On 7 September, Turkish police arrested Oktay Candemir at his home in the eastern city of Van and confiscated his computer and personal archive. Candemir is a freelance journalist who writes columns for the pro-Kurdish news website Nupel. According to the Media and Legal Studies Association (MLSA), a local free expression group, Candemir was released […]
I have written recently in these pages about the particular threat coronavirus poses to prisoners of conscience, many of whom are already in poor health or held in squalid conditions. The World Health Organisation has stated, ‘People deprived of their liberty … are likely to be more vulnerable to the Covid-19 disease than the general population.’ […]
On 2 May, the 24-year-old filmmaker Shady Habash died in Egypt’s notorious Tora prison after drinking sanitising alcohol. Habash had been held in pretrial detention for 793 days, despite the two-year maximum prescribed by Egyptian law. He was among eight individuals arrested in March 2018 for their alleged involvement in producing the exiled musician Ramy […]
Several authoritarian regimes are using the coronavirus outbreak as an excuse to crack down on opposition and critics. Azerbaijan’s intimidatory tactics are perhaps less well known and scrutinised than those of other countries. Ilham Aliyev took over the presidency from his hardline father, Heydar, in 2003. By then, Ilham was already prime minister, vice-chairman of […]
As the novel coronavirus outbreak has spread across the world, human rights groups have become increasingly concerned about the wellbeing of writers and journalists who remain in prison, many in appalling, life-threatening conditions. In Bahrain a number of such individuals, detained under the country’s poorly defined counterterrorism law, have been denied early release, in stark […]
It is over four years since Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won elections in Myanmar. Sadly, political reform there has been slow and inconsequential. The Myanmar military, known as the Tatmadaw, still carries considerable influence and political clout. A UN fact-finding mission stated that it is responsible for grave human rights […]
Free expression is increasingly under threat in Brazil. In January, forty-four press freedom and civil liberties organisations signed an open letter to the country’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, condemning his government’s attempts to bring criminal charges against the award-winning American investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald, now living in Rio de Janeiro, is a former lawyer and […]
On 6 January this year, agents claiming to be from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) raided the Maktaba-e-Danyal publishing house in Karachi and confiscated some 250 copies of Mohammed Hanif’s acclaimed satirical novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes. The following day, they demanded a list of bookshops that stocked the work. Originally published in the […]
Writers, journalists and activists in Russia continue to be routinely intimidated and judicially harassed. They are often imprisoned on trumped-up charges. The increasing use of antiterror legislation to silence journalists is particularly alarming. On 6 February this year, Svetlana Prokopyeva, a reporter for Radio Svoboda and the Pskov branch of Radio Ekho Moskvy, had her […]
In September 2018, the Ugandan writer and feminist activist Dr Stella Nyanzi published a poem on Facebook in which she criticised Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, and insulted his late mother. Nyanzi was charged two months later with ‘cyber harassment’ and ‘offensive communication’ under sections 24 and 25 of the 2011 Computer Misuse Act. At the […]
Every year, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) grants three Press Freedom Awards for ‘courage’, ‘impact’ and ‘independence’. This year, Pham Doan Trang, a Vietnamese writer and journalist, is the worthy recipient of the award for ‘impact’. According to RSF, her work ‘has led to concrete improvements in journalistic freedom, independence and pluralism, or to an increase […]
The Kyrgyz journalist and human rights activist Azimjon Askarov has been in prison for almost a decade. A member of Kyrgyzstan’s Uzbek minority, Askarov has spent his journalistic career exposing corruption. He was arrested on various trumped-up charges on 15 June 2010 during the inter-ethnic violence that swept Osh and Jalal-Abad provinces in southern Kyrgyzstan. […]
In April this year, the award-winning Sri Lankan writer Shakthika Sathkumara was arrested and charged with inciting religious hatred and violating international human rights law after sharing a short story on his Facebook page. The story, ‘Ardha’ (‘Half’), is due to be published as part of a collection later this year. Certain Buddhist groups were […]
I first wrote about the Kurdish-Iranian writer, journalist and filmmaker Behrouz Boochani in these pages in December 2016. Boochani is currently stranded on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, where he has been held, on order of the Australian authorities, for the past six years. Those seeking asylum in Australia are often detained for years and […]
Turkey imprisons more journalists and writers than any other nation, so it is not surprising that it features in these pages so often. The books of two dissidents written behind bars have recently been published in English translation. Ahmet Altan (LR, April 2018) is well known in literary circles and as an advocate for the […]
I first wrote about Italian author and journalist Roberto Saviano in these pages in December 2008. He had been living under police protection for two years after publishing Gomorrah, a gritty denunciation of the Naples mafia. In that year, Saviano was forced to leave Italy when the mobsters he had exposed in the book threatened to […]
Last month, the prominent Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh was sentenced by a court in Tehran to thirty-three years in prison and 148 lashes after being tried on a series of politically motivated charges. In an earlier trial, held in her absence in 2016, she was sentenced to five years in prison, bringing her […]
Beijing’s successful bid for the Olympics in 2001 caused consternation amongst campaign groups who believed China’s appalling human rights record did not merit her winning this opportunity. However, there were many who argued that the international platform would encourage the Chinese authorities to be more responsive to pressure from other countries. If anything, though, China’s […]
On 5 February, over 650 writers, journalists, publishers, artists and activists signed an appeal calling for the immediate and unconditional release of writer Nedim Türfent, a news editor and reporter for the pro-Kurdish Dicle News Agency (DIHA). Türfent has now spent over a thousand days behind bars. Türfent was arrested on 12 May 2016 after […]
Freedom of expression in Egypt is in its most perilous condition for decades. Since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi came to power in 2014, crackdowns on civil society organisations have intensified and dozens of writers have been arrested or forced to flee the country. His regime has adopted numerous laws that restrict free expression and peaceful […]
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A review of my biography of Wittgenstein, and of his newly published last love letters, in the Literary Review: via @Lit_Review
Jane O'Grady - It’s a Wonderful Life
Jane O'Grady: It’s a Wonderful Life - Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophy in the Age of Airplanes by Anthony Gottlieb;...
literaryreview.co.uk
It was my pleasure to review Stephanie Wambugu’s enjoyably Ferrante-esque debut Lonely Crowds for @Lit_Review’s April issue, out now
Joseph Williams - Friends Disunited
Joseph Williams: Friends Disunited - Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu
literaryreview.co.uk