* Untuk pengetahuan ramai, webtv8 (http://wtv8.tv) pernah menemuramah Said
Zahari dan temuramah itu disiar untuk seketika lamanya. Dengan kemunculan isu
ini, maka webtv8 mungkin akan menyiarkan temuramah itu semula, insyAllah. -
SDahij
Singapore to ban political film
AJ
Wed | Apr 11, 07 | 05:24:37 PM Singapore, April
11 - Singapore has said that it will ban a documentary about the detention of
a former leftist activist because its "distorted and misleading" portrayal of
events could undermine the government.
Zahari's 17 Years, is a 49-minute interview with Said Zahari, who was
arrested in 1963 on suspicion of plotting violent acts and detained for 17
years.
The ministry of information said on Tuesday that the film was an attempt to
clear Said of his involvement in activities against Singapore.
Martyn See, the film's director, who was under investigation last year for a
documentary about an opposition leader, said he was surprised by the ban.
The ministry said in a statement: "The government will not allow people who
had posed a security threat to the country in the past to exploit the use of
films to purvey a false and distorted portrayal of their past actions and
detention by the government."
Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore's prime minister has acknowledged tensions over
regulations that tightly restrict the media and free speech, but defended them
as necessary to maintain order.
Approval
See said the film, produced at the end of 2005, had been approved twice last
year with a PG rating.
When it was not shown at the 2006 Singapore International Film Festival, as he
expected, See applied for an exhibition licence to screen it publicly.
"I don't know what changed. Maybe different people with different views
watched it this time," See said.
"I based my questions to Said on his first book, which is sold in Singapore. So
what is in the film is not something the government didn't know."
He said he had been ordered by the censorship board to surrender all copies of
the film by Wednesday afternoon.
Said, who was held without trial, said from his home in Malaysia that was
shocked to hear of the ban. He said he had already accepted an invitation to
visit Singapore next month to give a speech at the film's screening by a
university film institute.
"This is very funny. I don't understand why they would ban it at all. What I
said in the movie I have already said in my book, and much, much more," he said.
"That was 40 years ago. Is the government still afraid?"
"I feel sorry for Singaporeans who have not been given a chance to see the
other side of Singapore history, particularly the 1960s and '70s. It's not
fair."
Said's detention came in the early years after British colonisers gave
self-government to Singapore in 1959.
'Left-wing politics'
In the early 1960s, authorities arrested left-wing politicians, trade
unionists and Chinese students involved in strikes and rallies, accusing them
of being violent subversives planning a communist state.
Singapore, which was planning a merger with what later became Malaysia, said
the swoop was aimed at individuals threatening to use violence to sabotage the
proposed amalgamation.
The detainees were jailed under the colonial-era internal security act, which
allows for arrest without charge and indefinite detention without trial.
Said, who denied the accusations, was held for years, sometimes in solitary
confinement, after the merger failed in 1965 and Singapore became independent.
- mks.
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