[Reader-list] Report - Day 1 of South Asian Seminar on Censorship 22February 2006]

Thu Feb 23 00:16:33 IST 2006

Apologies for Cross Posting - here is the report of day 1 of 'Free 
Speech and Fearless Listenign'

This report is prepared  by Samina Mishra

regards

Shuddha

----------------

Report on Day 1 of the seminar - Free Speech &
Fearless Listening: The encounter with censorship in
South Asia 22 February 2006

The first day of the seminar began early with Heiko
Seivers from the Max Mueller Bhavan welcoming the
participants and the audience to the seminar. He
explained that the reason MMB was partnering with DFA
and FFF on a seminar on censorship was because Germany
is not completely free of censorship too. So, although
the main focus of the seminar was South Asia,
it was also an opportunity to widen the scope of the
discussion and raise issues of concern in Europe and
Germany.

Rahul Roy spoke on behalf of Films for Freedom and the
Delhi Film Archives. He began by thanking MMB and
Sarai for their support in making this event possible.
He described FFF and DFA as a peculiar political
formation born out of an all India movement against
censorship that existed without a bank account, office
or office bearers and yet, had managed to organize
many large and small events, screenings and protests.
Pressure from FFF had also forced the government to
appoint a ministerial committee to finally bring
Indian films on par with foreign films, as far as
freeing them from
censorship at film festivals was concerned. Organising
screenings was one of the strategies being used by FFF
to fight censorship and this remained at the centre of
the FFF vision.

Rahul spoke of the awareness that filmmakers
increasingly have that they are not alone in facing
censorship, and therefore they need to forge bonds
with others who suffer from being silenced in order to
understand how censorship functions. He tried to
explore why the seminar had a South Asia focus by
talking about similar experiences across the region,
whether it's a film not being given a censor
certificate in India or news from conflict
ridden areas being blanked out in Pakistan. He spoke
of the logic of capital which would seem to make
borders more porous in the South Asia region. This
would affect not just people and their livelihoods but
also modes of
representation and so, the seminar could be a way of
understanding the realities of censorship better as
well as finding a space to dream about a shared
resistance.

This was followed by the first panel, Reports from the
Region chaired by Amar Kanwar. Prasanna Vithanage,
noted filmmaker from Srilanka, spoke of the situation
in his country where the war between the majority
Sinhalese governmnent and the Tamil Tigers had
affected even art criticism and polarized artists. The
demand for censorship was coming not just from the
state but also from the Nationalists with articles
appearing in the newspapers asking for films to be
censored and filmmakers who are against the war being
called traitors. One of the ways to discredit
filmmakers is to
label them as foreign funded and the films as being
made for festivals and foreign audiences. To counter
this, filmmakers in Sri Lanka are taking their films
to the grassroots and showing them on DVD across the
country. Prasanna also talked about the The November
Movement in which filmmakers, artists and art lovers
in Sri Lanka got together in November 2005 to create a
space between ultra nationalism and neo liberalism.

Jitman Basnet, a journalist and lawyer who now lives
in exile in India, spoke of crisis in Nepal and the
continued repression of political leaders, activists,
journalists and lawyers. Nepal is today polarized
between the king on one hand and the Maoists on the
other. More than 1500 people have been detained under
the Public Security Act. The ban on press freedom is
complete and restrictions remain on the freedom of
movement. In this context, the immediate need seems to
be the restoration of democracy.

Hasan Zaidi, writer and filmmaker from Karachi,
presented the Pakistan scenario. He began by
clarifying that there is quite a vibrant press in
Pakistan and the current media boom is witnessing the
mushrooming of private FM and TV channels, something
which had not been allowed before the current regime.
He called this phenomenon Killing through Ambiguity
since while on
the one hand this was happening under a quasi military
dictatorship, on the other, the restrictions on the
media were quite strict under earlier politically
elected governments. He said that the government was
reacting much more to TV than the press because there
is a lot of money at stake and pressure can be put on
the owners of the TV stations, if not the journalists.
The mode of censorship seems to have changed as well.
The proliferation of cable makes it possible to simply
block a channel. So, Indian channels had been taken
off the air for threatening the cultural sanctity of
Pakistan and the BBC was taken off the air when a
rumour was circulated about the possible telecast of
the Prophet,s cartoons. He also spoke of pressure from
non state actors who force the government to react
and the situation remains ambiguous because it is
unclear where the censorship is coming from.

Nem Davies from the Mizzima News Agency Burma,
presented a short interview with Burmese writer May
Nyien now living in exile in Thailand. May Nyien
spoke of leaving Burma because she could not work
freely both as  a teacher and as writer. The military
junta in Burma tore pages from magazines where
her stories had appeared because they dealt with the
hardships of common people like farmers and teachers.

Tenzin Tsundoe, from Dharamsala, spoke of his
experiences in  Tibet where he had been imprisoned by
the Chinese government for having crossed over
illegally. He talked of newspapers and radio bulletins
that tried to create the notion of the ideal Tibetan
citizen who eschewed Buddhism and the Dalai Lama and
believed in the new development. He also spoke all the
media in China being controlled by the government and
of hardly any reports coming out of Tibet. In this
context, he introduced the work of Woe Ser who is
currently underground in Beijing as well as the work
of singers and music video artists who were using
subversive words and images to get their message
across. He showed a music video by Nam Kha and Ba
Gocha in this connection.

Tenzin also spoke of censorship that comes from
corporate control and self censorship that has not
allowed Tibetans to question the role of the Dalai
Lama for years. But, according to him, things have
begun
to change in this respect.

