Frankfurt - Organizers of the world's largest book fair admitted Thursday they had excluded Chinese dissidents from a symposium in Germany this weekend. Beijing earlier objected to the author Bei Ling and the journalist Dai Qing being invited to China and World, a conference Saturday and Sunday in the run-up to the October 14-18 Frankfurt Book Fair.
"It's a symposium jointly hosted by us and the Chinese partner, so we had to make some compromises," said book fair director Juergen Boos in Frankfurt. He denied the organizers had succumbed to censorship.
China is to be guest of honour at the book show next month.
Boos said freedom of expression would have "pride of place" at the annual Book Fair next month and any Chinese author could speak there. "Content at the Frankfurt Book Fair cannot be supervised," he said.
Author Bei Ling, who lives in exile in the United States, told the German Press Agency
