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About Kirsty Hughes

Kirsty Hughes is Chief Executive of Index on Censorship.

Articles by Kirsty Hughes

Gathering clouds over digital freedom?

Kirsty Hughes 12 March 2013

The debate over the direction of the web has just started, and contradictory messages that need careful scrutiny are emerging from governments and corporations alike.

Lost in a 1990s timewarp: the UK and the European Union

Kirsty Hughes 28 January 2013

Is the crucial change in the UK's position in the EU, that demands a referendum, really the need to extend UK doctors' working hours? And what of the EU – has it got a better story to tell?

What future for a Greece in crisis?

Kirsty Hughes 24 March 2012

Will Greece see a process of painful rebuilding, be mired in stagnation and despair - or even face a social explosion?

Another summit, another bleak day for European democracy

Kirsty Hughes 31 January 2012
The new 'fiscal compact' treaty agreed at Monday's summit aims to take vital economic policy choices out of the reach of democratic decision-making. Beyond that, there is no new thinking, nothing to stimulate growth, nothing to give some hope to the 23 million unemployed – and those who will join them as the recession deepens.

EU democracy in crisis: mired in a perfect storm or rebounding?

Kirsty Hughes 16 January 2012
If the heart of the crisis lies in the politics – including in the politics of the economic policy choices being made – then solutions may lie, not in yet more EU institutional changes and the creation of an austerity union, but in the practice and the dynamism of democratic European politics. But a certain tradition of creating a theoretically more democratic Europe for the people even if they do not seem to want it has deep roots in the EU elites. So far, this hasn't worked.

The UK and Europe: how much damage did Cameron's veto do?

Kirsty Hughes 20 December 2011
Reactions are still rolling in, just over a week after Cameron's veto. Was it the tantrum of an 'obstinate kid'? Whatever reasons he had, he has relegated the UK to the sidelines of Europe.

The five follies of David Cameron

Kirsty Hughes 12 December 2011
Perhaps now, as the eurozone and the entire EU struggles to survive, there will have to be a serious debate in the UK about the EU.

Euro end-game or end of crisis? Eurozone heads into critical summit

Kirsty Hughes 5 December 2011
There will be huge sighs of relief if the potential political and economic catastrophe of a break-up of the euro is avoided. But a return to 'normal' politics it will not be.

The UK's vanishing European influence

Kirsty Hughes 24 November 2011
The UK has a choice over whether to be a small player on the margins of Europe. But to become so without any serious national debate is surely a major error.

Turkey's judicial-political crisis

Kirsty Hughes

Turkey's political and democratic troubles are deepening. The country's domestic problems are grave enough, but an additional complicating factor is that few of its putative friends and partners abroad are able or wish to exert a positive influence on the direction of events.

Britain through Indian eyes

Kirsty Hughes
Kirsty Hughes returns to her homeland after almost a year in south Asia and sees a different country.

Tamil Nadu after the tsunami: hopes and obstacles

Kirsty Hughes
Their world turned upside down in the great Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004. Six months on, the fishing communities of southeast India struggle to rebuild their lives. Kirsty Hughes reports from a forgotten frontline of reconstruction.

France's 'non', Holland's 'nee', Europe's crisis

Kirsty Hughes

The French non to the European Union constitution on 29 May is still reverberating across Europe, probably to be followed by a Dutch nee on 1 June – tipping the European Union into the biggest crisis in its history.

Zanzibar: in the eye of the storm

Kirsty Hughes
An Indian Ocean microcosm of global politics – democracy, development, and election fraud, arguments over sovereignty, violence and pluralism – what can Zanzibar teach the world? Kirsty Hughes talks to Juma Duni Haji, a leader of its main opposition party, the Civic United Front.

This week's editor

Heather McRobie


Niki Seth-Smith is a freelance journalist and co-editor of OurKingdom.

Europe from the bottom up

European Union stars in Paris. Flickr/notarim. Some rights reserved.

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