Stockholm - Freedom of speech is under threat worldwide Italian author Roberto Saviano and British author Salman Rushdie said late Tuesday at a lecture organized by the Swedish Academy. Journalists and writers in countries ranging from China to Mexico to Zimbabwe are under threat, they said, reminding the audience of the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Russia.
Saviano and Rushdie were invited to Stockholm by the Swedish Academy that selects the Nobel literature prize winner. Both also shared their own experiences of living under death threats.
In 1989, the academy was deeply divided over how to respond to the death threat issued by Iran's religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini against Rushdie over his novel The Satanic Verses that was labelled as blasphemous.
Two of the 18 members, who are appointed for life, gave up active work to protest the academy's decision not to sign an appeal condemning the death threat along with other freedom of speech groups.
One of the former members, author Kerstin Ekman, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur
