State propaganda also has it that the film Flying Fish is not in consonance with the country’s culture. Where is that culture codified? Who decides on what the country’s culture is and isn’t and who gave them the mandate to do so? What kind of culture would it be if the arts are suppressed? How can one conceive of culture without the arts and art without the freedom of the artist to create? One can well imagine the fate of the Sigirya and the Isurumuniya art if these Taliban-type cultural police had served in ancient times.

Has Martial Law been declared in the Arts in Sri Lanka? If the ‘Defence authorities’ whatever that may mean, exercise a veto over the arts, what do they NOT exercise a veto over in civic life? Where do they get the Constitutional and legal right to do so? How does one classify a society in which such a de facto veto exists? Behind an increasingly illiberal democracy are we headed to the type of ‘mixed regime’ which in Latin America of the 1970s was termed a ‘State of National Security’ or a ‘civilian–military junta’? Is a ‘civilian–military junta’ already operating alongside or within the democratic state; more manifest in the former conflict zones but increasingly influential in the island as a whole?

Via http://groundviews.org/2013/07/19/flying-fish-and-the-constriction-of-the-arts-in-sri-lanka/

source: Groundviews

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