Africa
Authors: Githae-Mugo Micere
Published: October 2007

Adewale Maja-Pearce interviews the Kenyan writer exiled in Harare
Georgia's struggle to tell its story
Authors: Dragadze Tamara
Published: October 2007

Moscow allows debate but guards against foreign reporting of any challenge to its control over Tbilisi
Aquino's tarnished track record
Authors: Jones Sidney
Published: October 2007

The Philippines welcomed a new era when Marcos was removed — but corruption and illegal killings continue. There have been six military coup attempts against Mrs Aquino's government. The last one was quelled on 7 December 1989
Zaire: a nation reduced to silence
Authors: X. Jean-Marie
Published: October 2007

Marechal (Joseph-Desire) Mobutu Sese Seko has set the stage for one of Africa's worst political tragedies
The continuing struggle
Authors: Mahfouz Naguib
Published: October 2007

The controversial Egyptian novelist and winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature, whose novel Awlad Haratina, written in the 1950s, still cannot be published in his country, was interviewed for Index by Marilyn Booth shortly after a death threat had been issued against him
Apparatus of cultural indifference
Authors: Smith Anthony
Published: October 2007

Britain's future broadcasting will be revolutionised, and threatened, by new legislation
'We have been deprived of our niche'
Authors: Sedakova Olga
Published: October 2007

Perestroika has forced position changes in the old underground as well as officialdom
Midrash on happiness
Authors: Paley Grace
Published: October 2007

In an interview in the January 1990 issue of Index, American writer and political activist Grace Paley pointed out the odd circumstance in which Americans, enjoying the right of unfettered speech, are often embarrassed to make use of it. In this story, she offers a vision of a different world in which the right to speak also guarantees the privilege of being heard and the obligation to listen.
Bowdler revisited
Authors: Levinson Nan
Published: October 2007

Artist Jane Zweig discovered books burned
In search of a liberal press code
Authors: Badaoui Mohamed
Published: October 2007

The October 1988 upheaval forced change in Algeria. Freedom of expression has benefited
The caravan of death
Authors: Hurtado Maria Elena
Published: October 2007

As Chile prepared to return to democracy on 11 March the country was shocked by the account of the 'caravan of death' which in October 1973 travelled through Chile assassinating political prisoners
The fiction of Honduran democracy
Authors: Custodio Ramón
Published: October 2007

Ramón Custodio is the President of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in Honduras. Recently the victim of harassment and a death threat, he talked to Index Latin American researcher John Kraniauskas while on a visit to London
Lack of access makes the press more bureaucratic
Authors: Couto Mia
Published: October 2007

Mia Couto was born in 1955 in the Mozambican city of Beira. In the early 1970s he moved to Maputo, the capital, to begin medical studies, but soon switched to journalism. He was a former director of the Mozambique Information Agency (AIM) and Tempo magazine; he is currently on the staff of Noticias. Adewale Maja-Pearce asked him about his own experience of the relationship between journalists and the government.
Trampling over freedom
Authors: Forgan Liz
Published: October 2007

Britain will continue to make wrong decisions about press freedom until the right to free expression is enshrined in law
Losing their soul in a dish
Authors: Williams Joan
Published: October 2007

Caribbean leaders fear that US cultural penetration will soon dilute island identities in a soap pot
Kenya— independence without freedom
Authors: Wamwere Koigi wa
Published: October 2007

A former Kenyan MP looks at politics under President arap-Moi and the hypocrisy of some support
My childhood at the gate of unrest
Authors: Goma Paul
Published: October 2007

'I was sitting on the calidor and I could see...' From this vantage point exiled Romanian writer Paul Goma's first English novel My Childhood at the Gate of Unrest surveys the events in his native Bessarabia, a part of Romanian Moldavia annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. From the Calidor (a type of verandah, but also a corrupted Greco-Romanian word meaning 'sublime longing' — a feeling often encountered among Goma's Stalinised Bessarabians) of his father's village schoolhouse, young Paul observes the movements and machinations of the Second World War's Eastern front — particularly those of the oncoming Russians, about to swarm into his village instead of the long-hoped-for Romanian patriots ...
The grim reality of Afghan exiles
Authors: Hyman Anthony
Published: October 2007

Murders are frequent as rival chieftains settle private and political scores and hostages disappear in clandestine prisons on Pakistani territory
Where even toddlers know hatred
Authors: Kokan Jane
Published: October 2007

Disinformation, death threats, and Stalinist-style censorship keep Kosovo in a state of tension
Africa's new Islamic Fundamentalists
Authors: Jones Gareth
Published: October 2007

