The Sivas massacre occurred on this day in 1993, in one of the blackest moments in the history of intellectual freedom. 37 poets, musicians, hotel staff and tourists were killed in a fire set to a hotel in Sivas, Turkey by radical islamists attempting to kill Aziz Nesin, a translator of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. Nasin survived but was severely beaten by his rescuers when they realized who he was.
