By MANJIT KAUR
PADANG BESAR: The decision to ban the screening of The Last Communist (Lelaki Komunis Terakhir) is final.
Home Affairs Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said allowing the film to be screened in the country would give the wrong impression about Chin Peng, the exiled leader of the Communist Party of Malaya.
“It will be like allowing a film portraying Osama Bin Laden as a humble and charitable man to be screened in the United States,” he said.
Mohd Radzi said there was no violence shown in the movie and it gave a wrong impression about Chin Peng.
“People who don’t know about Chin Peng will think what a ‘poor old man’ he is. The impression given is wrong,” he told reporters after meeting with Umno members at SMK Datuk Jaafar Hassan near here yesterday.
It was reported on May 24 that the Government and not Umno would decide whether the film could be released for public screening.
Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim had said that under the Film Censorship Act, the Home Affairs Minister had the final say.
On another matter, Mohd Radzi who is also the Umno secretary-general, said Umno members must pay their annual fees to their branch representatives by October.
He said although about 30% of Puteri Umno members had registered with the party they had yet to register with the Election Commission.
“It does not mean that you are automatically registered with the commission when you register with the party,” he said.
MEDIA-MALAYSIA:
Film on Communist Leader Banned on Shaky Grounds
Baradan Kuppusamy
KUALA LUMPUR, May 11 (IPS) - The Malaysian government has banned a film on the life and times of an octogenarian communist insurgent leader, who had also collaborated with the British during World War II, setting off a hornet's nest of charges about denial of freedom and space for democratic expression.
Film makers, movie buffs and ordinary people have expressed shock and anger at the sudden and unexpected ban on ‘The Last Communist' --a semi-musical road movie that looks at life in the small towns in Malaysia that were connected with the colourful career of Chin Peng (pseudonym for Ong Boon Hua), former head of the long defunct Communist Party of Malaya.
Chin Peng, son of Chinese immigrants, collaborated with the British to resist the Japanese occupation of Malaya and was even decorated for it with the Order of the British Empire (OBE). But, in 1948 he launched a communist insurgency in what became Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.
Ironically, the film, by independent film maker Amir Muhammad, was treated as benign by the Censor Board which approved it for screening to general audiences without a single cut.
Amir himself described the movie as a ''semi-musical documentary road movie inspired by the places and events in the early life of Chin Peng'', the secretary-general of the outlawed Communist Party of Malaya.
It was to have been shown in three cinemas from May 19.
Even a group of Special Branch political police, that has a reputation for its anti-communist stance, did not object to the film.
However, the decision to screen the film was objected to by nationalistic-minded Malays in the ‘Berita Harian', a mass circulation Malay-language daily, which launched a venomous attack on the film in early May.
It accused Amir and the film of glorifying communism. It interviewed leading personalities, including a historian who derided the director and the film and urged the government to ban it.
What many found hard to stomach was the fact that none of the critics of the film had actually seen it. Yet, in a knee-jerk reaction, the government succumbed to their demands and announced, last week, that the film was banned.
''It is truly disgusting that a Malaysian film which is showing at 14 film festivals around the world is banned in the country,'' said opposition member of parliament, S. Kulasegaran.
''The government has made a fool of itself,'' Kulasegaran told IPS. ''Even Singapore which once fought a life and death struggle with the communists is to screen the film.''
But then the difference may lie in the fact that Chin Peng's movement, for all its ideological moorings, was supported by ethnic Chinese, rather than the indigenous Malays who dominate Malaysia. In Singapore, on the other hand, ethnic Chinese form the majority.
The Malaysian government says people in this country -- a few of whom are victims of Chin Peng's atrocities -- are not ready for such a movie.
Relentless government propaganda is partly to be blamed for the public reaction to Chin Peng. It was trend that continued from colonial days when the British successfully equated communists with bandits and Chin Peng was not only branded a traitor but his name made synonymous with terror.
In his own views recorded in ‘My Side of the Story', a book compiled from interviews by journalists, Ian Ward and Norma Miraflor and released in 2003, Chin Peng speaks about the effectiveness of British propaganda in exaggerating atrocities committed by the insurgents while camouflaging their own -- such as the 1948 massacre at Batang Kali.
In Singapore, the monolithic People's Action Party (PAP) government of then prime minister Lee Kuan Yew locked up leaders of the main opposition party, the Barisan Sosialis, in the early 1960s, on the grounds that it had links with Chin Peng's movement.
