Unofficial English translation of Censors’ Verdict
PRESS RELEASE
13 August 2013, Bangkok
GOOD NEWS FROM THE CENSORS!!!
This
very day, even as the online community is seething over the government’s
increasingly intense scrutiny and persecution of social media users, even as
the police is requesting co-operation from Line, the popular smartphone chat
APP, to let them monitor its users to prevent threats to national security, we
have unbelievable good news for freedom of expression in Thailand from the most
unlikely quarter: the Film Censors.
Last year the Film Censorship
Committee and the National Film Board banned the horror film, ‘Shakespeare
Must Die’, a Thai adaptation of Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’. Accordingly, since we are filmmakers, we
recorded the whole banning process and our fight against the ban, from the
Censors’ Office to the Film Board, to the National Human Rights Commission and
the Senate House Committee on Human Rights, all the way to the Administrative
Court. This has resulted in the documentary ‘Censor Must Die’.
Recently, as required by law,
this new film was submitted to the censors. This morning we received a letter
by post, document # Ministry of Culture 0508.2/6058 (Thai original and
English translation in the attached files) from the Department of
Cultural Promotion to inform the result of their deliberation: “Censor Must
Die is exempted from the film censorship process and has been given
permission from the Film and Video Censorship Committee, by the power of the 2008 Royal Edict on Film and Video, Article 27(1)”,
because “the producer of Censor Must Die made the film from events that
really happened.”
Furthermore, due to this
exemption from censorship, Censor Must Die has not been rated and may be
seen by anyone of any age.
For us, the filmmakers, this is
like winning the lottery. We can’t stop smiling. It’s a great relief that we
won’t have to repeat the arduous process of appeal that we went through and are
still going through with Shakespeare Must Die. We must thank the censors
for their brilliant broadmindedness. I
hope this precedence-setting decision will help to bring a more optimistic
future for Thai cinema.
In the case of Shakespeare
Must Die, both the National Human Rights Commission and the Senate House
Human Rights Committee have concluded that the 2008 film law should be amended.
The NHRC further recommends that the ban on the film should be lifted, as the
ban infringed our right to freedom of expression. The case against the Censors
and the Film Board is progressing in Administrative Court.
Respectfully,
Manit Sriwanichpoom
Producer
(Mobile 085 199 4050)
Shakespeare
Must Die and
Censor Must Die