 Hello and welcome to Safe Haven's Freedom Talk. My name is Arma Sam and I've been invited to open this event. I do so because I'm an artist and activist in a global network defending artistic freedom. I'm so proud to be part of the Safe Haven community where we support each other's efforts and struggle for free speech and protections of artists at risk. Safe Haven's meetings and Freedom Talks are some of the tools that we share for this course. And today I'm very happy to introduce the brilliant Kathy Rowland, the co-founder of Arts Equator in Singapore, as well as an art producer, writer and editor with a very special interest in art censorship. Kathy today will lead the panel about the conditions of free speech and artistic freedom in Southeast Asia. Please don't hesitate to ask any questions to the panel through the Museum of Movement's Facebook account and Kathy I will leave it to you now to lead this fantastic panel and introduce this topic. Thank you Rami. Hello and welcome to Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia proxy wars, a collaboration between Safe Havens and Arts Equator. We come to you delighted from several cities in Southeast Asia this afternoon or evening depending on where you are. Welcome everyone. Our panel of distinguished speakers will share about the way that power and the arts collide, confront and coexist in this regional space. They will discuss specific cases and share their insights into the underlying reasons and meanings of these incursions and outbreaks into artistic freedom. The first two presenters, T. Sassitaran from Singapore and Dr. Anli from Malaysia, will speak for about 15 minutes each and we'll then take a couple of questions from the audience before we continue with Ari Sivaraza from Malaysia and Katrina Stullet Santiago from the Philippines. Each will be sharing for 15 minutes each as well. Then I hope to have a cross-panel discussion and take some questions from the audiences as well. You can post your questions as Rami has said on the Facebook live feeds or wherever you're watching this from. So without wasting any time, let me introduce to you our first speaker, T. Sassitaran. Sassi as he's known is co-founder and director of the Intercultural Theatre Institute. He writes and lectures on art, theatre training, performance, practice and Singapore culture. And from 1995 to 2000, he was the artistic director of substation, Singapore's only independent art space. Before that, he was the theatre and visual arts critic for the Straits Times newspaper, Singapore's main broadsheet. Sassi received the cultural medallion, the highest honour given to an arts practitioner in Singapore in 2012. Sassi, over to you. Thank you, Cathy. And the good people at MOM. Hello, everyone. It's night here and I'm sure it might be light somewhere else. So I'm hoping that this talk will shed some light on the situation of censorship in Singapore. Artists in Singapore have worked with the reality of censorship since Singapore became independent in 1965. This is a reality which I think we have come to imbibe and try to understand in doing our work, in being able to find spaces within which we can be free. You could say that artists have a kind of a dance with the state and the censor. And I'd like to call this dance the Singapore Three Step. It's basically one step forward and two steps backward. And every time you think we are making progress in freeing up art space, something will happen. A policy would be implemented. A law would be enacted which would then drag us two steps backwards. And we've been performing this jig for as long as we can remember. And censorship in Singapore has evolved. It's become more complex and complicated. In the 60s and the 70s, we had the old style red pencils, the black balls. Scripts would be deleted. Lines would be removed. Images would be taken out. And the only merit to that kind of censorship was that it was visible. It was clear that something was being removed. It was clear that a work of art was being defaced. And it was clear that we were experiencing and witnessing an exercise of power, usually an arbitrary exercise of power in order to curtail or silence information and speech. But over time, these regular, these tactics that were used became invisible. They became part of a complex set of policies and laws which the state deployed as regulation. It deployed as administration. And most recently, with the efflorescence of art in Singapore, as you might know, Singapore fancies itself as a renaissance nation, as a nation which is a leader in artistic expression, which is a global center that might attract culture and arts talent from all over the world. And in this effort, there is a constant availability of money and funds. There's no doubt about that. But often, the money and the funds are used as seductive appeals, which would silence the artist. So there's been this shift from the crude, visible, brutal acts of censorship, which we're all familiar with in most illiberal societies, to a much more finessed, a much more sophisticated, and a much more invisible way of silencing. So what we are left with, what the audience is left with, is a lack of visibility of how the silencing happens. And there is the illusion that there is no victim in the process of the state's control of the arts. Why complain about the arts? Why should people push or conduct activism in order to reduce censorship when there was no visible victim? So there's been this evolution, which is part and parcel of Singapore's development as a city-state. And the evolution of censorship, the landscape of censorship here, is affected primarily by a series of censorship review committees. We have them once every 10 years or so, starting back in 1991. And every 10 years, the minister of culture or some other minister or minister of law, for instance, might convene a committee which will consist of public civil servants, politicians, leaders in society, the great and the good, people who are running orchestras, people who are affiliated or associated with government cultural organizations, and they will basically decide on what the guidelines of the restrictions are going to be. They will decide how and when dissemination and communication can be possible. And they have an immense impact on cultural production and on the production of information in society. And over the years, the medium and the genres that effectively came under regulation has expanded. Most recently, it has included blogs, blogs, social media posts, including, by the way, media posts that are only social media posts that are only for friends only might be silenced or restricted for its content. So the other aspect of censorship in Singapore, which has evolved with this process, is the censoring authority that the state has used in order to effect the silencing. This too, one could say, has evolved. In the 60s and the 70s, there was the public entertainment licensing unit, the dreaded Pelu, as we used to call it. The Pelu was an arm of the Singapore police force. And it seemed appropriate that the policing would be done by the police. You literally went up to the Pelu office, sat in front of a censor with your script and went line by line to see if something might be objectionable or something would have to be removed before a license for a performance would be granted to you. And often it might just be a word like nipple, for instance, would cause great consternation. And you'd be asked if the actor could not say the word nipple, as if it would cause some kind of revolution in society. And this is what we had to do. We would literally sit in front of the censor and negotiate what can be allowed and what can't be allowed. But slowly, this authority was shifted from the police. And now it rests with the info communications and media development authority since 2003. So it kind of characterizes ostensibly an increasing sophistication in the mechanisms of control and the retreat of censorship from the realm of the overt and the visible to spaces of invisibility and recesses of policy at administration. Now the regime of silencing and control has been so effective in Singapore. And it's so subtle that the state has very much succeeded in implanting the fear of speaking in many people in many citizens and people who happen to be in Singapore. So much so that the need for the censor, the very need for the censor has begun to disappear. It's been supplanted by the most effective mechanism of censorship that any authority could imagine. This is self-censorship when the artist or the citizen or the speaker has been so pummeled into fearing what he can say and what he cannot say or better so if he doesn't know where the lines are, he prefers not to speak at all. Now this has been, in my view, the evolution of censorship in Singapore. It's an evolution of increasing sophistication and effectiveness. I would like to point out a couple of cases now of censorship that's happened to give you an idea of the scope and the diversity by which control is employed by the state to silence the artist. My first example is a case, a notorious case, called Joseph Ng, the Joseph Ng affair or the Brother Kane affair in 1994. There was an event at a shopping mall, post-modern installation art, performance art event that included a number of genres that was run by an independent assembly of artists in a shopping center. It was a five-hour event that ran overnight. In that event, in that festival, there was a two-minute performance of a performance art piece by Joseph Ng which effectively was a protest at that time against the entrapment of homosexuals by the Singapore police force. Joseph Ng enacted certain actions and then stripped naked, turned away from the audience and snipped his pubic hair. This particular moment was captured by a journalist who was not supposed to be at the event because this was a private event and the press was not supposed to be there. Nevertheless, the next afternoon, the tabloid ran the picture with the headline pubic art and that was it. All hell broke loose and overnight funding for performance art was withdrawn by all the official bodies. Nobody could fund or present performance art in Singapore overnight. This was the means of control through money. All funding was removed and any other foreign organizations which might have been interested in funding performance art was discouraged from doing so. Even organizations like the Goethe Institute or the Orléans Francaise would think twice if they were going to fund or to present a performance art event in