Friday, 15 July 2022

A new chance to protect freedom of expression online

The government has hit pause on the Online Safety Bill. We need to go back to the drawing board, says Index on Censorship CEO Ruth Smeeth.
Photo: Victoria Heath/Unsplash

A memorial for the man who told the world about the Babyn Yar massacre

Anatoly Kuznetsov is the Ukrainian writer who documented the horrors of Ukraine’s worst atrocity. He deserves to be remembered, writes Martin Bright. Photo: Valeriy Tretyakov, Creative Commons

Summer magazine launch: The battle for Ukraine

In the summer 2022 issue of Index on Censorship, launched next week, people across the spectrum talk about the corrosive effect of the war in Ukraine on freedoms. Viktoria Sedult, a journalist in Hungary, writes about how Europe’s most right-wing leader, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, used fears of being embroiled in the war to secure a resounding electoral victory. Hanna Komar, an activist from Belarus, tells how she is desperately trying to challenge her parents on the lies they see on their TV. We give space to Ukrainian writers and artists, with a moving essay from Andrey Kurkov on how today, as in the past, Russia is trying to erase Ukraine’s culture, and a discussion with the poet Lyuba Yumichuk on children in Donbas being fed an alternative history. We publish the court statement from student journalist Alla Gutnikova, one of the Doxa Four sentenced to two years’ “correctional labour” in April, alongside an interview with her. Ilya Matveev, a Russian academic, writes about the incredibly difficult environment in his St Petersburg classroom, which eventually led him to flee. And we spotlight the amazing ways people are fighting back.

Get ahead of the game and take out an online subscription with a 30% discount from Exact Editions using the promo code Battle4Ukraine. Offer ends 15 August.

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Index on Censorship defends people's freedom to express themselves without fear of harm or persecution. We publish censored writers and artists, monitor and campaign against censorship, and encourage debate.

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