CENSORING TOLHILDAN

"Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind."
~ General William Westmoreland.

Heval Tolhildan (David Rouillet), Bahoz Erdal (HPG Headquarters Commander), Ursula Rouillet (Tolhildan's mother).

A while back I posted something on Heval Tolhildan (David Rouiller), who had left his home in Switzerland in 2001 to join HPG. Kurdish filmmaker, Mano Khalil, tracked down Heval Tolhildan in the mountains and made a videotape of his story. Later, Khalil helped Ursula Rouillet, Heval Tolhildan's mother, make the trip to the Kurdish mountains to visit her son and his comrades.

Heval Tolhildan's father, Claude Rouiller, a former president of the Federal Court in Lausanne, approved of Heval Tolhildan's choice to defend the Kurdish people by saying, "If my son has found meaning through this work he is doing, then I am the happiest person in the world. Even though some might not like this, I am proud of him."

Mano Khalil's documentary film on Heval Tolhildan's life was slated to be shown at the Singapore International Film Festival, but it has apparently been banned from the festival along with another documentary for "...sympathetic portrayal of organisations deemed terrorist organisations by many countries."

There's a little more, from Wise Kwai's Thai Film Journal:

David The Tolhildan -- Directed by Mano Khalil, the documentary follows the story of David Rouiller, son of a prominent Swiss judge, who joined the Kurdistan Workers Party, which is recognized as terrorist organization by the US and EU. According to the Board of Film Censors chairwoman Amy Chua, both Arabs and Terrorism and David the Tolhildan "portray terrorist organizations in a positive light by lending support and voice to justify their cause through violence", which are disallowed under the film classification guidelines.

[ . . . ]

The censorship comes as Singapore is trying to liberalize its image, bringing in casinos, a night-time Formula 1 race, staging massive arts and music festivals and promoting its nightlife. It has a motion-picture ratings system that seems to work. But paranoia and censorship still reign, particularly when it comes to political subjects.

Don't you just love democracy?

I think the excuse for banning both documentaries has more to do with the fact that their content would contradict the official propaganda that "civilized" societies have worked long and hard to promote as Absolute Truth. The "civilized" societies have spent a lot of money on their PR campaigns to brainwash their populations. In the case of David the Tolhildan, audiences might get the idea that the Kurdish cause is just; that those who take up arms against the grave injustice of Turkey and all its allies are human; and that perhaps there is much more to the Global War on Terror, Incorporated, than what the real terrorists would have the world believe.

Who was the nincompoop who first said, "They hate us for our freedoms"? What freedoms? Certainly not the freedom of expression which contradicts the myths of the status quo.