Singapore. This caused immense hardship for many performance artists in Singapore who were forced to move out to other festivals overseas. I cite this because I think this is unique in the history of art because the Singapore State gained a singular distinction of a jurisdiction which not merely censored an artist or an artwork but in one fell swoop. A whole genre of art and art making was censored and it took 10 years before performance art could be rehabilitated and received funding again. The other example I'd like to give you happened within the context of the Singapore Biennale. Now this is a huge festival that's government funded and it's hosted by the museums. This happened in 2011 and it was the closure of an exhibition by a foreign artist called Simon Fujiwara. The exhibition itself was called Welcome to the Hotel Munba. This was an installation art exhibition by the British artist Simon Fujiwara and it was curated by the museum for the Biennale. The problem was that the installation included a number of what was deemed to be pornographic elements which were strewn on the bar and in the floor. What was interesting was that the museum allowed the installation to stand for the first week because the first week was open to trade, to arts professionals and to the international media but at the end of the first week these magazines were removed because they were deemed to be improper and obscene for the lay public to see. Now when the artist heard about it of course he requested for the exhibition to be closed. So again we see the use of power by the state, a very cynical and a very deliberate use where aspects of the exhibition were allowed to go on because for the benefit of the international media and for brand Singapore but in effect it was not allowed for Singaporeans to see. My third example is the batting of a film in 2014 by Tung Pin Pin. The film was To Singapore with Love. This was an internationally acclaimed film which essentially interviewed political exiles who were forced to live outside the country because if they had come back because of their dissenting views they would have been immediately imprisoned. Therefore they had no choice but to leave the country. Tung Pin Pin who was an internationally renowned filmmaker traveled the world and interviewed these people essentially trying to understand what their connection to Singapore was. How do they see themselves still as Singaporean? And the film was banned again de facto banned because by the time in 2014 the film rating system had already been in place but the IMDA deemed that this particular film would not be allowed for all ratings which in effect banned the film. But the ludicrousness of this act becomes clear only when you understand that the film was widely available over YouTube and people would actually travel across the causeway towards the film being screened in Jeho Baru. So it was not an effective censorship at all. Nevertheless the state persisted because it wanted to draw a line in the sand, a symbolic line in the sand to say what was going to be allowed and what was not going to be allowed. And in effect the film was banned if you understand because it began to question the founding mythology of Singapore because this is what these political exiles were questioning. They were questioning the right of the ruling government to form the historical narrative which they claimed was the founding myth of Singapore's progress and this would not be allowed. And there's another aspect to this which is very interesting because back in almost a decade ago a play by the name which was called The Lady of Soul, an ultimate S machine was allowed in Singapore after previously being banned. The play is by a political playwright by the name of Tan Tan Hao. It was an irreverent satirical play essentially criticizing the materialism and the economic imperatives that have guided Singapore's progress namely the need for a soul and it criticized the civil service, it criticized the political elite and the play was not allowed or it was severely censored in 1992 and 1993. But overnight in 1993 after the new censorship review committee had met the play was passed without cuts and it was staged by a leading company in Singapore Theatre Works and directed by Hong Kong Sen. Now at that time the government claimed that this was an example of how there will be no more censorship in Singapore. We will only have regulation and censorship would be used with a lighter touch but within 10 years we all saw Tan Pin Pin's film being banned although ineffectively bad. So the government wanted to retain even if it was symbolic the power to draw the line as to what is going to be allowed and what is not going to be allowed. My fourth example is the NAC is the National Arts Council's withdrawal of funding in 2015 for Sunny Liu's The Art of Charlie Chanhok Chai. This again is another astounding ludicrous move by the National Arts Council when it withdrew the funding of Singapore $8,000 for a graphic novel after its publication on the grounds that it is potentially undermines the authority of the government. Once again if there is a work that even potentially questions or criticizes the legitimacy of the government then no support can be extended to it. It will preferably be silenced but if not the agencies that champion the arts in Singapore will not be seen supporting it. As it turned out it didn't matter that the NAC did not support this particular graphic novel. As it turned out the art of Charlie Chanhok Chai was a masterpiece in the realm of graphic noveling. It won three Eisner awards which is the equivalent of the Oscars for the artist and it's globally recognized as one of the most brilliant graphic novels that we have ever seen and what this demonstrates for me is the total ineptitude with which the National Arts Council looks at the merit or the demerits of a work which it is supposed to be supporting. It is simply exercising its agency as a government body to silence or to censor a work. My final and fifth example is happened in 2019. This is the cancellation of the Watane concert in Singapore and it happened uncharacteristically within 24 hours the cancellation happened 24 hours before the concert was supposed to go on which meant that the organizers and the sponsors incurred great losses business losses as a result of this. So the action by the government was quite a knee-jerk reaction which is unusual for the Singapore government. The Watane concert was cancelled because the Christian community here objected to it on the grounds that the Swedish black metal band was anti-christian and promoted Satanism. Now despite this being a textbook case of manufactured offence or outrage the minister of law nevertheless maintained in public that given that many Christians felt this was deeply offensive denigrating the Ministry MHA which is the Ministry of Home Affairs advised IMDA to cancel. It was my decision that MHA should do so and advise IMDA. My officers and I took into account the rejection of the reaction of the Christian community and the broader security implications of that reaction both in the medium and the longer term. This was a case not of the state exercising the right to censor but of people. There was a frightening coalition of people who had come together and used democratic means to silence the expression of someone else in society. This Christian community could have easily asked its followers not to go for the concert, not to buy tickets. It would have had no impact at all on the community's beliefs or the people who belong to the community would not be impacted in any way if they did not attend the concert. Despite this they moved to have the event cancelled. This to me was particularly frightening because finally it was not just the state censors that we need to be worried about but interest groups, religious interest groups or other political interest groups with different agendas which could be motivated to silence and reduce the space available for cultural production. So I think that I hope I've given you some measure of the shift in the landscape that we've experienced as artists. Many people, particularly observers from abroad, are surprised to learn that freedom of speech and expression is actually enshrined in our constitution. It's understandable because Singapore's view, the view of Singapore amongst observers is that it is a highly illiberal society. These rights, the rights to free speech have had the stuffing beaten out of them by serial legislation, by enacted by successive parliaments, restricting, conditioning and limiting them to the point of oblivion. So although the right is there in the constitution, its exercise has become almost impossible. Every Singaporean school child will tell you that these rights are not absolute, that the right to free speech is not absolute and we must not expect that ever to be so. We have taught our children too well, I think, to forget that these rights actually do exist in our constitution. And then as citizens, we are entitled to these rights. If not absolutely, then at least fully and completely. It's only the contingency of politics that has continually silenced us and reduced the space for freedom of expression in Singapore. This has been done completely legally. There is a whole raft of laws which are in the books in Singapore, which enable the government to do the silencing, which enable the government to camouflage censorship as regulation, which enable the authorities to cancel or to remove objects of art or other objects of cultural expression. I can go through these laws with you a bit later if that is necessary. What I'm trying to to establish here is that all of this is legal in Singapore. Censorship is legal in Singapore. And the fig leaf that is often used by the state is that there is a silent moral majority which essentially supports this censorship of art and of expression. This is something that artists have always questioned, this fictitious moral silent majority. We believe that this is just a figment of the government's imagination in order to effect the censorship that it wants. I will stop there. Thank you. Thank you, Sassi. Thank you very much for that. I just was just as you were speaking, I think just taking us through the evolution and the increasing sophistication of the measures that are and the tools that are used, a couple of things really struck me. The fact that the arts has the ability to challenge certain narratives that are created by the state is what makes it so powerful. And I think also this