Time to abolish censorship

FMT LETTER: From the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA), via e-mail

The Sept 19 filing of charges against activist Lena Hendry for the screening of a documentary which was not approved by the Film Censorship Board has once again brought into focus the immense control of the state over freedom of expression.

Lena Hendry, along with Arul Prakkash and Anna Har, of the NGO Pusat Komas were invited for questioning immediately after the July 3, 2013 screening of the film No Fire Zone, the Killing Fields of Sri Lanka, a documentary about the final stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka in 2009.

It took authorities two-and-a-half months to file charges for violating the Film Censorship Act of 2002, but only against Lena Hendry.

The main issue here is that the government has opted to impose the old-fashioned law for the screening of a human rights-themed documentary, with a topic that is certainly of public interest: impunity of the state. Furthermore, the government has specifically targeted a person whose work is dedicated to promoting human rights.

Sri Lankas culpability for possible war crimes during final offensive against the Tamil separatist insurgency in 2009 has been the subject of much concern in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

It does not take a genius to guess that the Sri Lankan government is trying to prevent screenings of the film, and uses diplomatic pressure to prevent No Fire Zone in other countries. And in this case, they did.

With the filing of charges against Hendry, Malaysia will thus be seen as buckling under diplomatic pressure to file charges against its own citizen for showing a human rights film about another country.

Of course, the Home Ministry can always argue that it has to impose what the law says. And true enough, Pusat Komas has received warning letters from the Film Censorship board about their human rights film showings since 2009.

But their actions merely point to the absurdity of the Film Censorship Law: it is biased. Films produced or sponsored by the state are exempt from censorship.

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Time to abolish censorship