As the apparatus of tyranny is dismantled in Eastern Europe, human rights campaigners are now worried that the government of Africa's largest country, Sudan, may be taking up the mantle of repression with a new mixture of militarism and Islamic fundamentalism
Forgetting Orwell's warning
Authors: Dzisah Melvis
Published: October 2007

Pursued by agents of Jerry Rawlings' chaotic 'system', a Ghanaian journalist is driven into exile
Murder with impunity
Authors: Girven Tim
Published: October 2007

Domestic political tensions and the 'drugs war' propel the growth of institutionalised violence
'I didn't feel alone during detention'
Authors: Habib Shafiq
Published: October 2007

A black flag flies over a house in the Galilee village of Dir Hanna. It is here that poet Shafiq Habib has been spending 24 hours a day under house arrest until legal procedures against him are finalised. Habib has erected the flag in mourning for the death of freedom of expression in Israel, for although it is not unusualfor Palestinian writers in the occupied territories to be detained and for the written word to be censored and banned, no legal steps have so far been taken by the Israeli authorities against an author inside the green line. His arrest and detention appear to set a dangerous legal precedent.
Learning by letter to be free
Authors: de Caires David
Published: October 2007

Guyana's press was government-controlled until Stabroek News was launched in 1986
Guinea: a case for optimism?
Authors: Blay-Amihere Kabral
Published: October 2007

As Sekou Toure's grip loosens, freedom of expression has a chance
One year in Baku
Authors: Guseinov G.A.
Published: October 2007

On the night of 19 January 1990, more than 100 people died and about 400 were injured when Soviet troops invaded Baku following riots and pogroms which had been taking place against the Armenian population of the city. However, even the Armenians have questioned the timing of the Kremlin's intervention days after the violence had taken place. The purpose, it has been suggested, was not to protect lives but to curb the growing power of the,Azerbaijani Popular Front.

According to witnesses, soldiers fired indiscriminately. Some of those hurt were unarmed, innocent civilians. They included old people, women and children. Whether it was indeed an attempt to restore the power of the Communist Party, or harshly to reestablish order in a discontented region, what took place was an example of severe and largely gratuitous violence by Soviet troops. As thefollowing eyewitness report and photographs show, it was nothing short of a massacre.
The return of the black horseman
Authors: Nikolov Lyubomir
Published: October 2007

Bulgaria's Prime Minister, Andrei Lukanov, elected in June 1990, resigned on 29 November 1990. His downfall was caused by economic failure but, despite suffering 46 years of Communist rule, literature stands a better chance of success
Voices against the tide
Authors: Dimitrova Blaga
Published: October 2007

On 22 October 1990, one of Bulgaria's finest poets, Blaga Dimitrova, spoke to fellow poet Lyubomir Nikolov about censorship under Todor Zhivkov, Eastern Europe's longest-serving Communist leader
Made in Taiwan
Authors: Rayns Tony
Published: October 2007

Antiquated censorship codes have not deterred Taiwanese directors from exploring politically and socially contentious subjects
Two steps forward, one back
Authors: Hellier Chris
Published: October 2007

A more relaxed attitude to film and television angers the Turkish army and Islamic groups
Dallas dollars and the government line
Authors: Mamma Olley
Published: October 2007

To help create cinema that celebrates African cultures, governments must help, but not control
Pictures from olden times
Authors: Hames Peter
Published: October 2007

When the curtain rose on the 'lost' works of Czech cinema, it revealed a treasure trove of rare delights
Rabbits run free in Berlin
Authors: Schenk Ralf
Published: October 2007

In condemning its own film makers and artists 25 years ago, the East German government began a march towards a dead end
Suffer the little children…
Authors: Polaco Jorge
Published: October 2007

The Argentine film director tells John Kraniauskas how he became the victim of religious bigotry and Victorian values
Dear Mickey Mouse…
Authors: Goldman Steven
Published: October 2007

Hollywood continues to dominate the global screen, and US directors and producers don't dare take artistic and political risks, so censorship is not a burning issue
Suffer the little children
Authors: Maja-Pearce Adewale
Published: October 2007

The IMF is putting the squeeze on Zambia and its people are hungry. The words of the all-powerful ruler and 'father' of the nation go unheeded and his 'children' rise up to bite the hand that is failing to feed them
Rites of passage to democracy
Authors: Mukela John
Published: October 2007

President Kaunda has agreed to multi-party elections, but the media, it seems, cannot take part
Mikhail Bulgakov: private thoughts of the Master
Authors: Milne Lesley
Published: October 2007