emergence of non-state actors as another force of censorship, which I hope we will have a bit more time to discuss later in this evening. But right now I want to just pick up on two things. Now you've mentioned that there has been this emergence of a kind of policy framework versus let's say a more legislative legal framework. And just pulling that out and as we understand policies really are methods that governments use to reach certain desired outcomes. So it's more of a carrot narrative than a stick narrative, whereas the laws can be often, they have the force of being enforced, they are often preventative. How has this shift from using laws to one that is more policies, which is more bureaucratic, reframed censorship in the minds of the artists themselves in Singapore? Yeah, as I try to say, try to mention in my speech Kathy, the effect of these policies, the effect of these administrative strictures as it were, is to make censorship invisible. Now I want to make something very clear, none of these policies are done without the power of the law behind it. That there is legal sanction which enables government agencies and bodies to implement or to conceive these policies in the first place. So there's no question about that. But what happens is that, I'll give you an example. So if you are a major government agency that is producing art in Singapore like the Esplanade, for instance, or if you are the arts house, you are given a certain amount of leeway in order to decide what is possible for your programming, you are given a certain amount of scope. Now, therefore, the act of censorship is devolved from the state to these institutions, which are actually presenting the work. The programmers, the curators will be dealing with the artists directly. And this is where the negotiation can happen. So if there is a depiction of a scene which might be deemed problematic or which might be deemed offensive or obscene, the programmers can negotiate with the artist and the stick and the carrot becomes, well, if you want this work to be mounted at all, if you want the work to be seen at all, then you'd have to take out that scene or you'd have to remove that line or, you know, we will not program this. Now, in the past, the artist would see this quite clearly. I mean, in my people of my ill congeneration would have seen this as a pressure to censor. But there are many young people who believe that this is a legitimate process of negotiation and working with institutions. So because there is so much pressure to want to show your work, understandably, artists are prepared to make sacrifices. And this is how I think the state, in effect, inches into the process and, you know, uses administration to silence artists. It's self-censorship. But it is self-censorship through pressure from the state. So kind of outsourcing of the action. So because I'm just conscious of time, I want to thank you very much, Lassie, for the presentation and for just explaining a little bit more. I'd like to actually move on to our second speaker and just a reminder to speakers. You might hear my voice saying time if we are running out of time in your presentation. Okay. So we'll move on to our second speaker, Dr. Anne Lee, who's a playwright, a researcher and a researcher of political, human, theater, television, and social media, including contemporary indigenous satire. Anne has a PhD in Southeast Asian Studies from NUS and is a past fellow of the Asian Fellowship Program in Japan. She's currently researching freedom of expression in faith-based texts and working on an archive of censorship in Malaysia. Her latest play is available in the publication Southeast Asian Plays published by Aurora Metro in 2016. Anne? Great. Thank you, Cathy, for that introduction. Thank you also to MOM for the invitation to be here and everybody who's here. Okay. Now I'm going to present a case study, a work in progress that looks at censorship practice and satire or the satirical expression of descent in a democratic space. This space, Malaysia, has been variously called a hybrid democracy, a semi-democracy, and even a competitive authoritarianism to use Stephen Levitsky and Lukin Wei's phrase. The terms originally applied to Southeast Asian countries context, but have also been applied elsewhere. Now, next slide, please. Thank you. The next slide after that. Thank you. Now Judith Butler, one of whose influential ideas is that gender is constructed, indeed performed, has also written that in a time of political science where agency and effects contend, and now of course there's also affect, terms like state economy have become less fixed, less stable. Now I would like to suggest that, well, to extend the idea of less fixed and less stable to censorship and satire. I will look at an example of satire or satirical expression of descent defined here as the mocking of authority by play. And in this case, the play involves a prime minister portrayed as a clown. Now, as a vehicle of satire, the clown is unreliable. The first reason is that satire is unreliable. Mocking authority means any authority along the political spectrum, not just left, but also right. And these terms of reference themselves left and right may shift. The second reason satire is unreliable is that while the clown, or fool, is in most cultures a sort of wise in disguise character, it is not always easy to tell why or how the clown is playful because sometimes the clown may be sinister. We can also look at censorship as less fixed, less stable, less totalizing. We can agree that censorship has evolved, from red and black pen markers to spaces of invisibility, as he called it, in the recesses of policy and administration, and even up until the point of self-censorship. But let me respond to a potential positivist thread in that argument. Meaning, if there is a linear narrative of how censorship gets worse due to increasingly tighter laws, and so freedom of speech, expression, and association becomes correspondingly prescribed, then we can also consider narratives or counter narratives that show dynamics of censorship that are not as stable as fixed, likewise freedoms of speech, speech acts, and expression. My case study highlights a range of interesting contradictions that suggest a less fixed and less stable outcome of censorship. And this builds on the work by Sumit K. Mandal, Susan Philip, and a certain Kathy Rowland in this area. Next slide, please. Now Judith Butler's still valuable notion of the performative contradiction shows that certain speech acts, can I have the next slide? Yeah, thank you. Judith Butler's still valuable notion of the performative contradiction shows that certain speech acts can be said to undermine or contradict themselves. The performative contradiction is integral to any regulation or censorship law that states what it does not want stated. An apt example of this is Malaysia's Sedition Act 1948, passed during the British colonial administration, interestingly just repealed in the UK in 2009, but still alive and well in Malaysia. Now a broad definition of sedition or to show seditious tendency is to utter words that bring into hatred, contempt, or excite disaffection or ill will, against a number of things, any ruler, any government, or to question any matter, right status, position, privilege, and others in relation to the certain provisions in the federal constitution. The performative contradiction here is that when we talk about the Sedition Act, we also commit sedition. Next slide please. This contradiction can be demonstrated by reference to a series of satirical expression of dissent by Fami Reza, what he calls visual disobedience, recalling civil disobedience. Now in the Southeast Asian region, visual disobedience in the form of cartoons, comics, caricatures, and so forth, is the most researched area. Zunar, I know the political cartoonist has also spoken at this panel, but there are artists of various gender and sexuality, including Joy Ho, an illustrator and cartoonist. Her or their work can be found at fever underscore dream. Shirin Rafi is a freelance illustrator at wildd.sing. Both of them will be talking at a new narrative event, although its co-founder, PJ Tham, is currently facing increased persecution in Singapore. Click. Thank you. Next one. Now, Fami Reza's work covers a broad number of years, but I focus on his portrayals of a former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Tanraza, who is now convicted of white collar crime concerning one, just one of many companies associated with a massive financial scandal that he allegedly led, involving the theft of up to approximately 20 billion US dollars. I think that's about 17 billion euros from a sovereign fund called the One Malaysia Development, or 1MDB, between the years 2015 and 2018. Next slide, please. Fami's depiction of the highest public officer in the land as a clown went on to become a face of a scandal that quite often because of its intricacy and complexity bewildered many. Now, kita semua punhasut means we're all seditious. The full line translates as if a country is full of corruption, well, when a country is full of corruption, we're all seditious. It points to the systemic and extensive reach of the alleged corruption. It also recalls the performative contradiction integral to any regulation or censorship law. The talking about sedition means we cannot escape sedition ourselves. Fami points out that in that year alone, 2015, 91 charges under the sedition act occurred, which as Amnesty International pointed out, was about five times as many in that one year than had been in the first 50 years of the act. Now, this image appeared on all his social media accounts, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, initially from 20,000 followers, but grew eventually to a domestic audience that can be calculated of around approximately 7 million. Stories about this particular clown, which I refer to as Fami Bandut 1, would also appear on the BBC, New York Times, CNN, Time and elsewhere. These are only English language references, but reaching an estimated audience of 30 million. Next slide, please. But back then, within an hour of posting the clown on Twitter, this rare and unusual notice appeared on his account, a warning from the Police Cyber Investigation Response Centre. It hardly made an appearance after this, but next slide, please. But by then, Fami had already posted the image on his main Facebook page. He would go on to repost the warning as well. It must be noted that an estimated 10.18 million Malaysians, or over 40.5% of