(SEAPA/IFEX) – Singapore’s Media Development Authority (MDA) withheld a license from a local theatre group to stage a play about the execution of a drug courier until it revised some scenes and took out all references to the death penalty, the English daily “Today” reported. The play “Human Lefts” was supposed to be staged at […]
(SEAPA/IFEX) – Singapore’s Media Development Authority (MDA) withheld a license from a local theatre group to stage a play about the execution of a drug courier until it revised some scenes and took out all references to the death penalty, the English daily “Today” reported.
The play “Human Lefts” was supposed to be staged at the Drama Centre at the National Library on 3 December 2005, a day after the execution of Australian national Nguyen Tuong Van for drug smuggling, despite repeated pleas for clemency from the Australian government.
The theatre group “The Fun” was asked to submit a completely new script a few days before it was to stage the play, “Today” said on 6 December.
The group’s artistic director Benny Lim told “Today” that it was “unfortunate timing” that Tuong Van’s hanging had been scheduled just the day before the opening of the play, originally written about the hanging of drug courier Shanmugam Murugesu on 13 May.
Local coverage of Tuong Van’s trial, conviction and sentence has been almost non-existent in the government-owned media, with daily reports only appearing in the past week and their focus being limited to the outcry in Australia.
A week before the execution, a work of art by a Slovenian art student with reference to Tuong Van’s final days was altered, according to “The Australian”.
The daily newspaper reported that the work by Matija Milkovic Biloslav, who was participating in an exhibit at Singapore’s Lasalle-SIA College of the Arts, was altered after the exhibition opened.
Biloslav had displayed under falling nooses a single standing stool carrying a card with Tuong Van’s execution number, C856, a very deliberate reference to the Australian. The college, which receives government funding, said the art work was about suicide and hastily removed the card.
The reaction of the art college is typical of the sensitivity in Singapore to even the very limited political and social debate allowed by the long-ruling People’s Action Party.
In an open letter to Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on 29 November, Robert Ménard, Secretary-General of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), made a number of concrete recommendations to achieve lasting improvement in the press freedom situation in Singapore (see IFEX alert of 29 November 2005).
RSF also reminded the government of its statement of support for an open society a year ago and the fact that no significant improvement in the situation of press freedom has been observed.
