Adelaide Writers Week Canceled As 180 Speakers Withdraw Over Palestinian Writer's Exclusion
HuffPost
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was among the speakers who pulled out of the event.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Organizers of Australia’s largest free literary festival canceled the event Tuesday after more than 180 writers and speakers withdrew over the scrapping of an appearance by an Australian-Palestinian writer and academic.
The uproar began when the board of the Adelaide Festival, which runs Adelaide Writers Week, announced on Jan. 8 that they had disinvited Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah from the event “given her previous statements” and citing cultural sensitivities “at this unprecedented time so soon after” an antisemitic mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.
There was no suggestion that Abdel-Fattah or her writings “have any connection with the tragedy,” the board members added.
They didn’t cite any specific statements by the lawyer, academic and writer of fiction and nonfiction that prompted their decision. Abdel-Fattah decried the move as “censorship” and said the announcement suggested that her “mere presence” was culturally insensitive.
By Tuesday, when the event was canceled, most of the programmed speakers had withdrawn. The episode unfolded amid a fraught national debate in Australia about limits on speech following the Bondi shooting.
Trump’s decision to attack Venezuela, arrest its president and temporarily run the country marks a striking departure for a politician who long criticized others for overreaching on foreign affairs and vowed to avoid foreign entanglements.
The protests, have become the biggest in Iran since 2022, when the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody triggered nationwide demonstrations.
With the capture of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump and his allies are calling the audacious U.S. military operation an unqualified success.
The Venezuelan government called it an “imperialist attack” and urged citizens to take to the streets.
The Coast Guard said it had deployed helicopters and a large vessel called a cutter to help with the search.
Forty people were killed and another 119 injured at a Swiss ski resort on New Year’s Eve.
The deaths may mark the start of a heavier-handed response by Iran’s theocracy over the demonstrations.
Axel Clavier, a 16-year-old from Paris who survived the blaze, described “total chaos” inside the bar.
Russian President Vladimir Putin used his annual televised New Year's address to rally his troops fighting in Ukraine.