A Nobel laureate was among a group of prominentwriters who pulled out of an upcoming literary festival in Sri Lanka on Friday to protest in favour of free speech, dpa reported. Organizers said Turkish novelist Ferit Orhan Pamuk, who won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, and 2006 Man Booker Prize winner Kiran Desai, were no longer attending this month's Galle Literary Festival in Galle, a popular tourist destination south of the capital Colombo. Other authors also adhered to a boycott launched by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and a group of local journalists in exile known as Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS). "RSF and JDS find it highly disturbing that literature is being celebrated in this manner in a land where cartoonists, journalists, writers and dissident voices are so often victimized by the current government," campaigners said in a statement. -- SPA
