Presenter: Girish Sawlani
Speakers: Alex Au, leading gay rights activist; Leong Wai Teng, senior lecturer, Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore

SAWLANI: Starhub cable Television was adjudged by the Media Development Authority to have breached local advertising guidelines after it aired a commercial last November featuring Taiwanese pop sensation Olivia Yan kissing another female in a romanticised scene.

While the cable operator expressed disappointment at the decision it says it understands the authority's concerns, and pledges to adhere to local broadcasting guidelines in the future.

The decision by the censorship body has angererd members of Singapore's gay community. Alex Au is a prominent Singaporean gay rights activist.

AU: It's utterly ridiculous, it is something that has happened again and again in the past, is nothing new. But the regulations and enforcement of those regulations are just beyond commonsense.

After all, I mean it's a fact of life that there are gay and lesbian people in this world and they engage various acts of affection like any other person and I don't think Singaporeans are so blind as to think that these things do not happen anywhere in the world. It's just absurd to treat TV viewers as children.

SAWLANI: He says latest case of shows the government is out of touch with Singaporean attitudes towards homosexuality.

AU: Singapore society is such that homosexuality and gay kisses are really no big deal. It's as if something that they've never seen before.

So the curiosity may not be arosed as much this time as it might have been say ten years ago. So in that sense, it means that Singaporeans are quite relaxed about the whole issue and that the government policy is therefore completely out of step with the social attitudes of Singaporeans.

SAWLANI: Singapore's media industry is one of the most robust in the region - with more than 5000 foreign publications operating out of the country while numerous multinational media corporations such as CNN, Disney and the BBC choose the city state as a base for Asian broadcast operations. But the latest decision according to media expert from the National University of Singapore, Leong Wai Teng, highlights a contradiction that exists in Singapore's free market economy.

TENG: This policy is an indication of the contradictions in Singapore. There are many analogies that people talk about. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. So Singapore wants to do outreach to the international community, so we have a lot of programs to sell

Singapore with these in terms of getting media producers to sell their product and trying to create a brand recognition and so we want to have a kind of, be a player in the global media market. But on the other hand, when you look at ads that get pulled off or fined for being aired then it shows that we are not ready there. So the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

SAWLANI: Singapore's Media Development authority has on numerous occasions banned films condoning homosexuality from being broadcast on local television and being featured in film festivals. But it seems as though the censorship body is especially uncompromising when it comes to films produced in Asia or feature Asian personalities. Leong wai Teng says that censorship authorities are adopting double standards in order to maintain the notion that Asian societies are moral and conservative.

TENG: When you look at the media policy, they are stricter on Asian films or films with Asian characters than they are with Western scenes. So you have other scenes like Brokeback Mountain that was being played in Singapore, but Asian ones they are very NC about it.

They prick up their ears and they try to control more. They don't want to acknowledge that our neighbouring countries are doing this. So meanwhile, they can say that oh, Asians are very conservative. But the point is the ones that are restricting those images.

SAWLANI: He says the ruling by the media development authority may end up being counterproductive.

TENG: In this day and age, it is a bit redundant to ban and fine all thesethings. People will be furious and people will find ways to look at that film.

Eventually this ad will appear in the YouTube and then you will get a greater audience. So again, Singapore's policy can be counterproductive, in that this kind of ban encourages people to find out more about it, which otherwise people would not have known.

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