Index on Censorship

What follows is the text of a speech read on 14 February 1992 at Stationers Hall, London, on the third anniversary of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.

Sarajevo Television achievedfinancial autonomy and a democratically elected management in July 1989, reluctantly tolerated by a severely weakened Bosnian Communist Party. But its newly-won editorial independence came under political fire. With the fall of Communist-style censorship, the three ethnically-based nationalist parties that emerged from Bosnia's November 1990 multi-party elections to form the coalition government attempted to impose new forms of censorship which, according to Nenad Pejic, would be worse than any imposed by Yugoslavia's Communist rulers. He predicts that the slide towards a purely nationalist media means not only the destruction of independent voices in Yugoslavia but ofany chance ofa peacefulfuture for the region. He was interviewed by Ursula Ruston.

Belarusian victims of the fallout from Chernobyl are finding it difficult to get their version of events onto the agenda

After half a century of censorship under Salazar's military regime, Portuguese theatre is on the move once more

Old traditions die hard in the shallow waters of a new democracy

The government tries to keep the lid on rumbles of discontent with its authoritarian rule

The revolution that threw out Communism in Czechoslovakia was convinced it could get away without a showdown with the past. But the combination of old structures and new problems resulted in new anti-Communist legislation that looks very like a judicial purge

Twenty years of dictatorship and a machismo culture keep women silent. No longer. A new radio station is making their voice heard throughout Chile

The full horror of Saddam's security apparatus was revealed through the Gulf War; his victims, such as Dr Hussein Shahristani, whose case is here described, have felt its force for many years

There are no journalists in Iraq, says an exiled poet, only spies and agents provocateurs

Fundamentalist Arab governments in the Gulf are buying out journalists and writers in Egypt