Author Salman Rushdie, best known for classic works "The Satanic Verses" and "Midnight's Children," has voiced concerns over the targeting of writers and artists by authoritarian governments across the globe.
In an interview with dpa in Berlin on Tuesday, the Indian-born British writer said "the world is becoming a much angrier place where people seem to resort to violence much more easily."
Rushdie was severely injured in an assassination attempt at an event in the United States in 2022, losing an eye.
He said that artists "have become the targets of authoritarian regimes across the world."
"I worry about it a lot, especially because a lot of it is aimed at artists of different kinds, not just writers, but musicians and even visual artists," he stated.
Rushdie highlighted the case of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who he said has "had a great deal of trouble in China."
"The more authoritarian a government is or a leader is, the more they want to have the ability to control the story," Rushdie said.
He added: "Writers and artists are people who don't conform to the world-view of the powerful, and they have different world-views. And so their versions of the world, if you like, are in conflict, and that can lead intellectuals, writers, artists to become targets."
The 76-year-old is widely regarded as one of the most important writers of the modern era.
He lived under police protection for decades after being issued with a fatwa, an order for Muslims to kill him, by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 following the publication of "The Satanic Verses."
Rushdie's new book "Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder" was published in April.