HLC Condemns Censorship at Film Festival

Humanitarian Law Center

The Humanitarian Law Centre (HLC) condemns the decision of the organizing committee of the New Festival of Auteur�s Film to remove from its programme The Palace of the Sun, Lou Ye�s film in Chinese-French co-production.

The story of The Palace of the Sun takes us to the People�s Republic of China, in 1989. Two young lovers are involved in a complex erotic relationship, mixed with love and hatred towards the tumultuous events and political turmoil in Chinese politics at that time. The beautiful Yu Hong leaves her village, family and boyfriend to study in Beijing. There, she discovers a world of intensive sexual and emotional experiments and falls head-over-toes for her colleague Zhou Wei. Their relationship turns into a dangerous game, in an environment in which their colleagues start protests demanding democracy and freedom.
The film contains documentary footage recording at the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, in 1989. The massacre was preceded by series of demonstrations that took place between April 15 and June 4, in which the loudest demands were presented by students, intellectuals and activists of PRC�s labour movement. Many lives were lost were lost in the action taken by the Government to break-up the demonstrations. The official reports of PRC authorities say that between 200 and 300 persons were killed, while the Students Association and the Chinese Red Cross claim that between 2,000 and 3,000 persons died.

In accordance with the official note sent by the Chinese Embassy to Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, demanding that �...the film The Palace of the Sun is removed from the programme of the Festival, in view of good bilateral relations between China and Serbia...�, the MFA issued a public statement with recommendations to the organizers of the Festival to remove the film from their programme �...for higher interests of the state�.

Piazza Tiananmen 1989

HLC reminds that the film was shown on the Cannes Film Festival, in spite of the protests filed by the Chinese Government. HLC called upon Serbian Government to stop the political pressure and censorship of artistic works.

The Centre also reminds that the public and the society in general deserves and has to have a chance to see the truth about crimes committed in the past, regardless of who committed them, the nationality, race and colour of skin of perpetrators and victims. The Serbian society needs to adopt this principle during the process of its integration into the European family of nations.