More paranoia and self-censorship in the Lion City. A state-funded, but generally high-quality, art school has threatened to sue an Australian newspaper for printing a photo of an installation piece that was… political.

IT was a rare public display of protest against the death penalty that even Singapore’s arts community didn’t want the world to see.

Titled “I am going to send you to a better place”, the now infamous send-off from veteran hangman Darshan Singh, the disturbing artwork is the only act of open defiance in the city-state during the final days of condemned Australian drug-trafficker Van Tuong Nguyen.

Slovenian art student Matija Milkovic Biloslav had displayed under falling nooses a single standing stool carrying a card with Van’s execution number, C856, a very deliberate reference to the Melbourne man, scheduled to be hanged at dawn this Friday.

But after The Australian unexpectantly attended last Friday night’s opening of the exhibition at the Lasalle-SIA College of the Arts, the self-censorship that pervades the country of four million took hold.

Over the weekend, The Australian newspaper was threatened with legal action by Lasalle directors if it published a picture of the work and all requests for an interview with the artist were denied.

The card carrying Van’s execution number was hastily removed. The college, which receives government funding, said the artwork was about suicide.

The reaction of the art college is typical of the sensitivity in Singapore to the very limited political and social debate allowed by the long-ruling People’s Action Party.

Local coverage of Van’s trial, conviction and sentence has been almost non-existent in the government-owned media, with daily reports only appearing in the past week and limited to the outcry in Australia or a defence of the looming execution.

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, east asia, singapore rebel, southeast asia