the population at the time, were on Facebook in that year. Only 25,000 initially saw this on Facebook itself, but it was increasingly remediated elsewhere. Critically, the image also prompted a reaction from graphic rebel untuk protestan aktivisme, or grupa, the Malaysian Association for Rebellious Graphic Designers. Next slide, please. As grupa states on its first Facebook page, we choose to remain anonymous at the public level, not because of fear, but because this project is not about us as individual designers, but about the causes that we are highlighting. At the time, new clown memes were posted in solidarity with Fami's initially every two hours, in turn, remediated, some of which were more popular than others. I've just selected a small selection here. On the bottom left, you can see a sort of Heath Ledger portrayal of the Joker. In the middle, above, there's a clown that has its right hand on a cat's neck. The text reads, he's choking us because we're all seditious. On the immediate right there, the middle finger character is from an earlier coloring book by Fami, which lampoons an A to Z of politicians from all across the spectrum. I highlight this because there's an interesting contradiction of Fami's own persona in that image. He perpetually wears a black berry, black shirt, and black trousers, and that is a lampoon here together with the sort of V for Vendetta kind of character. At the bottom there, there's, we're all seditious in Jawi. Next slide, please. Grupa would go on to produce over a hundred separate clown images. Next slide, please. Fami himself would produce over 80 clown images. In all nearly 200 clown images were created during the first two months of 2016 and later remediated. Fami was threatened with the Sedition Act once, but charged twice under the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 section 2331A, which became the tool of choice. This is arguably ironic, since an amendment to the Sedition Act was passed in 2015 after 11 hours of debate in Parliament to, among others, extend the reach of the act on social media and increase the number of years in imprisonment if found guilty. Next slide. But what is also interesting is a jump from online to on ground that also happened. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins originally coined the word meme. He wrote that, you know, just as genes or DNA molecules propagate by leaping from body to body via sperm and eggs, so do memes go leaping from brain to brain. Now, he was also the first person to apply the concept of a virus. And, you know, today, of course, we call it going viral. But this online to on ground action here occurred in all 13 states of Malaysia, based on printers who supplied stickers and t-shirts, which were openly listed on Fami's Facebook page. On the same page, people posted their on ground action of pasting stickers, posters, redesigning the clown for themselves, and wearing t-shirts that could also be bought from printers. In this way, the campaign took on life, took on a life of its own as Fami states. Now, proper documentation of this effect and affect of contagion is ongoing. Next slide, please. In real time, five months, five months after the first clown meme appeared, this article appeared in Utusan Malaysia, the oldest national language, national language Malay newspaper, which at the time had an estimated readership of just over half a million. Its headline is graphic translates as graphic designer charged for posting fake image of the PM or Prime Minister. But it is the photo that demonstrates a prime example of the performative contradiction, namely the very same image that the verdict sought to censor by fine or imprisonment was held up for all to see by the artist himself. It would take another year for one of the charges that occurred to Fami to be met with a verdict. In this, he was eventually found guilty of for using network services to transmit content that is obscene, indecent, false, menacing, or offensive in character with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass another person. He was fined 30,000 ring it, I think it's about 6000 euros, but chose a crowd funding site and managed to raise the full amount in cash from public donations within less than 24 hours, a clear demonstration of support for his work. In conclusion then, a number of contradictions presented themselves in this example of censorship and satirical expression of dissent in a so-called hybrid semi-demi democracy or competitive authoritarianism of a space. One, the performative contradiction that any regulation that states what it does not want stated can be found in the Sedition Act, whereby the speech act or talk about the Sedition Act is to be simultaneously committing sedition. Fami's clowning serves to highlight this contradiction not only as some kind of small compensation but a full-blown satirical expression of dissent on both online and off on-ground, under the campaign theme of Kita Samoa Khunhasut that we are all seditious. The apparent impracticality of arresting everyone or the population on Facebook that may have observed one or more clown memes saw in effect one artist charged for two images instead of nearly 200 and none of the anonymous rebellious graphic designers. This was so to say censorship performed. Two, the practice of censorship is less fixed or stable than may be presumed by the existence of the law against it. The sudden rash of 91 charges under the Sedition Act that occurred in that year alone. The Sedition Act amendment and the new tool of the choice being the Multimedia and Communications Act indicate outcomes of censorship are not necessarily guaranteed by the number of laws. Indeed it may be said the Sedition Act 1948 and its amendment in 2015 served to generate work by artists. Now this of course draws on the argument of Michel Foucault by some by whom you know some of Judith Butler's arguments are also influenced but that there are no relations about no relations of power without resistance. The resistance is formed where power is exercised. In other words famously power by the state is productive not simply repressive. The final contradiction is that not all state bodies such as the government-owned media will produce a consistent line. Utusan Malaysia added a half a million viewers to see the clowning image. The point being that vulnerability and precarity exist in explicit acts of prohibition and censorship because instead of shutting down public debate they can lead to proliferation of it instead. Okay thank you that's the end of my presentation. Thanks Anne it was fantastic thank you so much for that. So I think that you know your presentation really highlights some of these as you said the contradictions and also these instabilities are inherent in the way that state tries to control artistic production that in trying to silence it it actually creates more noise and in trying to contain it it attracts more attention to the words that is is trying to suppress and it almost seems from your presentation that artists have some kind of advantage and upper hand in some cases but perhaps lack the tools to take advantage of these contradictions. From your case study that you've been saying I know in Indonesia as well as in Malaysia but perhaps just looking at Fami's case what lessons do you think we can draw as artists and art workers from the way that his case unfolded. I'm struck by if we would if what Sasi was talking about seemed like an outsourcing of control this almost feels like a crowdsourcing of resistance right because of the hive and the way that there was this replication of his work. Can you maybe share it yeah. Yes I well I think what is interesting here is is that Fami was able to get support from other artists specifically in that genre but that kind of gave gave it much more you know gave it much more legs it continued for a much longer period and I think that artists can work together when when something happens in a way that typically artists may not because either for genre differences or because of you know some kind of you know habitual distancing and so forth. But I think also he had huge you know his well significant public support you know he has although it's urban based it's quite a range in terms of class and age background. I think that you know the way it could jump from online to offline I think was was very much a part of that. Now I don't think it extended because you know I think it's it's been quite well covered that you know even from sort of the so-called Arab Spring that you know you can't have a revolution by online you know it really does depend on how strong the on-ground infrastructure is in order to be able to then carry through some of the change but I think that it's sort of that idea of artists being able to work together in order to extend a kind of resistance and being able to persuade a range of public following would be something that you know could be tried again perhaps but this was something which you know it had its perhaps you know the idea the sheer scale of the 1MDB scandal was just could take up that much population involvement. Thank you. Sasi could I ask you just because there are so many differences and similarities between Singapore and Malaysia I mean there's a shared history but then there's also just really deep deep gaps of differences between them and and you've mentioned the Renaissance city plan which in 2000 the Singapore government launched a massive and very detailed roadmap into turning Singapore into a renaissance city of the arts and invested a lot of money and infrastructure and human resources to make that a reality right in Malaysia on the other hand arts and culture has received very little state investment we've had progressive governments that have promised to do this but generally the ministry of culture arts and tourism or whichever iteration it is at the moment because it changes you know has has not really had the political will behind it to really kind of develop the arts infrastructure so I want to ask right do these differences translate into you know more growth but less freedom in Singapore versus less growth but more freedom of the arts in Malaysia I mean how simplistic or accurate is a view like this both is the question to both Sasi and to Anne it's I don't think it's possible to to to to think about the the the possibility of freedom just in terms of the the funding levels the infrastructure support the government you know involvement in the arts I don't think it's it's about just about the money and then the