Intimidasi?

Elizabeth Wong muses about the seizing of Dr. Kua's book about May 13 and wonders why it was actually necessary for KDN officers to actually walk into a bookshop and seize 10 copies without paying when they could simply have asked the publisher for a review copy or when they could just have trotted along to the launch and picked one up for themselves.

It does look like heavy-handed tactics were employed for the sake of making a point very publicly ... which can't have been pleasant for the management of the book chain, or the staff.

Elizabeth reports today that:

MPH said they don’t want to sell it, as KDN has advised them not to, even though the book isn’t banned. ... Kinokuniya said, because the book is controversial, they will practice self-censorship and not sell it.

... There is very little that we can do, if bookshops do not live up to their social responsibility as frontliners in the war against ignorance and pem-bodoh-fication (a word first introduced to me by Jason Tan, editor of Off The Edge) of the minds.

Bookshops are businesses first and foremost, Elizabeth. Where got social conscience?

But word is that Popular, Times and Silverfish are still intending to sell the book.