Three Singapore Literature Prize judges resign over NLB’s decision

SINGAPORE — Three judges for the Singapore Literature Prize have walked out from their posts, in protest against the National Library Board’s (NLB) recent decision to withdraw and pulp three children’s titles deemed to be not promoting family values.

In a joint statement sent yesterday, 2012 Cultural Medallion recipient T Sasitharan, former journalist Romen Bose and Yale-NUS College humanities don Robin Hemley said they “cannot in good conscience” continue to be judges for the non-fiction category of the biennial literary competition, given the “close links and associations” between organisers, the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS), and the NLB.

“We condemn in the strongest terms NLB’s decision to remove and destroy these books, given that it is responsible for the dissemination of information rather than its destruction. The fact that the board has not even considered restricting access to the publications but has moved directly to pulping them is very disconcerting,” they said.

When contacted, the NBDCS said it regrets the trio’s decision, as it sought to distance itself from the NLB.

Noting that the NLB is only one of its 40 members and not involved in the council’s day-to-day operations, its executive director R Ramachandran said the Singapore Literature Prize has an established history of judging writers and books on their literary merits and supporting books of literary merit regardless of the political or social themes they contain.

An NLB spokesperson said the statutory board is saddened by the resignations.

She added: “We hope the Singapore Literature Prize this year will not be affected by their decision to protest an NLB decision with which the NBDCS had nothing to do.”

The three judges’ resignations come after several literary figures — citing unhappiness over the NLB’s action — pulled out of various NLB-related events, such as the Singapore Writers Festival and talks that it organised.

The judges said what the NLB did was “bigoted and sets a very worrying precedent that it is acceptable to discriminate against anyone who may hold differing values and opinions”.

It was “unbecoming of an institution entrusted to protect and preserve learning and literature and to provide accessibility to information”, they said.

Writing on Facebook, Bishan-Toa Payoh Member of Parliament Hri Kumar said he disagreed with the NLB’s decision to pulp the three titles. But he also disagreed that destroying books is akin to censorship and that all censorship is bad.

“There are some publications that clearly do not belong in our public libraries,” he said. “The real question is whether homosexuality falls in that category that should be excluded.”

Nevertheless, he added: “I think most neutrals would agree that children should read books with controversial themes supervised.”

He suggested that such books be placed in a section that can be accessed only with the presence of an adult. “Excluding such books, or worse, destroying them, sends an altogether different and confusing message about the role of the NLB,” he said. NG JING YNG