Film makers, enthusiasts and critics are not taking the Malaysian ban lying down. They have launched a campaign to force the government to reverse its decision and supporters from countries like Australia and New Zealand are writing to the government and local media arguing against the ban.
Locally, supporters plan to boycott the ‘Berita Harian' and also pressure advertisers to drop the paper.
The government's explanation is that the atrocities committed by the communist are still fresh in people's mind. "I don't think it's right. I also received a lot of objections and negative feedback from the public so I don't believe Malaysians have reached a level where they are ready for such a movie," Interior Minister Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said.
"So whether you like it or not, the underlying message is that this movie will promote Chin Peng. This is the man who was behind the destruction of property and the loss of many innocent lives,'' he said.
The movie, written and directed late last year, made its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February. It has been invited to 14 international film festivals including those in London, Seattle, Vancouver and Hong Kong.
In a long and passionate rebuttal of the ban in his blog, Amir said: "I am not naive and do know that the subject of communism is taboo in Malaysia. I maintain that The Last Communist was made with a certain sense of responsibility and sensitivity to history."
"It is not a propaganda film but a rather ‘odd' documentary," he said. The film does not include any interviews with, or even photographs of, Chin Peng himself.
Amir attacked ‘Berita Harian', as a "conservative newspaper whose cultural politics verges on the ethnocentric and the semi-fascist."
"It is, to put it mildly, horribly unfair for a movie to be banned based on comments by people who had not seen it. I am dismayed that a single newspaper (and a culturally chauvinistic one at that) could cause the government to reverse the decision by the censors," Amir said.
Amir and the production company have appealed against the decision. "I made the documentary for Malaysians first of all, since it is about our own past and present. We can't let chauvinists tell us what we can or cannot see."
Human rights activists also decry the ban and demand that the government reverse it.
"It lacks accountability and transparency because it was made at the absolute discretion of the minister," said Sonia Randhawa, executive director of Centre for Independent Journalism, Malaysia.
"Under the current law the minister does not have to account for decisions made for the rest of us," she said, urging the repeal of sections of the film censorship act that disallow appeals against a decision.
"The fact that the minister can ban a movie because people who have not watched it have protested also demonstrates that the government is not interested in transparency," she told ‘The Sun' newspaper.
The National Human Rights Society in a statement said the ban was "another nail in the coffin" for artistic expression in the country. Its president Cecil Rajendra said it is because of such ‘'mindless censorship and repression'' that the country's creative and innovative people preferred to emigrate or stay in exile. (END/2006)
| May 21, 2006 22:56 PM |   |
Rais Finds 'The Last Communist' Film Not Offensive
KUALA LUMPUR, May 21 (Bernama) -- The banned musical documentary "The Last Communist" is not offensive, said Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim.
"The plot isn't controversial and there's nothing that could be deemed as offensive from the cultural viewpoint," he said.
The facts portrayed in the documentary could be read in the book about former Communist Party of Malaya leader Chin Peng sold in book stores, he told reporters after joining Members of Parliament to watch the film at the National Film Development Corporation (Finas) Sunday.
The Internal Security Ministry banned the documentary produced by independent film-maker Amir Muhammad on May 10 days before its screening in cinemas although it had been passed by the Censorship Board.
The ban followed criticisms that the film glorified the cause of the communists and Chin Peng.
The documentary was screened for the MPs at the request of parliamentary Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang who wanted to see the justification for its ban.
Rais said there was nothing new in the film except for the interviews with the Communist Party of Malaya's former members.
"They were vague, not conclusive for any quarters... that's normal," he said, adding that whether the ban would be lifted was the prerogative of the Internal Security Ministry.
He said his ministry would give its views if it was asked to do so but he hoped the issue would not be blown out of proportion.
Lim said that he could not see anything controversial that could justify the banning of the film.
"When I went in, I was prepared to be outraged. But, hard as I tried, I could not find anything to be outraged about because it does not glorify the Communist Party or Chin Peng, and does not even promote communism.
"It just used the Chin Peng connection to make a documentary about life in the country and a little bit about life at the border. Some scenes such as the charcoal factory (in Taiping), petai boys (in Bidor) are an eye opener for many and highly educational," he said.
PAS secretary-general Datuk Kamaruddin Jaafar said it was a simple film portraying the life of a group of Malaysians in the 1940s and 1950s.
"It does not even tell a full story on the communist insurgency in the country nor is it a propaganda film," he said, adding that it would not leave a negative impact on the audience.
-- BERNAMA
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