level of development I think really what's behind the the money and the infrastructure is centralization of authority I think that that is that becomes the critical thing the structures of work the structures of production the means by which an artist can create work becomes more and more an aspect of government control and because in Singapore because Singapore is so small and because of of the tremendous efficiency with which the the systems are managed in Singapore it's not just about the fact that there's been a lot of money and development but there has been a corralling of centers of power I mean from from simple things like spaces for performance the walls for exhibitions control of publication control of the internet and again this again reflects not just economic power but the power of parliament and legislation to control the way in which artists can work so essentially the state has taken over the means of production that were available to to the artist now I suppose in a in a larger country which is which has less regular development there will be aspects of work which the state or an authority may not be able to control and there I think is where there is the possibility of you know freedom and originality to blossom so I don't think it's a direct relationship but I think it works through control of systems and control of of power that's what it comes out to yeah thank you unfortunately I think we've just got a time reminder so we have half an hour more so I'm I'm gonna actually just move on and we'll we'll save your answer and your response to that for when we move on and I think I'll quickly just introduce the next speaker and just a reminder to those of you who are listening in you can actually post your comments on the Facebook live pages or Vimeo wherever you're watching this and the questions and comments will be sent back to us. Siva I'll introduce you right now. Our Siva Rasa Red Lords and Anne's College Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar with other activists he founded Malaysia's leading human rights advocacy organization in 1989 to campaign for the repeal of the infamous internal security act in 1998 after the reformacy or reform movement ignited in Malaysia he entered the political arena and is now a third member of parliament he's married to Anne James a prominent actress in a Malaysian theater scene. Siva over to you. Thank you Kathy for that quick introduction and can I start by thanking MOM for this opportunity to speak to all of you and I'm going to try in the in the next 15 minutes to give a quick like a bird's eye view of artistic cultural and also political or rather the limits on artistic culture and political freedom of expression in Malaysia and it was great listening to Sasi and Anne earlier you know speaking from the Malaysian and Singaporean perspectives and again I think it's a good reminder to see how much of a common journey actually these two countries have traveled together in our histories although of course as Kathy pointed out there are also of course differences clear differences between the two. Now Malaysia like Singapore has a whole armory of laws basically intended to control the expression and I think in both countries you will find the roots of that that the system the systemic control through those laws start in colonial times. Anne Lee just mentioned the Sedition Act and that's that's which was we added in 1948 the British introduced it as a form of political control and of course instituted mechanisms basically to control creative forms of expression as well because the British during the British colonialism which was with us until 57 there were movements for independence and the British were very British rulers were very concerned about image of equality independence movements using culture and art to promote the ideas the subversive what they consider the subversive ideas of independence and so on and at that time as we know both in Malaysia and Singapore left-wing movements including the what is then known as the communist Malayan Communist Party also got involved and so you had this paranoia in a sense you know developing vis-a-vis the the the left-wing movements of this part of the world and that is really the legacy from which much of the repressive legislation comes from so if I could start with the first slide what I've done and it's just to to list out so that you get a sense of the what I call the Armory of Laws that that are used regularly from time to time in Malaysia to basically control actually freedom of expression and Cathy you I think you also documented in a website the all the instances really of use of such laws and if I'm not mistaken in perhaps in the last 30 40 years you've documented at least 50 over cases of such use of such laws to control all forms of artistic expression from film books performance art and so on so I'm not going to go into it in too much detail because I think but just to mention these key ones the first censorship board act of 2002 ostensibly to control obscene or lewd films but basically says that every film that is shown in public in this country must be approved it is not approved and you do it that's a criminal offense you can go to jail up to five years and these laws are not often actually I mean in a sense that not many people actually get prosecuted but from time to time you get a you'll get a prosecution to to make this random message to people so the recent case I've highlighted here is the charging of activist Lena Henry who works with an NGO called commas commas commas is is in the business of promoting alternative filmmaking and so on and she was charged in court for screening a well-known movie called no fire zone about the massacres the massacre in 2009 in Sri Lanka by the Sri Lankan army of almost about a hundred thousand Tamils mostly civilians and we have it was interesting that that screening that screening also took place in Singapore it took place with the Malaysian parliament I was part of that with no consequences but when she showed it in public she was arrested charged I convicted and finally fined 10,000 cricket as a reminder to all of the consequences of breaking the film censorship board act now if I can quickly touch on the next laws the next screen please next slide oh hang on maybe it's got a bit mixed up the next one please at the finesse act that's right finesse act is is what we call the national film development cooperation act again this is the regular production distribution and exhibition of films without licenses to produce a film you need a license to distribute you need a license to exhibit in your license if you don't the criminal offense and the examples of the kind of draconian powers that are given to the state through such laws if I could go one slide back please one slide back yeah I mentioned this one this is not so much legal how stage performances theater performances well legal in the sense that they control through local authority regulations again through issues or through issuance of licenses as Sasi had mentioned Singapore went through that period we also went through that period scripts had to be sent in there was a detailed negotiation on on what could be put in what could be what have to be taken out in order for that play or stage performance to take place now it seems more relaxed where we said we just send in synopsis but still the process of control is still pretty much there and it is a sort of regular reminder to artists that this is the these are the conditions under which you work and I mean again it's too short a time to to discuss actual instances but I think Kathy's documenting of of there are enough instances of interference uh in stage performances in scripts uh of censorship of warnings stopping performances after a few days sometimes even stopping them before the start and so on next slide please if I could go past the next one I've touched on this yeah this is a recent development of the fairness act just happened in July this year where the current government yeah the minister for communications and multimedia in the current government suddenly announced in parliament causing a big uproar that the license requirement of fairness would also be extended to all films made and shared on social media now so this caused a huge uproar and uh he was he was made to withdraw his statement uh I mean it is it is obviously an impossible requirement to expect people I mean given the amount of stuff that is shared on social media today especially first video documentaries and so on I mean obviously it was very silly remark to make it was a little a literal it it was basically a literal interpretation of the of the words in the act but the bigger point that was missing that in the uproar in the conversation that took place was that the finance act really has no place whatsoever in any democratic society that you would control uh you know the making of films to that degree of control possessing distributing uh you know films and all that would be subject to licenses in that manner that point was kind of overlooked but I mean I think for democrat activists for democracy this act would be one of the acts that we have to remove uh in order that one day Malaysia will practice a true democracy and not the sort of authoritarian version that we have now next slide please uh this is another example printing presses and publications act this is you can't run a printing press in Malaysia without a license likewise you can't publish a newspaper without an annual renewable license and there's a general clause in this law to basically ban any undesirable publication so for example if it's used for books to ban books to ban multimedia productions films and to give you two quick examples Amin Muhammad a well-known author wrote a book on exiled Malaysian communists living in South Thailand and again you know the sensitivity to all the deaf histories like Susie mentioned the histories or perspectives of exiled Singaporeans was something unacceptable to the Singapore state and in the same way the narrative of the the war the internal war we had uh with with the Malayan Communist Party prior to independence post independence again for the Malaysian state is another unacceptable discussion it it can't be allowed to happen and Amin Muhammad's book was banned as a result you know on a different theme sisters in Islam a well-known NGO in Malaysia uh advocating for a pluralistic uh inclusive Islam a progressive Islam had a book on women in Islam and again uh that book was promptly banned but here sisters