Novelist Salman Rushdie says freedom of speech is under "real assault" around the world.
The Indian-born British-American author was awarded the Liberatum Cultural Honour in London on Wednesday at a ceremony running under the theme "Freedom of Expression".
"I live in America and I never thought that there would be such an assault on free speech, coming from the authorities in the land of the First Amendment," Rushdie told Reuters in an interview shortly before taking to the stage.
"The fact that they have been attacking journalists, comedians, writers, artists, intellectuals for expressing dissenting opinions shows what they think of free speech," Rushdie said.
"There's a big struggle. I have to say that there's quite a good fight back there. For instance, all these books being banned from libraries, there's a lot of challenges to those. And in many cases the challenges are successful."
