Sri Lanka book fest woes blamed on India visa rules

India has dismissed claims by a Sri Lankan literary festival that New Delhi’s visa restrictions prompted star author Orhan Pamuk to pull out of the book event, a report said yesterday.

An Indian newspaper quoted a spokesman for the Indian High Commission in Colombo as saying New Delhi cooperated “in every way possible” to ensure visa issues posed no problems for writers wishing to attend the Sri Lankan event.

The Indian mission in Istanbul had given Pamuk a letter stating he should be allowed to re-enter India when he desired after the end of the Galle Literary Festival, the Hindu newspaper said.

The report came after the Galle organisers blamed India’s strict visa rules rather than boycott calls for a decision by Pamuk, a Nobel-winning Turkish author, to withdraw from the event.

Earlier last week, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders and a Sri Lankan rights group asked foreign writers to protest against alleged rights abuses in Sri Lanka by withdrawing from the Galle festival, which opens on Wednesday.

Last Friday, Hemali Sodhi of Penguin publishers in India told AFP that Pamuk and Booker prizewinner Kiran Desai “won’t be attending the Galle festival”,without elaborating.

The Sri Lankan organisersthen said yesterday the couple had chosen not to take partin the Gallefestival due to Indian visa rules barring foreignersfrom re-entering the countryfor two months after leaving India.

The organisers did not refer to the rights groups’ call for a boycott but said they were unable to resolve the Indian visa issue after weeks of negotiations with Indian authorities.

“Nobody is sadder than Mr Pamuk and Miss Desai” about their inability to attend the Galle festival, the organisers said.

They quoted from an e-mail they said was sent by Pamuk in which he said he was “very sorry for and frustrated about this decision”.

He added he had “looked forward to seeing the beauties of Sri Lanka very much”.

Diplomatic officials in New Delhi and Colombo could not be immediately reached for comment on the Hindu report, carried on the newspaper’s website.

Sodhi, whose company publishes both Pamuk and Desai, did not respond to requests for comment yesterday.

The two writers are attending the Jaipur Literary Festival in northern India and had been due to travel to Sri Lanka afterwards.

Pamuk declined to take questions about the Galle festival while speaking at the Jaipur event last Friday.The Galle boycott campaign has been backed by high-profile authors as Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy.