John Sweeney

Jul 19, 2024 | dailymail.co.uk | John Sweeney

Alexei Navalny, the dissident Russian politician, thought he’d become untouchable. He calculated that his worldwide status as the single best-known critic of the psychopathic president Vladimir Putin and his fascist state, was, weirdly, a sort of life insurance policy. ‘As I became more and more famous,’ he said in a television documentary in 2022, ‘I was totally sure that my life became safer because it would be problematic for them just to kill me.’Boy, was he wrong.

Oct 5, 2023 | indexoncensorship.org | Katie Dancey-Downs |Frederike Geerdink |John Sweeney |Ruth Anderson

Photo: Kennedy Library (CC-BY-NC.20)What do popstar Ariana Grande, filmmaker Guillermo del Torro and 90s rock sensation Garbage have in common? They’ve all joined the fight against book bans in the USA, just ahead of Banned Books Week. Alongside more predictable figures like Margaret Atwood, Roxane Gay and Judy Blume, they are some of more than 170 artists who signed an open letter condemning book bans and calling on Hollywood to use its influence.

Oct 5, 2023 | indexoncensorship.org | Frederike Geerdink |John Sweeney |Ruth Anderson

Beijing Coma – Ma JianIn the lead up to the Beijing Olympics, when China was on a global charm offensive, Ma Jian’s book Beijing Coma was published. Through the central character Dai Wei, a protester who was shot in Tiananmen Square and fell into a deep coma, Ma presented the other side of the country, an insecure nation afraid of its past and struggling with its present. Ma stated that he wrote the book “to reclaim history from a totalitarian government whose role is to erase it”.

Oct 4, 2023 | indexoncensorship.org | Frederike Geerdink |John Sweeney |Ruth Anderson

The police at London’s Luton airport worked through a list of questions. Did Broomfield consider his reporting to be objective? Did he include multiple sources in his work? How did he get paid? What was his opinion about beheadings, and did he ever send anybody a photo of a beheading? “Not answering the questions is a criminal offense, so I complied,” British journalist Matt Broomfield said about the questioning he was subject to in July.

Mar 2, 2022 | newstatesman.com | John Sweeney