in Islam took took the issue to court and produced a happy ending in this one uh they won their case at all levels high court court of appeal and it was it was a good decision on the part of the federal court uh to reverse the ban and the book is available for everybody to read so different activists have responded differently Fami Reza in the example um and Lee just gave took took the opportunity to to run a social campaign and very well as well sisters took a legal challenge other other artists have sometimes just accepted the outcomes and gone on to do well to live with the laws or to to modify their their creative activities you know adjusting with the laws and so on next please this is the sedition act and Lee has mentioned it uh old colonial law broadly worded offenses covering criticism of the state judiciary monarchy inciting aerial between races and so on covers literally all forms of publication punishable by jail coincidentally i've been charged under this act for making statements criticizing Amno the dominant party in the previous government manipulating the judiciary in the case of Anway Brahim and got charged and likewise well luckily we managed to change the government in 2018 may and as a result the the charges were withdrawn under the new more of course liberal pakatan harapan government um but this sedition act has been mentioned earlier is really broadly used i mean large numbers of people activists creative people political activists uh have been arrested and charged under this act and uh it's again is one of the black bucks on on the on the democracy we claim to the government should have repealed it we didn't get down to it and uh this country would continue to pay the price for you know for not repeating this act earlier next please after the sedition act i just want to quickly touch on this is a touched on this next one this is control of stage performances visual arts here visual arts again you know uh controlled through laws as well some of them i've mentioned otherwise through basically through administrative action local authority regulations overzealous bureaucrats uh bureaucrats sort of trying to uh double guess what the the state wants you know in terms of what is permitted in the public space and so on also controlled to control of exhibition spaces and again in kathy's documentation of the examples of the past there any number of the many examples of visual arts very calling free creative expert uh events being interfered with or being made to you know the the artwork being removed and so on next please so in short that the armory of laws is clear and i think singapore has gone through the same process it's probably that the laws have become more sophisticated in in Singapore we tend to be still in the more crude phase uh you know directly using some of these laws in a very uh openly oppressive and draconian manner can i go on to my next slide i just want to point out just one minute yeah oh you'd like to finish your point and then is that oh you've just been yeah so basically just to quickly make a point about where the controversial areas are um we have the the the legacy of the battle against communism keeps you know wearing its head and uh artistic forms that tend to provide alternative conversations usually themselves are wrong in the stick likewise is the development of insamic conservatism so in other words uh conversations artistic conversations around progressive Islam tend to get censored or criticized and controlled likewise because of a deeply conservative more more is in malaysia right now uh in stage performances nudity sexual scenes LGBT issues all these have become problematic and they invite reactions and control so this is the current context where we are in malaysia um a kind of legacy issues of our of our battle with you know laughing movements uh deep a deep conservative islamic awareness in you know in many sectors of the people and um this is what i think uh remain big challenges for the artistic community in malaysia thank you thank you very much seba and our final speaker today is Katrina Stuart Santiago who is an independent cultural critic and opinion writer from manila and a contributing um writer for cnn philippines she's also a published writer her essays have been published by anatoa uh university press her role as a critic is fuel to activism which cuts across issues of cultural labor systemic dysfunctions and institutional crises she is a founder she is a co-founder she is actually the founder of pagasa people for accountable governance is a sustainable action which seeks to build a new civil society for the agencies of the present Katrina will be sharing her her presentation in a pre-recorded recording and then she although she's here in live life and in in the flesh um and once we finish with her presentation i'll ask all of the panelists to switch on your cameras and then we can have our discussion thank you i'm uh i actually pre-recorded my presentation um but i'm doing a very short introduction just to say that i think the experience of the philippines might be very different from um singapore and malaysia um also because we live on the premise of a democracy of living under a democracy and so this presentation is really a work in progress and it's something that i fleshed out with kathy and um and and and and i think for a previous panel and it tries to flesh out exactly what it is that's going on in the philippines at this point in time where we like to pretend that we are in a democracy and that our freedoms are intact when in fact it isn't not anymore and so i'd like for you guys to check out the presentation and we'll get your questions linked can you please play it once pointing to the contrary a militarized govern when we talk about censorship in the philippines the narrative necessarily falls back on the marcos years from 1972 until 1986 during the 14 years of martian law media was shut down and cultural work was regulated in the four and a half years of the duterte government the threat of a martian law declaration has become not much more than a sound bite that comes from the dirty himself this allows the dirty to pretend that we are not under any kind of dictatorship and that we are in living under a version of martial rule this despite all indications pointing to the contrary a militarized government and corruption violence against the people and thousands dead it doubles as a threat adds on to the climate of fear that this government has nurtured even as it sells the idea that democracy is still intact our freedoms still ours critics can say what they want media continues to exist and there is no censorship as it is so defined but if there's anything we know now censorship need not be imposed for it to be an effect to some extent much of what has happened in arts culture and media during this pandemic has revealed how well planned and well played government strategy has been it ensured that at some point like the present there wouldn't even be any need for a declaration of martial law at all the people will be scared enough and exhausted enough to just call silent as far as the arts and cultural sectors are concerned this strategy started in 2016 soon after the 30 won the presidency he started putting allies in key cultural positions while these appointments are a matter of presidential prerogative these are still usually done with due respect to the credentials required for the position and the credibility the appointees have with the sector for the terrorist brand of devil may care these didn't matter a part of a small time political dynasty local government employees from the terrorist Davao his ex teacher those who campaigned for him in 2016 these are the profiles of the people who were appointed by the terrorist into key cultural agencies such as the cultural center of the Philippines and the film development council of the Philippines one of the key points to be made about these appointments is how there was very little pushback against it from the cultural sector itself few of these appointments even made the news but this one did the 30 appointed a non librarian as director of the national library of the Philippines this was not only highly irregular it was also against the law the Philippine librarians association actually dared question this particular dirty appointment and one of their members actually filed a case with ombudsman expectedly the charity ignored the pushback from the sector which just emboldened his appointee to be just as dismissive and even to lie about the law other than the national library the appointments to cultural institutions have been rarely criticized appointee such as the head of the film development council of the Philippines courted the industry she was to represent doing dinners claiming to do consultations and gathering a collective around herself that echoed the notions of unity and nationalism as the 30 himself was won to repeat travel assistance film fests awards parties these were used to build upon this superficial notion of unity as the cultural institutions were slowly being taken over by the terrorist people the state propaganda machinery gained a foothold over social media discourse this information was the name of the game and massive resources were being put into not just spreading falsity but also attacking those who were critical of government the massive disinformation campaign and the contingent hate and vitriol that it comes with is critical to the state of arts and culture the past four years under Duterte because the climate of fear is about as real as one's own personal decision to disengage whether for one's own sanity or because of one's fear of being attacked on social media when the pandemic hit and the nation was put on lockdown in march and april of this year this was our status quo as the majority of workers in the arts and cultural sectors were hardest hit cultural institutions filled with Duterte appointees had no choice but to rise to the occasion they provided as little assistance as they could while gaining favor from the members of the sector who felt lucky to get any assistance at all this is consistent with the strategy of throwing parties and holding dinners to gain the support of the sector except that this time you're using the pandemic and the task of providing relief and assistance to gain the same amount of control here gratefulness is a way towards possible self-censorship where one is made to believe that whatever it is we get from government is a privilege instead of it being our right