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Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, has defended the decision to ban Chinese writers Dai Qing and Bei Ling from attending an international symposium on China to be held in Frankfurt this weekend. Boos confirmed reports that the Chinese delegation threatened to pull out if the two dissidents were allowed to participate. "It was only under these conditions that official China was prepared to participate in this event," he said, in a written statement.
But Boos stressed: "The Frankfurt Book Fair will not allow itself to be pressured by anyone and, as a part of the German and international publishing industry, stands for freedom of speech, of expression and of the press throughout the world. With 7,000 publishers, 300,000 visitors and around 10,000 journalists, the Frankfurt Book Fair is a public forum that cannot be manipulated."
But said that the organiser of the symposium Peter Ripken came to an agreement via telephone with Dai Qing and Bei Ling not to jeopardise the symposium. Boos stated: "In the case of the symposium, we decided, under difficult circumstances and after consulting with the co-operation partners, to allow the conversation to go forward and not to cancel the event."
The symposium is one of the few events that the Frankfurt Book Fair is organising together with the guest of honour China. Boos said the goal was to "speak with each other and not over each other".
There are reports that both authors intend to travel to the event, and attend it as guests, rather than speakers. According to the German media, Dai Qing boarded a plane to Frankfurt after being forced to buy a new ticket at the last minute.
The symposium, entitled ”China and the World - Perceptions and Realities," will be hosted by the Frankfurt Book Fair and the Organising Committee China, in co-operation with the PEN Centre Germany, along with the Robert Bosch Foundation, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) and the Instituto Cervantes. The decision to strike the two writers from the list of participants has caused widespread criticism in Germany.