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The Last Emperor
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« ตอบ #67 เมื่อ: 01-02-2007, 09:04 » |
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มาเข้าเรื่องกันต่อดีกั่ว....มีข่าวเกี่ยวกับการข่มขู่สื่อประจานไปทั่วโลกแล้วครับพี่น้อง!!
"สื่อต่างประเทศตีข่าวไปทั่วโลก ช่อง 3 ระบุชัด คมช.ส่งทหารถือปืนยืนคุมนักข่าวในห้องกระจายข่าวตามสื่อต่างๆ
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January 22, 2007]
THAILAND: JUNTA TIGHTENS MEDIA CENSORSHIP
(English IPS News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
BANGKOK, Jan. 20, 2007 (IPS/GIN) -- At a leading television
station, the censor's scissors stands ready to snip out any
reference to Thailand's ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra,
or members of his Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai) party.
"You cannot quote a press statement by Mr. Thaksin word for word
or even what his party releases," Clare Patchimanon, a news anchor
on a morning current affairs program for Channel Three TV, tells
IPS. "There is an editorial policy to be careful about what goes
on the air."
Since last week she and other radio and other TV broadcasters
have come under pressure from the country's junta to restrict local
media exposure to Thaksin, who was ousted in the September 19
military coup.
The bluntness of the junta's order conveyed its new, tough
stance in dealing with the former, twice-elected leader, who has
been forced to live in exile. "I want to ask every television
channel and every radio station not to broadcast messages or
statements of the former prime minister and leaders of the past
ruling party," General Winai Phattiyakul, a ranking member of the
junta, told media representatives on Jan 10.
"If they don't listen," he added, "you can kick them out of your
station or if you can't use your judgment, I will use mine to help
you run your station."
As junta has drops its mask of appearing benign, it is also
losing friends. Sections of the local print media that welcomed the
country's 18th coup as a chance to restore Thai democracy that
Thaksin had undermined are not so sure now.
"We are not very happy with this meddling. The Thai press has
expressed its displeasure," says Kiatichai Pongpanich, senior
editor of Khaosod, a Thai-language daily. "This is not a very
normal situation."
Human rights groups are also firing broadsides at the junta,
pointing that its menacing approach to the local broadcasters goes
against the pledges it had made to justify the putsch, among which
was a promise to help restore Thai democracy from the abuse it had
suffered during Thaksin's five-year government.
"We are concerned by this disturbing trend to control the
broadcast media," Sunai Phasuk, Thai researcher for the global
rights lobby Human Rights Watch, told IPS. "This is
counterproductive to the promise they made to introduce a
democratic culture."
The uproar over the limits placed on the broadcast medium -- the
news outlets with the largest reach in this country of 64 million
people -- has overshadowed the increasing restrictions that have
been placed on the new media, such as websites.
During the first four months since the coup, the number of
Internet websites that have been blocked in Thailand have jumped
by "over 500 percent," notes a statement by a newly established
media watchdog, Freedom Against Censorship in Thailand (FACT). "No
identification of websites blocked has ever been disclosed to the
public nor do (the) government agencies disclose which criteria
they use to block."
By mid-January, according to FACT, the number of websites
blocked by the Ministry of Information and Communication had
reached 13,435, a dramatic rise from the 2,475 sites that had been
blocked in mid-October.
"Inevitably, the coup group is having to show more and more of
its real face, which like any other dictatorship is ugly," Basil
Fernando, head of a regional rights group, Asian Human Rights
Commission, said this week. "The figures on Internet censorship
speak for themselves."
But the Council for National Security (CNS), as the junta calls
itself, had already fired warning shots about how much media
freedom it would tolerate within days of the coup, when it went
after community radio stations in Thailand's north and
north-eastern provinces, where Thaksin had a huge following. In the
provinces of Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and Mae Hong Son, some 300
community broadcasters were forced into silence a day after the
junta grabbed power.
Television stations in Bangkok, like the one where Clare, the
anchor, works, had to put up with other pressures, such as armed
soldiers in each station. Channel Three, for instance, had a
regular presence of armed soldiers in the main control room for the
first month following the coup after which the soldiers remained
on the watch, but without weapons.
It was a form of intimidation aimed at preventing Thaksin or his
supporters taking to the airwaves to mount a media campaign and
challenge the authority of the junta. Such heavy-handed measures
contrasted with the more subtle tactics -- such as using money and
threatening to stop advertisements -- that Thaksin employed while
in government to silence the media.
The junta's expanding campaign against the Thai media is being
viewed by analysts here as one more self-inflicted wound as it
appears to be losing its way in a political environment that is
growing increasingly fragile. Four months after it took power, the
junta has succeeded in creating more dissension and divisiveness
-- an atmosphere it had pledged to end through a coup that was
aimed at unifying this South-east Asian country.
"Since the coup, government censorship has only focused on
breaking communication channels between Thaksin and the Thai
people," Philippe Latour, Southeast Asia Representative for
Reporters Without Borders, the global media watchdog, told IPS.
"Censorship, whatever the motives behind it, is against all
democratic principles and it is shocking when it comes from a
government that promised to bring back democracy within 12 months."
Copyright 2007 Global Information Network "
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