‘Free in speech but imprisoned when moving’: A look at writers facing death threats
The attack on Salman Rushdie in New York state on August 12 highlights the plight of other writers threatened with death, who are forced to live every moment in a state of fear. FRANCE 24 takes a look at numerous writers around the world who have received death threats.
The attack on Rushdie was all the more distressing for supporters of his right to free expression as Rushdie had lived freely in New York for years – thinking he was free – after the Iranian government said in 1998 that it would “neither support nor hinder” assassination attempts on Rushdie, as a precondition to normalise diplomatic relations with the UK.
The British police and MI5 had protected Rushdie in a string of safehouses for nine years, ever since the declaration of the Iranian fatwa on February 14, 1989 because his novel The Satanic Verses was deemed offensive to Islam.
