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18 / 05 / 2004
Salman Rushdie: “The persistent attempt to defend freedom puts it in jeopardy”
The current president of the International PEN club, Salman Rushdie, urged the United States government to dialogue with the rest of the world “at a time when the history of all the world’s inhabitants is mixing.” The British writer opened the first conference of the Forum Dialogue “The Value of the Word,” in act held at the site´s Convention Center. Important board members of the International Writers´ Organization (PEN) as well as the first minister of the Catalan autonomous government Josep Bargalló were in attendance.
“The United States shut others out when everyone should be heard, and they need to dialogue with the rest of the world.” This was one of the statements made by current president of the American Pen Club, Salman Rushdie, at the first conference of the Dialogue The Value of the Word which will be going on at the Convention Center through May 21st. In his speech, Rushdie harshly criticized what he calls ”the Bush Administration’s ministry of false alarms, created after September 11, 2001” and which attempts to submit Americans to the dictatorship of the constant fear of terrorism. He also criticized the Patriot Act, a bill that in his opinion, “enters people’s private lives controlling what people read” and another law that prohibits American from publishing literary works in some foreign countries, such as Iran or North Korea.
Rushdie described many of these measures as “pure insanity,” and questioned whether these persistent attempts to defend freedom are actually putting it in jeopardy. In Rushdie’s last mention of the US, he expressed his suspicion that high-ranking authorities of the government are involved in torturing Iraqi soldiers, which, in his opinion, would imply “a tremendous systematic problem that tarnishes the morality of the American executive branch.”
As for the recent changes in Spanish politics in the aftermath of the March 11 terrorist attacks in Madrid, Rushdie attributed the public’s reaction to “the rage and reaction to the manipulative attempts of the party in power.” Rushdie closed his speech by stating that “literature should further broaden the horizon of the universe in the midst of the delicate times we are living in, despite the fact that there are people who hinder this need.”
The president of the International PEN Club, Jiri Grusa, pointed out “the major role played by literature during dictatorships, as they silence politics.” “Literature“, she said, “offers prospects and hope as opposed to the coarseness exuded by power.”
The Catalan first minister, Josep Bargalló, made the last speech of the night. He spoke of the meeting being held today in Brussels to discuss whether Catalan has the right to be acknowledged as a language of the European Constitution, an issue which he admitted worries him at this point.
Dolors Ollé, president of the Catalan PEN Club, and Carles Torner, director of the Dialogue “The Value of the Word” also took part in the event.
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