to public funds the debt of gratitude runs deep in this country and government knows this well to some extent this set the stage for the Duterte government to sail through some of the most critical policies and decisions it has made in relation to arts culture and media during this pandemic early in july the Duterte's men in congress and the senate approved the anti-terror bill the possible long-term effects of which is self-censorship out of fear after all it penalizes just the intent to incite others through speeches writings proclamations emblems banners and other representations tending to the same end our intentions and what these mean will be judged by people appointed by Duterte into key positions mostly military men there is every reason to fear this terror law when no less than the justice secretary has said that we could be considered as terrorists for the ideology that we believe in soon after the passage of the anti-terror law the terrorist men in congress were able to shut down the largest multimedia institution in the country they were merely acting on the threat the 30 had made countless times against a bs cbn the a bs cbn shutdown is the biggest proof that censorship exists in the country during the 12 days of hearings in congress a chunk of the time was spent nitpicking about the network's content not just in terms of the news that it carries but even in terms of the portrayal of politicians in its soap operas and the sensitive romantic scenes in its other tv shows done in the midst of hunger and need exhaustion and fear this is the most violent act of censorship thus far under Duterte rendering as it does 11 000 workers jobless in the midst of a pandemic at the forefront of this battle for our cultural workers and against censorship should have been our cultural institutions but this is where the status quo comes in and where the moves of Duterte and his appointees in the cultural agencies since 2016 bear fruit our cultural agencies have no choice but to stand with Duterte at the very least they cannot take a stand against these acts of censorship that this happened at all during this crisis should have been enough reason for a citizenry to collectively make itself heard out on the streets in the loudest voices possible but given a militarized response to the pandemic the status quo of silencing and the new law that penalizes our intent plus a monolith like a bscbn being shut down the climate of fear is solidified this is not to say that there hasn't been pushback against these government's moves to muzzle the press to censor works to threaten critics and to regulate culture it's to say that the ways we push back and the lack of a larger collective pushing back on the same thing has allowed government to dismiss us as nothing more than a noisy minority these ways of silencing deliberate and otherwise are insidious and so far effective there is no censorship but we are afraid there is no censorship but we can be harassed and threatened by the president himself on live television there is no censorship but we can be jailed or killed we realize now that censorship comes in many forms and in the hands of the 30 given a divided populace now exhausted and at the mercy of a well-funded propaganda machinery it doesn't take much to see that through well-calculated coercion and insidious silencing self-censorship has become second nature so how do we move forward here's a starting point realize that the 30 is just as afraid of us as we might be of him after all the push to regulate and control culture continues proof that they are as afraid of the possibility that we might gather one massive collective that can tip the balance and shift the power to our side history of course teaches us to keep going as many others do no matter how small the acts of resistance i end with a very short clip that i think captures the state of affairs in the philippines when it comes to the kind of authoritarian rule we live under and the strategies of containment and ways of silencing that we have lived with the past four years as acts of resistance go this is mine authoritarian regimes are always you know because you need to symbolize the is this an authoritarian regime is that what you're saying oh no uh it's in character in in uh in consequence yes but not in character but wait you man nationwide are expecting Marino and I'm sorry, you're out. I will say to it that you're out. Thank you very much Katrina for your presentation and that act of final resistance at the end. I think it's a reminder that we are part of an active field of practice, right? It's not something abstract or academic and I want to also thank Sivarasa just now for his very merciful kind of taking us through the legal landscape but also for adding that very personal note that he himself has been you know the subject of the sedition act and you know that has had to pay some big personal prices for his choices as well. So thank you very much all to all of our panelists. We've got a little bit more time. We're going to slightly extend the time we're supposed to end now but really I feel that maybe we can take another 15 minutes to have a quick discussion and take some questions. I want to also just once again say to anyone who is watching this live, there are some problems with the Vimeo but you can catch this. I'm assuming that you're catching this on Facebook either on MWM or on Artiquator or on HowlRound. Please do post your questions or comments if you would like to address them to members of the panel. So very quickly right? So whatever it is no matter you know by any measure arts and culture in in the countries that we are all talking about today they are relatively kind of niche practices. They are small. They are not really a huge part of the wider public sphere and that's because of you know education, income inequality, access and you know a lack of access to the arts and so on. But yet when points of deep, deep conflict and controversies happen often they are around cultural works. They are about paintings. They're about films. They're about books. They're about a play. They're about a dance that maybe you know in reality 300 people would have seen but then they become sites of really very acrimonious battles right? By stakeholders and players who would not normally enter the cultural sphere. And I mean by this both state actors but also non-state actors. Why? Why do you think? I mean what did these stakeholders gain from these incursions into arts and culture? Katrina, do you want to? Do they gain? Well they have access to public funds. I think as far as at least this government is concerned it's become pretty clear that it's the it's having access to public funds being able to use it for government propaganda unlike never before at least unlike at least not since the Marcoses. So I think there's a very clear sense of how the cultural sector can function and how if they put the right people there early enough then they can actually use it to their advantage especially now that we're moving towards the next elections. So with the concentration of funds just going around a very small group of people that are all very uncritical of the government then they really have so much to gain by also being able to silence the cultural sector in the process. But what happens when and what happens or what are the reasons for example Sasi if I can address this question to you. For example we take the case of when Tango makes tree the book that was uh international library a children's book that depicted a same-sex penguin couple family and there was a whole kerfuffle over that library you know remove the book and then there was backlash and so what you know and that was something that was enacted by a non-state actor as far as we know right it was basically a member of the public that wrote a letter and had the power from that one letter to actually get a whole institution to act upon this children's book. I guess my question is really why do these public battles gain so much of attention? What kind of proxy are they for right? What are they really about? Is it really about a children's book? Yeah no clearly Kathy it's a it's as you say it's a proxy and I think one of the the great fishes you know one of the great fault lines in society today at least in Singapore as I see it is you know the the the issue of sexual orientation the issue of what constitutes a family what what you know what what does it mean to be families and obviously at the background is our issues of religiosity and religious beliefs so I think that you're right I mean the arts in effect reach a very small minority of people and they they hardly have any real political clout but the symbolic power of a book of a play of of a visual image you know as as Anne is so clearly shown you know in the in the work of farming I mean the symbolic power of these of these artifacts I think are amazing and I think governments are genuinely afraid that they do not know how to control if the genie is let out of the bottle and that's what they try to stop and of course as the case of you know the tango case all it took is for one outraged member of public to call up the library and and have the book literally poked for everyone in Singapore where you know as I pointed out earlier where democratic means are used to silence other citizens rights and so you know I think it's I think we need to acknowledge that you know quant quantitatively the arts do not have much of a scope within society but qualitatively effectively and effectively they carry an immense power would any of the other panelists like to also comment um Anne or Siva if you could unmute your mic please I think governments have always been uh fearful of what the arts community can do in this country you know it has been very clear from the 50s and 60s for example the way the special branch uh intensively monitored uh we really call creative activities especially songs uh you know theater performances by left-wing movements and that continued for for some time and in a way that that is the the legacy of control which we have now as I said earlier it comes from that and and I think as he's right the Singapore government is particularly paranoid about that for in Malaysia it's I don't know it's hard to put the finger on it you get these the state uh state responses oppressive responses um to to creative products which are seen to challenge uh narratives and so on and but what is also of concern now because and this is more in the religious area because of the resurgence of Islam over the