For seven years, Argentina was ruled by an authoritarian, right-wing military dictatorship. Censorship, repression, torture and extermination were the order of the day. Tens of thousands of people suspected of being political opponents lost their lives. After the end of the dictatorship and the restoration of democracy, a diverse culture of remembrance emerged. The period…
The Week of Free Expression will take place for the fifth time from May 3-10, 2025. Under the motto “Arguing? Absolutely!”, this time it will focus on the culture of debate and the ability to debate in our society with a diverse program from numerous partners. Arguing and listening to each other are essential skills…
In 2024, Project Leaders Nikola Roßbach and Florian Gassner joined the Munich House of Literature (Literaturhaus München) as researchers and copywriters for an exhibition on Banned Books: Verbotene Bücher – Religion, Politik, Moral. The multimedia exhibition explored the history and practices of censorship from around the world. One of the stations provided visitors with the…
Image by Mstyslav Chernov http://mstyslav-chernov.com/ It is no secret that China pursues a rigorous censorship policy. But does the same apply to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region? As recently as 2019, Hong Kong was rated much better than China in terms of press freedom by „Reporters Without Borders“. You might therefore think that Hong…
Photo by Edouard TAMBA on Unsplash Censorship in the Republic of Cameroon? This is a topic that is difficult to shed light on. Not only because so little information about it reaches the outside world, but also because it is incredibly deeply rooted in the country’s structures. Most of the censorship laws in force today…
Image by GR Stocks on Unsplash As a result of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, discussions about human rights and censorship on the Arabian Peninsula were held in many places. In October 2023, the World Cup was awarded to Saudi Arabia for 2034: This provoked a new wave of criticism and discussion. As students…
After consolidating his power over the Soviet Union in 1929, Josef Stalin implemented strict and comprehensive censorship. Not only people but also books could be deported to the GULag, where they were housed in so-called “Spetskhrans” (special depots). In total, around 100,000 books were banned in the USSR, and millions of copies were destroyed. The…
Image by ASphotofamily on Freepik The South Asian country of Bangladesh (with a population of 171 million) is a democracy with strong autocratic features. Reporters Without Borders ranks the country low in terms of press freedom, at 163rd out of 180. Bangladesh has a history of censorship of the media, books, films and the press.…
Not only bad people end up in hell, but also bad books. At least, that was the case in France for a long time: „Enfer“, hell, is the name of a remota collection of the French National Library (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, BNF), i.e. a collection of books that are not accessible to the public.…
In the course of the Russian war against Ukraine, censorship in Russia has already been reported here. In addition to this, censorship of “extremist content” is taking place in Russia. Such contents are collected in a list by the Russian Ministry of Justice (“Федеральный список экстремистских материалов”), based on court decisions. In total, it includes over 4000 titles:…
