Index on Censorship marks 40th anniversary with special issue

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/mar/26/censorship-freedom-of-speech

Version 0 of 1.

A special issue of Index on Censorship is published today to mark the organisation's 40th anniversary .

It includes an article by Aung San Suu Kyi on free speech, an extract from Ariel Dorfman's new play and a photo essay by Magnum photographer Abbass.

The issue also features a number of articles from Index's archive, including a 1983 essay by Salman Rushdie on censorship in Pakistan.

Index is giving people the opportunity to access its entire archive of previous issues for free for the next 40 days (see here).

Among the contributions available are pieces by Solzhenitsyn, Václav Havel, Arthur Miller, Kurt Vonnegut, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, Tom Stoppard, John Updike and Margaret Atwood.

Index, founded in 1972, was originally inspired by the plight of Soviet dissidents. The poet Stephen Spender organised a telegram of support and sympathy from 16 British and US public intellectuals, including WH Auden, AJ Ayer, Yehudi Menuhin, JB Priestley, Paul Scofield, Henry Moore, Bertrand Russell and Igor Stravinsky.

In reply, Pavel Litvinov suggested some form of publication "to provide information to world public opinion about the real state of affairs in the USSR".

That directly to the launch of Index by a group that included Spender, the then editor of The Observer, David Astor, philosopher Stuart Hampshire, the commentator and Observer journalist, Edward Crankshaw and the academic critic Michael Scammell.

Scammell's first editorial can be found here.

<em>Source:</em> Index on Censorship