About a week ago, I visited Israel and Palestine. I was part of a delegation of authors with representatives from different parts of the world.

We came to participate in the Palestinian Literary Festival. The opening ceremony was supposed to take place at the Palestinian National Theatre in Jerusalem.

We had just gathered when heavily armed Israeli military and policemen walked in and announced that they were going to stop the ceremony.

When we asked why, they answered: You are a security risk.

To claim that we at that moment posed a viable terroristic threat to Israel is absolute nonsense. But at the same time, they were right. We pose a threat when we come to Israel and speak our minds about the Israeli oppression of the Palestinian population. It can be compared to the threat that I and thousands of others once were to the Apartheid system in South Africa. Words are dangerous.

That was also what I said when those who organized the conference had managed to move the whole opening ceremony to the French Cultural Centre: – What we are now experiencing is a repetition of the despicable Apartheid system that once treated Africans and coloured as second-class citizens in their own country. But let us not forget: that very apartheid system no longer exists. That system was overthrown by human force in the beginning of the 1990s. There is a straight line between Soweto, Sharpeville and what recently happened in Gaza.

Read the complete translation of Henning Mankell's article by Robert Johnsson on P U L S E, 27th June 2009