'Zahari's 17 years' is a 49-minute interview with Said Zahari who was detained without trial in February 1963. He was only released in 1979, and since 1992, has been living in Malaysia with his family.

The subject was not the only one detained that night. Over a hundred political activists, trade union leaders and student organisers were seized by the Singapore government under Operation Coldstore, accused of being communists and communist sympathisers. Never having been put on trial, the public record will not show whether this is a convincing characterisation of their activities. Certainly, there was a communist underground in Singapore and Malaya at the time, but were all those arrested communists?

Said denies it. In the film, he laid out his version of his political activities prior to his arrest. He rejected as fabrication the government's chief allegations against him, pointing a particular finger at Lee Kuan Yew. He also described what he went through during those seemingly interminable years after his arrest. As he had told Associated Press in an April 2006 interview, "In solitary confinement, you're deprived of everything. You don't know if it's morning or noon or night, and you've no one to talk to for days, weeks and months."

The Singapore government would have none of his denial. In the press statement, the MDA explained that "the film gives a distorted and misleading portrayal of Said Zahari's arrest and detention under the Internal Security Act (ISA) in 1963 and is an attempt to exculpate himself from his past involvement with communist united front activities against the interests of Singapore."

"The Government will not allow people who had posed a security threat to the country in the past, to exploit the use of films to purvey a false and distorted portrayal of their past actions and detention by the Government. This could undermine public confidence in the Government."

Clause 35(1) of the Films Act was invoked -- the first time ever that this provision has been used -- to prohibit the possession and distribution of the film.

Clause 35(1) says,

Notwithstanding the provisions of this Act, if the Minister is of the opinion that the possession or distribution of any film would be contrary to the public interest, he may, in his discretion, by order published in the Gazette prohibit the possession or distribution of that film by any person.

Clause 35(2) then prescribes a fine of up to S$10,000 or imprisonment of up to 2 years. The film seized or surrendered to the government will be destroyed.

Clearly, disputing the Singapore government's conception of history is a risky endeavour. Such works would be "against public interest", that interest being not to "undermine public confidence in the Government".

With that, there has been a shift in the issue at hand. At its root, the question might be whether in truth Said Zahari was a communist or not, but since no open trial ever took place, and no evidence adduced, this question cannot be settled. All we have is the Singapore government's word that he was.

But this word is important, because upon it rested the entire legitimacy of Said's detention. Anybody who agitates against trust being placed on the government's word would thus be seen as attempting to shake and rattle the elaborate justifications for the People's Action Party's consolidating power they way it did in the 1960s. To contest those justifications is a form of heresy.

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In February 1616, Cardinal Bellarmine, having received instructions from the Vatican, summoned Galileo Galilei to his residence where he was told not to teach or defend Copernican theory. He was not even to hold that theory as valid in his head, if that were possible. According to an unsigned transcript found in the Inquisition file in 1633, Galileo was also enjoined by the cardinal from discussing his theory, either orally or in writing. 'Enjoin' is a very strong word. It means to direct, order or prohibit by an authoritative instruction.

In the months before that, a Church committee had found that the proposition that the Sun, not the Earth, was the centre of the universe and that the Earth revolved around the Sun, was absurd in philosophy,  erroneous in theology, and a heresy.

The Church believed that since Christ was the central figure in history and theology, and since Christ came to Earth, so the Earth must surely be the centre of the universe. To dispute this schema would be to repudiate God himself. Thus heresy.

Galileo was well known by then as the leading proponent of the heliocentric (i.e. Sun-centred) idea, thus the special warning given to him.

Galileo laid low for a while, but after his personal friend was elected pope (Urban VIII) in 1623, Galileo went to Rome to meet with him. In a conversation in 1624, the new pope apparently told Galileo that while he was not allowed to promote the Copernican theory, he could discuss it as a hypothesis. Thus encouraged, Galileo spent the next 5 years in Florence writing a book, that would be titled, 'Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.'

The book had 2 fictional characters in a debate, one setting forth the heliocentric Copernican theory, the other, named Simplicio, arguing the Church's point of view. However, it was not well balanced, perhaps because the scientific evidence was much stronger on one side than the other, and anybody reading the book would almost certainly be swayed by the heliocentric theory.

Galileo sent his manuscript to Rome, and he received provisional approval from the Secretary of the Vatican in June 1630, after which he sent it to print, the book coming out in February 1632.

Within months, the pope banned the distribution of the book and set up a special commission to examine it in detail. After hearing the commissioners' report, the pope summoned Galileo to the Roman Inquisition where his case was heard in April 1633. He was sentenced to imprisonment for an indefinite term, later reduced to house arrest, under which he remained until his death in 1642.

The book remained banned for centuries, and it was only in 1983 that the Roman Catholic Church admitted that Galileo had been right.

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Galileo had it easy. In the late 1500's a Dominican Friar, Giordano Bruno also went around Europe rubbishing the Vatican's Earth-centric teaching. In its place, Bruno -- and he was remarkably ahead of his time -- didn't even promote the Copernican theory of a Sun-centred universe. Instead, he advocated an infinite universe with no centre.

Where Copernicus and Galileo conceived of the Sun being static at the centre with the planets revolving around it, and further out a huge spherical shell on which were fixed the twinkling stars, Bruno's insight -- and he was only a philosopher, not an astronomer -- was that the stars weren't mounted on an outer shell, but were floating in space far away.

For his heresy, Bruno was excommunicated, and when he continued to refuse to recant, he was burnt alive at the stake in Rome in 1600.

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Why are we are not allowed to contest the government's account of 1963? Is it not in the public interest to hear all sides and let evidence prevail? Why do we react as if any alternative take on our history is heresy?

If Said Zahari had been tried in open court, he would have been able to present his defence, which might include his denial of having been communist. Would we therefore have proscribed his defence on the ground that such denial would be "against the public interest"?

Furthermore, are we again confusing the public interest with the government's interest? And what kind of banana republic law is this where a film can be banned on just a minister's say-so -- "if the Minister is of the opinion", says the Films Act -- without any checks and balances?

That said, Said's books are not banned. In them, I am given to understand, though I haven't read them, he laid out pretty much the same stuff that he made in the Martyn See film, probably in far greater detail too.

Why the difference? The government said that this was because film is a different medium from print, it being more impactful, and capable of arousing emotions. Print is drier.

Frankly, the only people whose emotions have been aroused by the film are the minister and his superiors. To most people, what happened in the 1960s is of academic interest. To many younger Singaporeans, it is of no interest at all. The fact that the ministers are reacting emotionally in fact tells us all the more that we're not dealing with dispassionate facts and evidence here, but with something seen as an intolerable attempt to repudiate the "Singapore scripture". Maybe too, it's a reaction against perceived slights on our Centre of the Universe.

© Yawning Bread