Former New Zealand PM withdraws from Australian writers festival
Adelaide Writers’ Festival sees withdrawals after barring award-winning Palestinian-origin author
ISTANBUL (AA) – Australia’s Adelaide Writers’ Festival is facing a wave of withdrawals by authors and speakers after organizers barred an award-winning Australian author of Palestinian origin, triggering a growing boycott and resignations from the festival’s leadership, SBS News reported Monday.
Randa Abdel-Fattah, a Macquarie University academic and novelist, was disinvited from the festival on Dec. 8, with organizers saying: “given her past statements, we have formed the view that it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi” beach in Sydney where 15 people were killed last month.
Abdel-Fattah, the author of 11 novels and a recipient of the Kathleen Mitchell Award in 2008, condemned the decision, calling it a “blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship.”
The backlash intensified over the weekend, with three board members and the chair resigning following a crisis meeting, as the number of authors canceling scheduled appearances reportedly approached 100.
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern joined the boycott on Monday, withdrawing from the festival without giving a reason.
Former Adelaide Writers’ Week director Jo Dyer told SBS News the festival had become “untenable,” while organizers acknowledged receiving a “significant” community response to the decision to bar Abdel-Fattah, who was born in Sydney to a Palestinian father and an Egyptian mother.
“I have heard of nothing, ever in the history of the festival, which has undermined the international standing of the Adelaide Festival as much as the events of the last few days,” she said, adding that she did not agree with the “egregious incursion on the principle of freedom of artistic expression” resulting from the board’s decision.
Abdel-Fattah, a sociologist and lawyer by training who writes both fiction and non-fiction, has been a vocal advocate for Palestinian people and broader human rights issues.
In her own statement last week, Abdel-Fattah, who holds a doctor of philosophy in sociology, said after two years of Israel’s live-streamed genocide of Palestinians, Australian arts and cultural institutions continue to “reveal their utter contempt and inhumanity towards Palestinians.”
Australian author Kathy Lette also announced a boycott of the festival unless organizers reinstated Abdel-Fattah.
“The decision to bar Abdel-Fattah sends a divisive and plainly discriminatory message that platforming Australian Palestinians is ‘culturally insensitive’.”
“Decisions like this lead to erasure of Palestinian writers and Palestinians more broadly from Australian public life,” Lette warned in a statement on the US social media company X.
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