The powers-that-be behind the Frankfurt Book Fair have fired a senior official after he “prevented two Chinese activists from speaking at the fair’s closing ceremony,” according to a report at Deutsche Welle. The report says project manager Peter Ripken “approached the Chinese environmental activist and writer Dai Qing before the closing ceremony and told her that she wasn’t allowed to give a speech.” He reportedly prevented activist and poet Bei Ling from taking part, as well. This, after controversy broke out before the fair even began (see the earlier MobyLives story) as to whether the two critics of China, the featured country, would be allowed to appear, and fair organizers issued a strong message saying they would. The Deutsche Welle report now says that it was Ripken who originally tried to block the appearance of Dai Qing and Bei Ling at the opening ceremony.

Ripken, however, says he was just doing what he was told to do by the ultimate power behind the fair — the German Foreign Ministry. And Bei Ling says that Ripken “and others told me that the foreign ministry was against our participation in the ceremony. I would like to know the reason why this is so.”

But the foreign ministry, says the report, “has yet to comment on the affair.”