zonatau.com – Writer Salman Rushdie on ventilator after stabbing in New York
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Indian-born writer Salman Rushdie went into hiding for years after Iran urged Muslims to kill him for his lyrics, but he is now in New York and was stabbed in the neck and torso during a speech on stage stabbed Police said he was airlifted to a hospital on Friday.
Hours after the operation, Rushdie was on a ventilator and unable to speak on Friday night after an attack that writers and politicians around the world condemned as an attack on freedom of expression.
It’s not good news,” his writing agent, Andrew Wylie, wrote in an email. “Salman will likely lose one of his eyes, the nerves in his arm will be cut and his liver will be damaged.”
Rushdie, 75, was given a speech about artistic freedom for hundreds of people at the Chautauqua Institute in western New York when a man stormed the stage and rushed toward the novelist, who has been living on scholarship since his death in the 1980s.
Stunned spectators helped to wrestle Rushdi’s husband, who fell to the ground. A New York State Police officer who was providing security during the event arrested the attacker. Police have identified the suspect as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old man from Fairview, New Jersey, who purchased tickets for the event.
Bradley Fisher, who was in the audience, said: “A guy jumped on stage from I don’t know where he came from and started hitting something like that in the chest and repeatedly punched him in the chest and neck. People were shouting and screaming and panting.
NEW YORK, Aug 12 (Reuters) – Salman Rushdie, the Indian writer who went into hiding for years after Iran encouraged Muslims to kill him for his writing, was stabbed in the neck and body on stage during a lecture. on Friday in New York state and was taken to a hospital, police said.
Hours after surgery, Rushdie was on a ventilator and unable to speak on Friday night after the attack, which was condemned by writers and politicians around the world as an attack on freedom of expression.
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“The news is bad,” Andrew Wylie, his book agent, wrote in an email. “Salman is likely to lose an eye; the veins in his arm are severed and his liver punctured and damaged.”
Rushdie, 75, was introduced to give a speech to an audience of hundreds about artistic freedom at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York when a man walked across the stage and stabbed the writer, who has since received the award, with his head alive. . 80s of the 20th century.
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Stunned bystanders helped pull the man from Rushdie, who fell to the floor. A New York State Police officer providing security at the event apprehended the attacker. Police have identified the suspect as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old man from Fairview, New Jersey, who purchased a ticket to the event.
“The guy jumped up on the stage from I don’t know where and started what looked like he got punched in the chest, punched repeatedly in the chest and neck,” said Bradley Fisher, who is in the audience. “People weep and weep and sigh.”
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A doctor in the audience helped treat Rushdie when emergency services arrived, police said. Henry Reese, the emcee of the event, suffered a minor head injury. Police said they are working with federal investigators to determine a motive. They do not describe the weapon used.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan called the incident “horrific”. “Thank you to the good citizens and first responders for helping him quickly,” he wrote on Twitter.
Rushdie, who was born into a Muslim Kashmiri family in Bombay, now Bombay, before moving to the UK, had long faced death threats over his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses.
Some Muslims say the book contains blasphemous passages. After its publication in 1988, it was banned in many countries with large Muslim populations. A few months later, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling on Muslims to prosecute the writer and anyone involved in the book’s publication for blasphemy.
Rushdie, who described his novel as “very tender”, went into hiding for almost a decade. Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of the novel, was assassinated in 1991. The Iranian government declared in 1998 that it would no longer support the fatwa, and Rushdie has led a somewhat more public life in recent years.
Organizations in Iran, some of which are affiliated with the government, have collected a multi-million dollar reward for Rushdie’s murder. And Khomeini’s successor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared in 2019 that the fatwa was “irrevocable.”
In 2016, Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency and other news outlets donated money to raise the cost to $600,000. In its report on Friday’s attack, Fars called Rushdie an apostate who “insulted the prophet”.
‘NOT A USUAL WRITER’
Rushdie published a memoir in 2012 about his cloistered, secretive life under the fatwa called “Joseph Anton,” the pseudonym he used while in British police protection. His second novel, “Midnight’s Children,” won the Booker Prize. His new novel “Victory City” is due to be published in February.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was appalled that Rushdie was “stabbed while exercising a right we should never cease to defend.”
Rushdie was at the institution in western New York for a discussion about the United States giving asylum to artists in exile and “as a home for freedom of creative expression,” according to the institution’s website.
There were no obvious security checks at the Chautauqua Institution, a landmark founded in the 19th century in the small lakeside town of the same name; staff simply checked people’s passes for admission, attendees said. “Salman Rushdie is no ordinary writer and I felt he needed more protection,” said Algerian writer and rights activist Anouar Ramani, who sat in the audience. He wrote a fatwa against him.
The foundation’s chairman, Michael Hill, said at a news conference that it is customary to work with state and local law enforcement to ensure the safety of events.
“Our overall goal is to help people bridge what is so divided in the world,” Hill said. And I don’t think Mr Rushdie wants that either.”
Rushdie became a US citizen in 2016 and lives in New York City. A fallen Muslim and self-proclaimed “radical deity,” he was an outspoken critic of religion across the spectrum and was vocal about persecution in his native India, including under the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The American Pen, a free speech advocacy group of which Rushdie was former president, said it was “shocked and stunned” by what it called an unprecedented attack on a writer in the United States. Read more
“Salman Rushdie has been the target of his rhetoric for decades, but he has never been shocked or shaken,” PEN Executive Director Suzanne Nassel said in a statement. Early in the morning, he said, Rushdie sent him an email to help transport Ukrainian writers seeking asylum.
