'The Kashmir Files' courts controversy in New Zealand

New Delhi, Mar 20: Vivek Agnihotri's "The Kashmir Files" has courted controversy in New Zealand with the country's chief censor reviewing the film's classification, a move that has been criticised by a former deputy prime minister.

Former New Zealand deputy prime minister Winston Peters slammed the movie board and said that censoring the film would be an attack on the freedom of New Zealanders.

Taking to Facebook, Peters posted "The 'Kashmir Files' has been shown in America, Australia, India and many other locations around the world. To date the film has been viewed by over 1.1 billion people."

"The film is about true and real events surrounding the 1990 ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Kashmir and today over 400,000 Kashmir Pandits remain in exile after 32 years," he said.

"To censor this film is tantamount to censoring information or images from the March 15th atrocities in New Zealand, or for that matter removing from public knowledge all images of the attack on 9/11," he added.

"Mainstream Muslims have both in this country and around the world readily and rightly denounced all forms of terrorism on the basis that committing violence in the name of Islam is not Muslim. Neither should steps taken against Islamophobia mistakenly lead to the shielding of terrorists in the name of Islam," he said.

"Terrorism in all its forms, no matter what its source, should be exposed and opposed. This attempt at selective censorship would amount to one further attack on the freedom of New Zealanders and people worldwide," he concluded.

Written and directed by Vivek Agnihotri, "The Kashmir Files" depicts the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus from the Kashmir Valley in the 1990s.

New Zealand outlet Stuff on Saturday reported that the country's chief censor David Shanks is reviewing the film's R16 classification after concerns were raised by the Muslim community ahead of the movie's release on March 24.

According to New Zealand's Classification Office, an R16 certificate mandates that a film cannot be viewed by children below 16 without adult supervision.