The KGB archives offered a precious insight into the life of one of Russia's most remarkable writers
My diary: under the iron heel
Authors: Bulgakov Mikhail
Published: October 2007

The private thoughts of the novelist reveal a man plagued by illness, too outspoken for his own good
Independent press in peril
Authors: Rukuni Charles
Published: October 2007

Zimbabwe's newspapers and their editors are increasingly subject to obscure government whim and proprietors' jitters. The need for official permission to secure foreign currency has a way of influencing editorial policy
The labour camp memoirs of Zhang Xianliang
Authors: Gittings John
Published: October 2007

He published his first poems at 13, and they were attacked. Thirty years later, in the remote north of China, he still writes, and is still criticised
From wimps to warriors
Authors: Sampson Anthony
Published: October 2007

The media have been laggard in mobilising public opinion against the arms trade —but wars make better copy than peace
When no publicity is good public relations
Authors: Corbin Jane
Published: October 2007

A member of the BBC Panorama team gives one woman's view of the ludicrous lengths to which the arms world will go to preserve its secrecy
Business before disclosure
Authors: d'Ancona Matthew
Published: October 2007

Political and commercial interests ensure the arms trade is unchallenged by impertinent questions
Freedom from fear
Authors: Aung San Suit Kyi
Published: October 2007

On 10 July 1991, Aung San Suit Kyi , Burma's leading politician and dissident, was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament. On 10 December 1991, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She was neither in Strasbourg nor in Oslo for the award ceremonies: for the last two years she has been under house arrest in Rangoon.

What follows is one of a number of previously unpublished essays (included in a volume published by Penguin in December 1991, Freedom From Fear and other Writings) in honour of her father, Aung San, the architect of modern Burma, who was assassinated in 1947 when she was two years old.
A cultural clearout
Authors: Kaufmann Walter
Published: October 2007

West European publishing giants have cleared the shelves of Eastern Germany and filled them with their own books of the month
The prophetic tradition and East German literature
Authors: Sax Boria
Published: October 2007

The demise of Marxism has left writers and poets struggling to find a new vocation
In defence of Christa Wolf
Authors: Drake Caroline
Published: October 2007

When the Wall came tumbling down, East German writers who had stayed at home were exposed to the chill blast of freedom
No slander, please
Authors: Bamrud Joachim
Published: October 2007

The Panamanian press has enjoyed a new lease of life since the departure of Noriega, but now its journalists are threatened with draconian slander laws
Day Five in the furnace
Authors: Gesbert Bernard
Published: October 2007

Accused of spying, the French film maker was arrested by Vietnam's security forces and held from 2-15 May 1991 in Hanoi's central prison. His diary tells the tale — and bears witness to the disappearance of his two colleagues, novelist Nguyen Huy Thiep and writer/producer Tran Van Thuy, who are still held by the authorities
Morocco: remember Tazmamart
Authors: Anonymous
Published: October 2007

At the end of June 1991, Al-Mouwaten published an eye-witness account of the Moroccan prison system in its launch issue; within a month the new magazine was banned
A cruise round the islands
Authors: Jaumain Yves , Donnadieu Jean-Louis
Published: October 2007

The paradise islands and archipelagos of the Indian Ocean hide another reality — particularly for journalists trying to do their job
Return of the native
Authors: Hyman Anthony
Published: October 2007

The 500-year-old poetry of a Turk has become the rallying cry for Uzbekistan's independence
Codes of conduct
Authors: McDonald Robert
Published: October 2007

Newspapers in Greece are challenging the anti-terrorist laws to open up public debate
Kosovo: Where journalism is a crime
Authors: Ruston Ursula
Published: October 2007

Albanian journalists in Serbian-run Kosovo are casualties of Yugoslavia's ethnic conflicts
Egyptian sleight of hand
Authors: Napoli James J
Published: October 2007

There is no censorship in Egypt, say its citizens, but plenty of journalists tell a different story
Homage to silence
Authors: Wilmot Patrick
Published: October 2007

A university lecturer in Nigeria tells a frightening tale of abduction and deportation
Annotations on the Dirty War
Authors: Tizon Hector
Published: October 2007

Three sketches about life under dictatorship by the Argentine novelist
New times, same problems
Authors: Golmakani Houshang
Published: October 2007

Iranian cinema has never been free of government restraints, but it looks as though it may be moving towards better times
Dislodging the buffer
Authors: Maryniak Irena
Published: October 2007

