Banned Books Week 2024: Censorship Around the World

Amnesty International highlights thirteen cases of endangered journalists and writers. 

"Each year during Banned Books Week, Amnesty International draws attention to people around the world who have been imprisoned, threatened, or murdered because of what they wrote or published or because of their work in the publishing or media industries. In solidarity with the American Library Association (ALA) and organizations across the U.S. and around the world, Amnesty activists work to fight challenges to freedom of expression."   Visit AI's page to see the cases and petition for the release of imprisoned artists, journalists, and activists.

Watch these documentaries on the Library's streaming media platform by clicking on the links and logging in with your MyBC username and password:

The Desert of Forbidden Art: The incredible story of how a treasure trove of banned Soviet art worth millions of dollars was found in the desert of Uzbekistan develops into a larger exploration of how art survives in times of oppression. During the reign of the Soviet Union, a small group of artists remain true to their vision despite threats of torture, imprisonment and death. Their plight inspires one Igor Savitsky and, pretending to buy State-approved art, Stavisky instead daringly rescues 40,000 forbidden fellow artist's works and creates a museum in the desert of Uzbekistan, far from the watchful eyes of the KGB. The film takes us on a dramatic journey of sacrifice for the sake of creative freedom. Described as "one of the most remarkable collections of 20th century Russian art" and located in one of the world's poorest regions, today these priceless paintings are a lucrative target for Islamic fundamentalists, corrupt bureaucrats and art profiteers. The collection remains as endangered as when Savitsky first created it, posing the question: whose responsibility is it to preserve this cultural treasure?  80 minutes.

THE BOOK THAT SHOOK THE WORLD is a historical essay film that delves into the controversy and uproar brought about by the publication in Australia and in Europe of The Little Red Schoolbook by Soren Hansen and Jesper Jensen, where in many countries it was banned, while also looking at the repressive censorship laws Australia lived under in the sixties and early seventies.  52 minutes, some graphic content.

Image credit :Amnesty International CC BY NC ND

This year, instead of posting some of the many news stories about censorship around the world (we didn't have enough time!), we're going to share this timeline of the history of The Satanic Verses.  This novel, and its author Salman Rushdie, have been the target of over 30 years of violence and attempted suppression.

Why did a young man try to murder the novelist Salman Rushdie in August 2022?

•     They had never met
•     Hadi Matar, age 24, had read only two pages of Rushdie’s novel, which was published before he was born
•     Rushdie, at 75, is an elderly man
•     Matar jumped up on-stage and stabbed Rushdie over 12 times in front of a large audience

Why?   

Read on to understand 34 years of violence over....a novel:

