Irony is...

... when a letter to the editor regarding censorship is heavily censored.

My letter to the NST was actually publised, albeit being heavily edited by the editor (my sister claims that that's what they are paid for... to edit). Well, in my true dramatic self, I would say that it got censored rather than edited. Somehow being censored makes what I have to say to appear to be more important, so much so that it is tantamount to censorship. As opposed to say, being edited, which simply means there's too much rubbish in what you have to say therefore they'll have to edit it.

I would like to believe that the former is the case, but for those of you who have read my original article... the latter is more likely the case.

All in all, I have no objections to the editing, I think they are justified and expected. My only grouse is that they replaced 'socio-economic discrepency' with 'socio-economic problsm', which I believe is an intentional attempt to downplay the realities of the Indian community as a whole.


Root of problem

10 Jul 2006
CHI TOO, Kuala Lumpur

I REFER to the statement by Palanivel calling for the censorship of suicide scenes in Tamil movies "Call to cut suicide scenes" (NST, July 6).

It is amazing that after having visited Jason Johnson, one of the survivors in the Sangeetha rail tragedy in hospital, all he could say is that suicide scenes in Tamil movies are causing people to kill themselves.

Will censoring suicide scenes minimise suicides among the Indian community? I doubt it.

One can obviously deduce that the root of this problem lies in the troubles the Johnsons are facing — that of a financial nature.

I believe Palanivel has to do better than offer such simplistic solutions.

He should look at the crux of the matter — the socio-economic problems of the Indian community in Malaysia. Maybe this is a contributing factor for people to commit suicide, as opposed to say, watching Tamil movies.

I enjoy watching movie scenes of murder, suicide, sex and violence, but that doesn’t make me want to commit suicide or kill someone else.

I think our leaders need to resolve these underlying problems instead of taking the easy way out with knee-jerk reactions like censoring movie scenes.