Press: Enemies of the Thai State?
Thursday, July 14th, 2005The Foreign Correspondent’s Club hosted another panel as part of it’s occasional series on freedom of the press this week.
Panel members were Anchalee Paireerak, operator of www.fm9225.com, one of two closed�websites, and executive director of and political commentator for community radio FM92. Also speaking was a representative from SEAPA, the Southeast Asian Press Alliance, Pravit Rojanaphruk, senior reporter for The Nation, commentator on media reform, promotion of transparency and public accountability and democratic culture, and Sue Saeri Mee Jing Rue author of a recently published Thai-language work on the subject “Does Press Freedom Really Exist?”
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Critics have long maintained that Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is unwilling to accept a totally free press, especially when it is critical of his policies.� They argue that his administration has fired, sued or otherwise silenced most of the independent voices on the air and in print — an assault on press freedom that they believe carries the pungent scent of power abused. Mr. Thaksin’s government has responded by promising better relations with the media in his second term.
But in mid-June, the government acted again. After, Anchalee Paireerak, the female 32 year old professional journalist & operator of the 24 hour community radio news station criticized Thaksin for enriching himself through his political policies, The Ministry of Information and Communications Technology ordered her two websites shut down on the grounds that they posed a threat to national security, defamed senior officials and employed language guaranteed to incite public unrest.
However, Anchalee explained that when the officials appeared on her doorstep to close her down, they explained that the reason was because her radio antenna was higher than 30 feet, reached too wide an area and could interfere with air traffic causing a plane crash. We all laughed at that of course. She has decided to leave Thailand for Australia temporarily after being sued by one of Mr. Thaksin’s corporations. She has established another website: www.fm9225.net.
The most interesting comments were made by the SEAPA representative who outlined the complexity of the economic and cultural pressures against a free press in Thailand. For example efforts to unionize the journalists have failed miserably because it is culturally very difficult for Thai people to confront authority.
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