last 30 30 40 years in this country the deepening I think generally of conservative Islamic beliefs thinking and so on which and you can see that uh the public seems to get involved as well now public reactions to events uh public reactions to to certain you know events on the theater in theater in books in films uh Yasmeen Ahmad's books films come to mind here and these have invited reactions so if not just the state anymore now it's also the public uh well as I see put express expressing their democratic rights but at the end of the day denying freedom of expression for for the arts denying a legitimate conversation oh I would like to add to something to what Seba is saying in terms of you know it's specifically in the Malaysian context least the current pandemic the very last spaces to open were theaters the very last last space and I don't think that's necessarily just true of of Malaysia but it's an indication of both the idea that you know this is a non-essential service non-essential kind of uh uh uh quantity and and yet um uh you know it supposedly has so much potential for power of change and so forth I I don't think so I mean you know if it's it's not seen as an essential service and people are not clamoring for them to open then there is some there's at least at least in terms of a kind of urban based practice of what theater is of what you know performance is that that has to face some hard questions I think in terms of what you know a large part of the population is looking for and considers and deems the arts to be I think there is a widespread um you know potentially a need to explain what the arts are for what what what is it about the arts that are uh um uh critical to to human existence I mean we kind of assume them to a sense but uh I think there is a there is because you know you we go more to malls than we go to theaters or whatever you know the practice of a large section of the population is not necessarily have that much arts aware uh um within everyday kind of practice I think the other thing is also though that the division between arts and public as if as if there is this big difference uh I think um uh for example um Rebecca Higgy she talks about um citizen journalism and citizen satire that actually a lot of satire that's produced online is anonymous um but uh uh this is at least a space in which you know some of uh uh concerns can be expressed likewise uh I think um um um Dennis McQuail's use of producers you know this combination of producers and consumers uh uh uh public actually being involved in in more uh creation of of of online work than you know maybe typically seen sort of on ground um the other thing I want to add also is it's just about I suppose it's kind of you know still sticking to the theme but there are those other kind of acts of of law in relation to you know the LGBT that was mentioned just now about being a proxy for other fights is that you know something like the sort of carnal uh uh uh intercourse against the order of nature you know which is in the in the the penal code and something of liwa which is against sexual relations between men I mean these are also laws in which the kind of um the unspeakable acts become more speakable than less you know the more these these these are discussed that the names of these that these are uh still very very much present and I think for um LGBT communities within that are using work right now in the pandemic uh um there is a feeling to still want to get involved to still want to press on even though there are very serious conditions around you know a lot of artists actually changing occupations to become grab drivers to cook and clean and all of these um then you know the fight continues it's not as if uh uh it has uh died entirely you know I think I think um being able to to to continue with the creation of of work is is important um non-essential must be made essential uh uh uh when made essential okay um unfortunately we're running out of time so I actually just want to ask I want to end actually just asking all of you because a lot of times when we talk about censorship of the arts it's it's very much as a binary conversation right the artist is performing to the gaze of the state the state is is watching the artist and responding and and and even when these these incidents make it into this public sphere that we're talking about what happens is that it is almost like the public is viewing this kind of you know binary conversation the recalcitrant artists or the human rights artists versus the state right the benevolent state or the state that is repressive but I don't think we know we talk a little enough about what the impact of this is on on the public right in the way that the public then seems to some of the issues that you're talking about that there's a particular view of the arts which is narrow which is that only it only breaks out into public space when there's moments of trouble uh when it's causing trouble rather than the value of what the arts can be and and so maybe I just ask each of you to maybe talk about just very briefly what is loss what does what does society lose when artists are not allowed the space to make work and to express themselves so not what the artists lose but what does society lose who's gonna start I think the the silence is very troubling you you're starting if I may let me let me see why you do you want to do you want to say something first well mine is going to be very brief the arts community creates conversations important conversations through various forms of through various art forms I mean you know film dance plays and so on so if I mean again and there's also a range of artists doing this not not everyone not every artist is a human rights type artist many artists are mainstream they just want to put the art on display they don't need to confrontation with the state but some artists are there trying to perhaps even create a confrontation with the state as part of the art process of creation of art for me is either is a is a great example of that he knows exactly what he's doing he wants to create a conversation beyond the art piece and so what we lose I mean what we lose is perhaps because that was the question you pose what does what what does society what does society lose we we lose those conversations I mean those those conversations which are on the age you know the cutting-edge conversations and we'll we'll have more of the mainstream conversations that are pretty much part of what the state wants it to be a non nothing controversial so you entertainment you know nothing that's going to disturb the state basically but society needs much more than that and that's what I lose out so yeah if I may I'll just take it forward from there I mean if I talked about conversations when we speak I think the great just impetus for us to speak is that we know that there are listeners and I think when the artist makes works he makes works for or he'll show works are for the people and this is fundamental to the practice of art to the making of art and as we know I mean when the pandemic broke the greatest consolation we got was from our books from our music from our plays you know and and the consolation and the comfort I think that art can give has nothing to do with the fact that it is critical and that it is it resists some kind of politics but it that it speaks to people and that it offers consolation and it offers consolation ultimately because it helps societies to form a conscience in order that we can form the conscience through which we can judge ourselves and our peers and you know our society we need to have this this process and I think it's absolutely vital absolutely vital thank you and Katrina if you have nothing to add then I will round up this is your last chance because we do have to hand over I think one minute one minute for the Philippines I think really what we're losing is just a sense of the things that we hold fundamental to our existence in this country which is democracy and freedom the moment we just decided to watch the government do what it has done the past four years we slowly but surely lost our sense we lost our voice we lost our sense of what is right and wrong and I think when we got lost in the quagmire of this information just everyone speaking at the same time saying too many things half the time not even really contradicting each other anymore but also not uniting on one thing and moving forward in the same direction I think that's what we that's what we lost we lost our sense of unity and it's really why we're where we are at this point in this country thank you very much Arcevarasa Taran and Lee and Katrina Santiago and thank you very much all of you for joining us please do check out arcecrader.com and the recording of this talk will be on on our website as well as on the MOM website I thank you very much to the Museum of Movements for inviting us and I now hand you back to the very able hands of Rami yeah thanks Kathy thanks everyone this was a very important conversation we have learned a lot about the region that is not talked much about in the media in this part of the world thank you so much thanks arcequader thanks how round and thanks Museum of Movements for hosting this freedom talk the freedom talks are a series of conversations and artistic intervention connected to the annual safe havens conference that is hosted this year by Museum of Movements Museum of Movements has been building a very unique operation in the last five years it has had a very special sensitivity and sharing authorities with the many NGOs and civil rights organizations that took part from the very beginning always is the passion for artistic freedom and free speech the Museum of Movements want to share with you that we are very sad and shocked that the swedish state will cut the funding for the museum movement from the next year feeling of ownership was shared by many and the loss would be also very widely shared it seems that the Museum of Movements has become a movement in itself however I've been assured that MOM will be operating as planned for the rest of the year and this means that the 2020 Safe Havens Conference is still on spearheaded by the Museum of Movements in collaboration with Safe Muse and a new platform for this will surely be in place for the next year freedom talks will continue and the next freedom talk will be in collaboration with Index on Censorship October 30 mapping the conditions of freedom for speech under COVID-19 don't miss it thanks you all for joining us today and stay safe