Censorship and intimidation can make life hard for academic researchers. You need to know where to look for hidden truths

Conducting research on controversial political topics can pose serious challenges in some countries. Researchers face censorship, poorly stocked libraries, political intimidation from security services and restrictive copyright laws. I have learned that effective research often has less to do with technical skill than the ability to navigate tricky socio-political terrains.

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In countries with repressive political climates, the most valuable books are often hidden. In Sudan, the front shelves of bookshops and libraries are reserved for the most mundane and uncontroversial texts. Critical political works, meanwhile, are strategically placed in the darkest, dustiest corners, away from the keen eyes of security officials.

This is not unique to Sudan; I have been in Egyptian bookshops that keep political and philosophical works in the attic. On several occasions I have asked about a controversial book and been guided to a secret room – walls adorned with the faces of African nationalists, Arab Marxists, and European existentialists – which is only accessible to those who ask.

But censorship isn’t the only barrier. Intellectual property laws in the global north are restrictive. High prices and hefty import costs can mean that texts written about Sudan by Sudanese authors but published in the UK are just as inaccessible as banned books. A landmark text on slavery, for example, is difficult to find commercially in Sudan (likely due to the politics of its communist author rather than its content) and a translated version costs £61. As my colleague Anne Powell has noted, “availability does not equal access”: £61 for a book is hardly accessible.

In addition, the cost of journal articles can be downright extortionate. Court statements – which you might expect to be accessible to citizens – can cost £26 each behind publisher paywalls. Unlike in the UK or US, where university affiliation means access to a wide range of journals, researchers in institutions in the global South don’t always have such access (although there have been initiatives by JSTOR, Research4Life, and INASP to make some articles free or heavily discounted).

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By contrast, intellectual property laws are comparatively lax in many poorer countries. After an unsuccessful hunt for a censored book in north-east Africa, I benefited from this laxness.

On this occasion I was searching on behalf of a relative, who had told me to ask for texts “by people imprisoned by Nasser or Sadat”. When my aunt overheard me saying this in a bookshop, she hurriedly ushered me out, lest I mistake a plain-clothes intelligence officer for a bookseller.

These officials are constantly on the lookout for members of “hostile”opposition groups and would have questioned my interest in such works. I turned to Google with hopes of finding the book in a nearby library – but instead my search returned a complete PDF version. I quietly thanked the uploader and the lax copyright laws.

Bu we must remember that where technology and books fail, people can excel. The historian Hanna Batatu, for example, secured access to political prisoners in Baqubah for his study The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq.

The Iraqi penal code had banned the “propagation of communist ideals”, which included possession and dissemination of literature. Relevant information was locked in the Ministry of Interior and in the minds of prisoners, with Baqubah hosting a sizeable cadre of leftists. Their history was not stored in books, but in their memories and collective experiences.

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For my research, I spoke with Sudanese trade unionists about a colleague who had been tortured to death in Khartoum for leading a strike in the early months of the coup. One of the doctors in the group had been on call when the body was received. He described how – in spite of the visible marks on the victim’s body – military doctors wrote malaria as the cause of death. Such harrowing truths cannot always be illuminated through books; the value of dialogue with people more informed and experienced than professional researchers cannot be overstated.

In such environments, an informal economy prevails – and within it, second-hand book fairs flourish. The most popular of these in Sudan is Mafroosh, a glorious monthly spread of used books too controversial for bookshops yet battered enough to be affordable.

It’s not only the content of the books that’s controversial – the very act of preserving and disseminating is as political as banning and destroying. And this is, perhaps, the best solution to the challenge of seeking information in closed countries: to bring together the people committed to preserving recorded history.

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