Looking at a copy of Index on Censorship from 20 years ago is like entering a parallel universe: everything is the same and yet utterly different. There is Noam Chomsky defending himself from a storm of outrage after he published a piece criticising the way the Middle East is represented in the US media; there is concern about the erosion of civil liberties in Zimbabwe; there are fears for the fate of dissidents in China and the BBC had just been through ‘the most troubled 18 months of its existence’. It could almost be 2007 – except that apartheid was going strong, the Soviet Union existed (glasnost was the buzz word, which Index regarded with suspicion) and Pinochet was still in power in Chile. This was the year of Spycatcher (described by a contributor as ‘second-rate Gilbert & Sullivan staged by three Law Lords with a highly developed sense of farce’) and the shocking murder in London of the Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali. Index was then edited by George Theiner and it surprisingly does not feel dated. Depressingly, this in part perhaps, because the issues largely remain the same and, in many cases, the enemies of free speech have not changed. If there’s one lesson to be learnt from looking at 20-year-old copies of Index, it’s that the fight to safeguard free expression is unending – battles may be won, but the war is never over.

‘This year’s issues of Index have focused on the 21st century’s most pressing concerns for free expression and the current troublespots: censorship on the Internet, the intimidation and murder of journalists in Russia and Turkey (including two outstanding commentators, Anna Politkovskaya and Hrant Dink), the use of terrorism legislation to silence political dissent, the imprisonment of bloggers, and the threat of Islamist extremism.’

Publication in Index perhaps mattered more then than it does now. The appearance in print of a banned poem, petition or story had symbolic significance – it was, in itself, an act of resistance and a triumph for free speech to have defied the censors of some despotic regime. The 1987 issues of Index included a story by the East German writer Monika Maron, who could only get her work published abroad because it was considered too negative, and an appeal by 18 Yugoslav intellectuals for the protection of freedom of expression. Today’s dissidents do not need Index’s platform as much as they once did – they have the Internet – but they continue to need as much support. If the Internet marks the greatest revolution for free speech since the printing press – giving rise to a vibrant new generation of dissidents who blog – it has also brought with it the possibility of unprecedented surveillance.

This year’s issues of Index have focused on the 21st century’s most pressing concerns for free expression and the current troublespots: censorship on the Internet, the intimidation and murder of journalists in Russia and Turkey (including two outstanding commentators, Anna Politkovskaya and Hrant Dink), the use of terrorism legislation to silence political dissent, the imprisonment of bloggers, and the threat of Islamist extremism. Western democracies are facing a significant challenge to their values, as civil liberties are eroded in the name of security. For the moment, 9/11 has come to define our perception of ourselves and our time. That’s why looking back 20 years is a salutary exercise – we’re not living in the worst of times for freedom of expression, it’s just that this most precious and contested of human rights must always and continually be fought for.