Fetching updates...Britain’s Index on Censorship has lost all legitimacy
February 8, 2010
pleaseblock.us gets helpful inspiration from major defenders of free speech around the world. The Index on Censorship is "Britain’s leading organisation promoting freedom of expression" and it offers timely news about violations of free speech. In recent months, the Index has been forced to report on its own shameful self-censorship.
When the Index published an interview with Jytte Klausen (who published the first scholarly account of the Danish cartoons crisis), the Index refused to print a single Muhammed cartoon with the interview. Ironically, this interview was about her publisher, Yale University Press, which refused to reprint any of the cartoons in the book.
You can read the Index Chief Executive explaining their cowardice here at the start of the interview. There was some bravery on the Index Board: irate member Kenan Malik dissented from the no-print decision: "(W)here was the threat? Index certainly received none because no one knew that we were going to publish. Nor is there any reason to believe that there would have been danger had the cartoons not been pre-emptively censored."
Wendy Kaminer has blogged on this shameful incident at the Index. Her point is our point: Self-censorship is just as morally bankrupt as censorship by government, and perhaps more dangerous in the long run.
More news: Gary Hull has just published Muhammad: The "Banned" Images.