My Own Country Scares Me

Remember that short film Singapore Rebel, about Dr Chee Soon Juan? In case you didn't, it's a documentary-style thing by Martyn See about the trials (forgive the pun) and tribulations of Dr Chee Soon Juan, notorious opposition member in Singapore. Incidentally, the music on the film is by Opposition and One Man Party, of whom I can sadly find no website dedicated to (it's probably gonna be a bit difficult to register www.oppositionparty.com.sg with Singapore's NIC).

Anyway, Mr See had to withdraw the film from Singapore's International Film Festival because it might have landed him in jail. Evidently, even making the film is going to land him in trouble, being under investigation by the Singapore Police force now. Amnesty International Film Festival(USA) said of the film:

The film has just been withdrawn from the Singapore International Film Festival because of government censorship. We are proud to host the World Premiere and to support freedom of expression for artists worldwide.

It screens 25th, 28th May. As far as I can remember the only films we produce that ever seem to make it in overseas film festivals are those we don't get to see much of in our own country. So sad. What we DO get is stuff like Gan Cheong King, an insipid little thing that plays on TV Mobile and which I hope its producers are embarrassed to have on big-screen.

Having actually watched Singapore Rebel, I can only say that it is not very good. The quality of the camera-work is pretty good for a one-man-production (or maybe there were people who helped but didn't want their names credited) and the archival videos were as good as you can expect the opposition to keep, but otherwise it's a rather limpid documentary that fails to excite much attention.

However, it is about lack of certain freedoms that people in other countries seem to take rather for granted, so I suppose it's a novelty for them to see a country where people get arrested and fined for peaceful rallies and protests. According to Thai Airways, smoking, chewing gum and littering are illegal in Singapore too, so I can only imagine what kind of a zoo we look like. Maybe we should just forget the IRs and come up with more fun and exotic laws that can garner us big tourist dollars.

Also hot in Singapore's activism news is something about a Singapore student's comments about A*Star in a public blog. In it, he lambasts A*Star chairman, Philip Yeo in what I personally consider to be a rather artful manner but-of-course-do-not-endorse-as-truthful-in-any-way. A*Star threatened to sue him, unless he apologized, retracted and promised never-to-do-it-again. He did so, you can check it out here. Of course, he's not an A*Star scholar - broke his bond a couple of years back because of many many troubles with PSC.

Of course, international media spared no time getting on the media frezy - you can tell it's big news - even Channel News Asia reported it and now we also face charges of being amongst the first few countries to sue a blogger (I don't know - have any other countries sued bloggers yet?).

You ever watched the Wizard of Oz? I'm beginning to feel like one of the inhabitants of the Emerald City, one of those citizens that don't have a name and only have five minutes of screen-time to portray a decrepit, morally bankrupt and meaningless lifestyle before being slaughtered by the heroes, who have names and cool guns (and come from countries with much smaller GDPs). Sodom? Gonorrha? Anyway we're turning into something of a city of evil, aren't we? And I'm not referring to the casinos, too.

I get to vote this year. Despite mother's best efforts, I still know quite a bit more about Singapore's political situation than most of my peers (discounting the few Political Science students I know). Which is sad, really, considering that I am already 24. Sometimes I think perhaps packing up and leaving is for the best indeed, screw all concept of loyalty to country and all. I have my nationalistic pride, but it's getting tiring to live in a country that's so hard to defend against accusations of smallness and meanness. Even the bravest child doesn't want to be the shortest guy in class.

Ooops, looks like psychological defence is fading- better get myself back to National Service where they can tune me up again.