Staff Reporter :
Booker Prize-winning Indian novelist Arundhati Roy’s talk in Dhaka titled ‘Utmost Everything’ at the photography festival Chobi Mela moved to a new venue after police vetoed its staging at the Krishibid Institution Bangladesh on Tuesday.
The new venue for the talk is on the 10th floor of Midas Centre on Road 16 (New), (Old) Road No 27 in Dhanmondi area of the capital, Chhobi Mela said in its post this afternoon.
After cancellation of the permission, Shahidul Alam, founder of Drik Gallery told reporters that “We will not refrain from arranging the function as we are determined to do it at any other suitable place.”
In a reaction to BBC Radio (bangla service), novelist Arundhati Roy said, “We are working for a space of opposition voice but disliked by the government.”
She emphasized to give free room for oppositions’ voice, otherwise militancy and other extremists group will take it as advantage of gathering supporters, which will not be well for any one, she said.
Chobi Mela had initially planned to arrange the programme at Krishibid Institute, but police informed them that the permission was being withdrawn for “unavoidable circumstances”.
“The talk will go on and the previous registration holds,” the organisers said in a statement. It will start at 6pm.
Participants have been requested not to bring bags or “other large items” and informed there will not be any question-answer session or opportunities to take selfies with the writer.There will be no live streaming of the programme either.
Asked why the programme was cancelled, Mazharul Islam, Officer-in-Charge of Tejgaon Police Station, said he got an order that due to unavoidable circumstances the permission had been cancelled.
Arundhati Roy is best known for her novel ‘The God of Small Things’, which won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997. She is also a political activist involved in human rights and environmental causes.
