Salman Rushdie stabbing: Satanic Verses author once complained about 'too much security' around him
By Team Newsable | First Published Aug 13, 2022, 3:23 PM ISTSalman Rushdie, who was attacked and stabbed on stage at a literary event in New York, has previously complained about having too much security around him, according to a media report on Saturday.
Salman Rushdie, who was attacked and stabbed on stage at a literary event in New York, has previously complained about having too much security around him, according to a media report on Saturday.
As Rushdie was welcomed on stage at the Chautauqua Institution event in Western New York on Friday, a 24-year-old New Jersey resident named Hadi Matar stabbed the Mumbai-born author, who received Islamist death threats for years after publishing 'The Satanic Verses'.
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Rushdie, 75, was taken from a nearby field to a hospital in northwest Pennsylvania, where he had surgery while covered in blood.
In 2001, Rushdie publicly complained about having too much security around him, The New York Post reported. While attending the Prague Writers' Festival, he told reporters, "To be here and to find a large security operation around me has actually felt a little embarrassing... I thought it was really unnecessary and kind of excessive and was certainly not arranged at my request."
"I spent a great deal of time before I came here saying that I really didn't want that. So I was very surprised to arrive here and discover a really quite substantial operation, because it felt like being in a time warp, that I had gone back in time several years," he was quoted as saying.
At the Chautauqua Institution, a not-for-profit community on Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York State, where about 7,500 people live on any day over a nine-week season, Rushdie was stabbed in the neck on the stage.
Following the incident on Friday, concerns were voiced over the host institution's security measures or lack thereof. The facility is located in a remote lake resort about 110 km south of Buffalo, New York.
Also read: Who is Hadi Matar, the man dressed in black who attacked Salman Rushdie?
Two people who spoke with CNN said that the institution's leadership rejected suggestions for fundamental security measures, including bag checks and metal detectors, out of concern that they would separate speakers from the audience. According to the sources, the leadership was also concerned that it might alter the institution's culture.
(With inputs from PTI)
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