• 1947:  Salman Rushdie was born to a Kashmiri Muslim family in Bombay, in the year of the partition of India.  He attended school in India and England before studying history at the University of Cambridge.
• 1981: Rushdie’s second novel, Midnight’s Children, shot him to literary fame.  It became a bestseller and won the Booker prize in 1981.
• Sept. 26, 1988: The Satanic Verses published.  Rushdie’s fourth novel was published in the UK by Viking Penguin, with a plot partly inspired by the life of the prophet Muhammad. It was a Booker prize finalist but was described as blasphemous by many Muslims for its satiric portrayal of incidents in the history of Islam.  Several protests and book-burnings followed in the UK.  The book was banned in a few countries, though not in Iran.   
• Feb. 12, 1989: Hundreds of demonstrators attacked the U.S. cultural center in Islamabad, Pakistan, to protest the novel’s publication (which had so far only been published in the UK). Local police fired on protesters, killing six people and wounding more than 80 others.
• Feb. 14, 1989: The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa – a religious ruling -- calling on Muslims to kill Rushdie for blasphemy. Rushdie said that his book was not blasphemous. “I doubt very much Khomeini or anyone else in Iran has read this book or anything more than selected extracts taken out of context.”  The 15th Khordad Foundation, an Iranian organization which mostly cares for war veterans, established a bounty for killing Rushdie.  He spent the next nine years in hiding under police protection.
• Feb. 22, 1989: The Satanic Verses was published in the United States.
• Feb. 24, 1989: Some 10,000 anti-Rushdie demonstrators marched on the British High Commission in Bombay, India. Police opened fire on the crowd, killing a dozen people, and injuring at least 40 more.
• Feb. 28, 1989: around 4 am, someone threw a Molotov cocktail through the window of Cody’s Bookstore in Berkeley, California, because the bookstore was carrying The Satanic Verses.  Upon opening, an unexploded pipe bomb was found in the store that could have killed everyone present.  It had to be sandbagged and detonated on-site.  Cody’s staff decided unanimously to continue to stock the novel, though the culprit was never captured.  The owner of Cody’s later said that this was the first international terrorist incident in the United States.  
• May 1989: An estimated 20,000 Muslims protested in central London, burned an effigy of Rushdie, and called for his death. As they marched, fights broke out between Iranians and Iraqis. Police arrested 101 protestors.
• August 1989:  This one guy Mustafa Mazeh was preparing a Satanic Verses book bomb in his room at the Beverley House Hotel in central London. The bomb went off while Mazeh was priming the explosive and killed him.
• September 1989: In Britain, four bombs were placed outside bookstores owned by Penguin, the publisher of The Satanic Verses. One bomb exploded, but no one was hurt. The others were defused.
• July 3, 1991: Ettore Capriolo, the Italian translator of The Satanic Verses, was beaten and stabbed with a knife in his apartment in Milan. The attacker claimed to be Iranian. 
• July 12, 1991: Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator, was stabbed to death in his office at Tsukuba University, where he had been teaching comparative Islamic culture for five years. The identity of Igarashi's murderer remains unknown.
• July 2, 1993:  In Turkey, a mob attacked the hotel where Aziz Nesin, the Turkish translator of The Satanic Verses, was staying.  Nesin escaped, and 35 people were killed as the hotel burned down. 
•  October 11, 1993: William Nygaard, the Norwegian publisher of the novel, was shot three times outside his Oslo home.  He survived the shooting, but no one was convicted of the murder attempt.
• September 1995: Rushdie, after spending six years living in various safe houses, made his first publicly scheduled appearance in London at a panel discussion called, “Writers and the State.”
• September/October, 1998:  Controversy in Iran -- Iran’s President Khatami announced that the Rushdie affair should be considered over, and the foreign minister said that the government had no intention of harming Rushdie.  Some 160 members of Iran’s parliament reacted angrily, saying that the fatwa remained in effect.  A student group claimed that it would pay $3.3 million for the killing of Rushdie, and the 15th Khordad Foundation raised its bounty to $2.8 million.
• February 1999: India granted a visa to Rushdie so he could visit his home country.  Muslims protested in response. Police opened fire and killed at least 12 rioters on February 25.
• 2007: Rushdie was granted knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for his services in literature. Protests were held in Iran, Malaysia, and Pakistan.
• 2010: Rushdie’s name appeared on a hit list in Al-Qaida’s magazine.
• January 2012: Rushdie canceled a trip to India to attend the Jaipur literary festival after police warned him that assassins had been sent to kill him.
• June 2014: Rushdie was awarded the annual PEN/Pinter Prize for “his books and his many years of speaking out for freedom of expression, but also for his countless private acts of kindness.”
• October 2015: At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Rushdie warned against new dangers to freedom of expression in the West, including attacks on writers and excessive sensitivity in publishing. Iran’s Ministry of Culture canceled its stand at the fair due to Rushdie’s presence.
• February 2016: 40 Iranian news outlets added $600,000 to the bounty for Rushdie’s head to show that the fatwa was ‘still alive.’
• June 1, 2022: Queen Elizabeth II made Salman Rushdie a Companion of Honour in the Queen's annual birthday honors.
• Aug 12, 2022: As Rushdie was speaking at the idyllic Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, a young man jumped up on-stage and stabbed him over 10 times in the neck and abdomen. Hadi Matar, the 24-year-old assailant, supported Iran and Hezbollah but has not said whether he was influenced by the fatwa.  He has stated that he has only read two pages of The Satanic Verses.  Among his many injuries, Rushdie has liver damage and stands to lose an eye and the use of one arm.   The 15th Khordad Foundation’s bounty on Salman Rushdie is still in effect and is now $3.3 million.

So....did it work?

Opponents have been trying to silence Rushdie for over 30 years.  The furor around The Satanic Verses has resulted in nearly 70 deaths...and made the novel far more famous than it otherwise would have been.  Salman Rushdie is a world-famous icon of free speech because people have tried to kill him.  Over 30 years after its publication, The Satanic Verses became a best-seller again after Matar’s murder attempt.

Censorship doesn’t work.