A late-night visit to the elegant, if unrefurbished, pre-revolutionary premises of Memorial in Moscow, yielded an impromptu meeting with two representatives of Agzybirlik — the civil rights movement of Turkmenistan
Making good use of bad debt
Authors: Mukong Albert
Published: October 2007

Dictators deprived of money may make good democrats yet
Zaire: wanted dead or alive
Authors: Moutcanda Leon
Published: October 2007

'African journalists must rise above everything; they have the power to make and break governments'
Break-through in Burundi
Authors: Misser François
Published: October 2007

A new law guaranteeing the freedom of the press has been passed. Will it have meaning?
Switzerland: a peculiar pair
Authors: Barrelet Denis
Published: October 2007

By exceeding their legal duties, two Swiss judges have helped to make censorship a reality
No better than they should be
Authors: Kucinski Bernardo
Published: October 2007

The nature of its ownership and the distortion of professional ethics has left Brazil's media in poor shape to further the country's flirtation with democracy
Black and white world
Authors: Bokshitskaya Yelena
Published: October 2007

New categories of 'untouchables' are emerging as writers and editors try to second guess the official climate of opinion in the Russian Republic
Voiceless in Uzbekistan
Authors: Kokan Jane
Published: October 2007

Opposition parties are banned and their newspapers silenced. Students are in revolt and Islam is on the rise. How long can the government last?
Striking a balance
Authors: Darbishire Helen
Published: October 2007

Protecting the victims of bigotry from verbal abuse and discrimination is more likely to drive prejudice underground than to stamp it out
The death of Art
Authors: Levinson Nan
Published: October 2007

The National Endowment for the Arts falls victim to the new puritanism
First Amendment behind bars
Authors: Janusz Luke
Published: October 2007

The creation of an independent prison journal pitted the prisoners' desire for reconciliation against the intolerance of authority
Benin: growing pains
Authors: Chabi Maurice
Published: October 2007

Journalists in the state sector are caught in the crossfire between government and opposition
Purely an internal matter?
Authors: Tan Lek Hor
Published: October 2007

The Chinese government is at odds with the people on an unprecedented scale but resents international concern and denies the charges levelled against it by human rights groups
The trouble with Dai Qing
Authors: Barme Geremie
Published: October 2007

A self-styled 'independent intellectual' pleases neither the government in power nor the dissidents waiting in the wings
Opting for the most dangerous path
Authors: Changqing Cao
Published: October 2007

Dissident journalists agree with the Party on only one thing: the press played a critical role in fomenting the student protest movement
Samizdat and designer T-shirts
Authors: Chi Lau Kin
Published: October 2007

The widespread nature of dissent within China is only now coming to light as the government attempts to stamp out the centres of underground resistance
Portrait of a much abused lady
Authors: Heins Marjorie
Published: October 2007

The politically correct establishment is coopting the feminist discourse to turn it back on the radicals
The walls of Hebron
Authors: Stasiuk Andrzej
Published: October 2007

Andrzej Stasiuk (b. 1960) is a poet and prose writer from the Beskid Niski region of southern Poland. The Walls of Hebron (Mury Hebronu) was commissioned by the Solidarity organisation Wolność i Pokój shortly after Andrzej Stasiuk's release from 19 months' imprisonment in 1984. He wrote the book in three weeks, but Solidarity rejected it for fear that its 'realism' might scandalise its supporters. The work was finally published in Poland in 1992 by Wydawnictwo Gyodnych Duchów and evoked a confused reaction among readers accustomed to associating imprisonment with myths of valour and patriotic sacrifice.
Conscience and courage
Authors: D'Souza Frances
Published: October 2007

Conscience Be My Guide: An Anthology of Prison Writings edited by Geoffrey Bould (Zed Books, London and New Jersey, 1991).
Kemal al-Gizouli: the salt sting of memory
Authors: al-Kid Khalid
Published: October 2007

Kemal al-Gizouli is General Secretary of the banned Sudan Writers' Union, aformer Attorney General and a member of the banned Sudan Bar Association. He was imprisoned on 10 August 1989 following the military coup in Sudan and was held without charge or trial until a government amnesty for political prisoners in May 1991. During his imprisonment, he was only allowed to see his wife on a handful of occasions and did not see his children until his release. He was rearrested in March 1992 and detained until July.
New frontiers: a visitor's guide
Authors: Godwin Mike
Published: October 2007

Computers are creating new-style communities that could be commonplace by 2001
Coming of age
Authors: Kucinski Bernardo
Published: October 2007

It was the press, not the politicians or their masters, who brought down the President