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FRANKFUR

Rushdie: ‘free speech is a part of human nature’

All attempts to curb free speech are "an attack on human nature", British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie said Tuesday at the start of the world's biggest book fair in Frankfurt.

Rushdie: 'free speech is a part of human nature'
Salman Rushdie. Photo:DPA

“Limiting freedom of expression is not just censorship, it is also an assault on human nature,” Rushdie told a news conference.

“Expression of speech is fundamental to all human beings. We are language animals, we are story-telling animals,” he said, insisting that free speech was a universal principle.

“Without that freedom of expression, all other freedoms fail,” he said.

Rushdie has had an Islamic death sentence hanging over his head for a quarter of a century over his 1989 book “The Satanic Verses”.

Iran's then supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa saying the author should be killed, forcing Rushdie to go into hiding, with the British government placed him under police protection.

The decision to invite him to speak at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which opens later on Tuesday, sparked a boycott by Iran of the exhibition.

“I always thought in a way we shouldn't need to discuss anymore about freedom of speech in the West, it should be like the air we breathe,” Rushdie said.

Violent threats

“It seemed to me that this battle was won a couple of hundred years ago” during the French Enlightenment, he said.

“But the fact that we have to go on fighting this battle is the result of a number of regrettable, more recent phenomena,” he continued, pointing to “violent threats” against writers, publishers, book sellers and translators.

In addition, “in certain parts of the world, a new feeling of political correctness is also dangerous,” Rushdie argued.

His new novel, entitled “Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights”, is appearing almost simultaneously in English and in German translation.

Last week, Tehran said it was boycotting the Frankfurt fair because it had, “under the pretext of freedom of expression, invited a person who is hated in the Islamic world and created the opportunity for Salman Rushdie… to make a speech.”

The author also said publishing was the “embodiment” and “guardian of freedom of speech”.

“If you believe in a single vision of the truth and you seek to impose that single vision of the truth on others, then people offering diverse visions of the truth become your enemies.”

“But yet oddly, literature often survives this battle,” he said. “Literature is unbelievably durable and strong (though) writers are weak.”

The fair's organisers defended their decision to invite Rushdie, saying freedom of expression was a key theme at this year's gathering of writers and publishers, 10 months after Islamists marched into the Paris office of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and gunned down 12 members of its editorial team.

Free speech 'not negotiable'

“Freedom of the word is not negotiable,” said Juergen Boos, director of the exhibition.

“The Frankfurt Book Fair is a place of dialogue,” he said, adding that he regretted Iran's decision to stay away.

“It mustn't be forgotten that Rushdie is still facing a death threat because of his work.”

The guest country of this year's show is Indonesia – the nation with the world's largest Muslim population.

About 70 writers from the Southeast Asian nation will attend, including author Laksmi Pamuntjak who will present her latest book “The Question of Red”, a love story set at in the 1960s, a period of violent repression against communists.

The Frankfurt fair dates as far back as the Middle Ages with the invention of the Gutenberg press just down the road, and this year some 7,300 exhibitors will be present, with up to 300,000 visitors expected.

Internationally renowned writers will be promoting their latest works, including Ken Follett, who is set to speak about the video game adaptation of his runaway success “Pillars of the Earth”.

Chilean writer Isabel Allende, Denmark's Jussi Adler-Olsen and British anthropologist Nigel Barley are also among the attendees.

The show will be an occasion for the struggling book publishing industry – with an estimated total value of 114 billion euros ($129 billion) worldwide – to look for new ideas as younger generations turn their eyes increasingly online.

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ECONOMY

Talent and growth head for the cities

The depressed rural areas of eastern Germany where economic growth is practically nil, should be taken as a stark warning for western regions of the country, an economic institute said on Wednesday.

Talent and growth head for the cities
Photo: DPA

Well-qualified people are moving to the cities such as Berlin, Dresden and Leipzig, enabling those areas to do well, while leaving rural areas empty.

“Aside from Berlin, Dresden and Leipzig, eastern Germany does not have much to offer,” the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW) said, presenting a study on economic growth across the country for the first six months of the year.

The absence of qualified workers makes the difference between the eastern rural areas — with an average growth rate of less than half a percent — and cities, which do much better.

And the trend is not just limited to the east, according to the institute. “Western German states without densely populated areas should look carefully at the problems in the east, because they could be in store for something similar,” the institute said.

Despite the ongoing debacle over the yet-to-open new international airport, Berlin had the highest economic growth rate in the country during the first half of the year.

“Berlin is losing its negative image with a lot of companies,” IW economist Klaus-Heiner Röhl told the Die Welt newspaper. Service providers were particularly attracted to the capital he said, even if their customers, often large corporations, were not based there.

“The most important plus for the firms is that many qualified workers want to come to Berlin,” Röhl told the paper.

The capital topped the list with 1.8 percent growth, followed by Baden-Württemberg and Lower Saxony, both registering 1.6 percent economic growth.

And although the non-Berlin eastern states had an average growth rate of less than 0.5 percent, western German states had average growth of 1.2 percent.

Eastern Germany suffers from qualified workers moving to urban areas, with a higher concentration of the population and more economic power.

The Local/mbw

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