Tanvir Mokammel from Dhaka presented the scenario in
Bangladesh where censorship comes not just from the
state but also from non state forces such as the
Islamists. There is no censor board for video films
and so, filmmakers who try and make films on video to
avoid being censored often face being charged under
criminal laws.

The second panel was on censorship related law, Framed
by Law. Usha Ramanathan, a Delhi based lawyer chaired
the session. Lawrence Liang, Bangalore, talked of how
the fundamental right to freedom of _expression was
actually bound by many restrictions and so, to use the
law to challenge censorship means the acceptance of
those restrictions as well. In this connection, he
presented his theory that it was necessary to move
away from looking at censorship from a Prohibitive
model, in which the law curtails freedom of speech, to
a Productive model in which the law constitutes or
produces a way of seeing. He explained this by using
an example of Hate Speech in which the court when
asked to censor hate speech actually ends up
recreating the same categories of what it means to be
nationalistic or anti
nationalistic as the hate speech itself.

Sara Hossein, a lawyer from Bangladesh, presented the
legal scenario in Bangladesh which is legally still a
secular and democratic republic and where the
constitution guarantees freedom of speech and
expression, albeit with restrictions. She spoke of how
the Supreme Court was the one institution which was
still functioning in Bangladesh but even that was
beginning to change. Litigation to fight censorship is
quite  rare and often the arguments are made on
technical grounds rather than challenging the
larger issue.

The panel presentations were followed by a short
discussion in which Hasan Zaidi spoke of the Kara film
festival choosing to not to go to court to take
legal sanction for the festival since there was always
the possibility that the court would rule against them
and that could mean stopping the festival
completely. Sanjay Kak raised the issue of filmmakers
engaging in a conversation with the law because of
their right to public space and demanding that right
as a political act. Shuddhabhrata Sen Gupta pointed
out that the first amendment that curtails the freedom
of speech in the Indian constitution had come in
through a set of legal processes and so, it could also
be expunged through another set of legal processes.

The post lunch session saw a more detailed engagement
with the law. The panel titled - Court Encounters was
chaired by Prashant Bhushan. P A Sebastian from Bombay
spoke of the need to have censorship for hate speech
and Sara Hossein spoke of two particular cases in
Bangladesh which had been argued from the position of
freedom of _expression. Prasanna Vithange then talked
about his experience with courts in Sri Lanka. It was
apparent from the session that across South Asia, the
courts are not always a means of fighting censorship.
This was emphasised by Lawrence who spoke of the need
for non juridical responses to combat contested areas
like hate speech. Both Shubhradeep and Shuddha
questioned Sebastian\s position on hate speech but
unfortunately, these could not be taken up since
Sebastian had a flight to catch and had to leave for
the airport.

The last session of the day was Silences from Srinagar
and Shillong chaired by Sanjay Kak. Aijaz Ahmed,
journalist from Srinagar, laid out the media
scenario in Kashmir where voices have been gagged for
the sake of national security, propaganda and the
interests of the petty bourgeoisie. He talked of
stories of the disappeared which amounted to the
censoring of human lives. He spoke of large areas of
Kashmir going totally uncovered in the media and the
presentation of the official version of events. He
also spoke of a kind of pre censorship which exists
because journalists have to be cleared by intelligence
agencies before they are hired.

Tarun Bharatiya, poet and activist based in Shillong,
presented the scenario in the North East with freedom
of expression being bound by an "illiberal bharat" on
the one hand and autocratic regimes set up to oppose
bharat on the other. P G Rasool, writer from Srinagar
gave a detailed account of how information is
controlled in Kashmir and of the growing organic
relationship between the media and the government.
Robin Ngangom, Manipuri English poet based in
Shillong, spoke of writing the poetry of survival in
the North
East. He called it the art of witness and spoke of how
the writer must fight for the liberty to tell the
truth as he knows it. The session ended with writer
Arundhati Roy speaking of the difference in the
presentations from the two areas with the North East
presentations talking about the dual guns of the state
and the revolutionary whereas the ones from Kashmir
had
reflected only the suppression by the state.

The day ended with the screening of Black Box,
directed by Andres Veiel.

Please find below tomrrow's schedule -

day 2   23 February 2006 Thursday
Max Mueller Bhawan, Kasturba Gandhi Marg

10:00 - 11:00 am : ï¿½Privateï¿½ Censorship
Andres Veiel (Berlin) Chair Shuddhabrata Sengupta

11:30 - 1:30 pm : Locating Hate & Censorship
Deepak Mehta (Delhi) Sara Hossein (Dhaka) Shohini
Ghosh (Delhi)
Intervention: Arundhati Roy (Delhi) Shuddhabrata
Sengupta (Delhi) Jawed
Naqvi (Delhi) Chair  Dilip Simeon

2:30 - 4:00 pm : Writing the body and mind
Malathi Maithri (Pondicherry) Sanjay Srivastava
(Delhi) In Conversation:
Shuddhabrata Sengupta & Shohini Ghosh Chair TBA

4:30 - 6:00 pm : Fiction in the Censors Web
Anurag Kashyap (Mumbai) Prasanna Vithanage (Colombo)
Tanvir Mokammel (Dhaka)
Vimukthi Jayasundara (Colombo/Paris) Chair Ranjani
Mazumdar

6:00 pm l Screening
Sulanga Enu Pinisa
(The Forsaken Land)
dir: Vimukthi Jayasundara (director present)

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