The long arm of Chinese soft power has reached Bollywood.
Indian censors have ordered the makers of Rockstar to cut or blur scenes showing images of the Tibetan national flag, which features in one of the film’s song and dance numbers. The movie opened last Friday with the required cuts.
The controversial sequence was a crowd scene filmed at Mcleod Ganj, a hill station town in northern India and home of the Dalai Lama since he fled Lhasa in exile in 1959.
Tibetans in exile naturally are incensed and have been staging rallies. It is not clear why the flag has been banned from the romantic musical, but Indian media speculated that India is bowing to pressure from China.
Kunsang Kelden, New-York based Tibetan activist and former board member of Students for a Free Tibet, told us: “It is outrageous that a vibrant democracy such as India, with an equally vibrant film industry, should bow down to Chinese pressure, violate free speech and censor the Tibetan flag.”
Rockstar’s director Imtiaz Ali may have the last laugh though.
According to Indian media his next film will be about the Tibetan independence movement.
“Reliable sources say that the movie will have political turmoil as one of the aspects along with love brewing between a Tibetan and a multi-millionaire Indian boy,” reports The Times of India.
It will be interesting to see how the censors deal with that.
The names of 28 News International employees were written in notebooks belonging to private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, the Leveson Inquiryheard today as it began proceedings at London’s high court.
Robert Jay QC, counsel to the inquiry, also revealed that the words ‘Daily Mirror’ had been written in the corner of Mulcaire’s notebook, but a Trinity Mirror spokesman has said the company has “no knowledge of ever using Glenn Mulcaire”. Mulcaire was jailed in 2007 alongisde former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman for intercepting voicemail messages of members of the Royal family.
11,000 pages of Mulcaire’s notes reveals he received a total of 2,266 requests from the News International, with 2,143 being made by four unnamed journalists. The inquiry was told that a reporter referred to as ‘A’ — and who cannot be named for fear of prejudicing the ongoing criminal investigations — made 1,453 separate requests for information from Mulcaire.
When Mulcaire’s home was raided in 2006, police also seized 690 audio recordings and a record of 586 voicemail messages intended for 64 individuals.
Jay also confirmed that Mulcaire’s notes cited 5,795 names who may be potential victims of phone hacking.
Today’s revelations suggest a culture of phone hacking at News International, Jay said, adding that the scale of Mulcaire’s work suggested that NI must have employed the private investigator full-time.
He asked if there was a “culture of denial, or worse, a cover up” at News International.
He added, “either senior management knew what was going on and therefore condoned illegal activity, or they did not and systems failed.”
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson.
At least one Mexican Twitter user was detained by local police after a series of sarcastic tweets made after a helicopter crash that killed Mexico’s interior minister Francisco Blake Mora, as well as seven other Mexican officials. A citizen identified as Mareo Flores or @MareoFlores was detained by local police based on tweets he made on 11 and 12 November. One of his tweets sent after the crash, said in English “Secretario de Gobernación singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly…”. According to his father, Mareo was arrested by men who arrived in five unmarked blackcars on 13 November, and released a few hours later after prosecutors interviewed him. Federico Areola of SDP Noticias criticised officials for the arrest, because the official investigation indicates that the crash was an accident, rather than an assassination. Another Twitter user, @Morfe0, also gained fame on 11 November, after it was revealed he had predicted the helicopter crash in a message he sent out on 10 November, joking that Mexicans should avoid Paseo de la Reforma, a famous avenue in Mexico City because ministers would fall from the sky on the account of the ominous 11/11/11 date. He was also referencing the 2008 death of another interior minister, Juan Camilo Mouriño, who died after the Lear jet in which he was traveling crash near Reforma Avenue.
MURDERED NOVEMBER 2007 (dates of deaths unknown) Seif Yehia, Musician and Ibraheem Sadoon, Artist — Iraq
Join us in demanding justice for Seif Yehia and Ibraheem Sadoon. In November 2007, Yehia, 23, was beheaded for singing western songs at weddings, and Sadoon, a painter, was shot dead as he drove through Baghdad. According to the Iraqi Artists’ Association, in the first five years of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, at least 115 singers, 65 actors and 60 painters were killed – many by Islamic radicals determined to eradicate all culture associated with the West. Cinemas, art galleries and concert halls were targeted in grenade and mortar attacks in Basra and Baghdad.
Out of fear, people stopped listening to music in public, a fellow Iraqi singer told the “Guardian” at the time. Pop music, in particular, was no longer being played. Remaining artists tried to get themselves and their families to safety. In 2008, the Iraqi Ministry of Culture estimated that about 80 per cent of artists had fled.
International Day to End Impunity is on 23 November. Until that date, we will reveal a story each day of a journalist, writer or free expression advocate who was killed in the line of duty.
