Thread: Democracy Abhisit Vejjajiva style: Eliminate freedom of speech

Originally Posted by EmperorTud

See my post earlier with a link to the FACT website that completely rubbishes your argument.

What argument? I asked a simple question, which you just get around now to answering.

Originally Posted by EmperorTud

Pre-coup, the government blocked 2,475 websites, while as of January 2007, the Junta had blocked 13,435 websites - an increase of a shade under 443%.

It's amazing how these answers, even favoring your points, are so easy to come by, but they appear to need to be dragged, kicking and screaming, out of each of you's.

Originally Posted by Repubblicano

This gov is based on bare brute force and shameless lying , they have no other chance but censorship to cover their crimes and mass murders.

Mass murders? What pray tell are you talking about?

Originally Posted by gjbkk

^
agree

their posts are not worth reading so I have most of them on my ignore list

You have them on ignore because you are not willing to look at both sides,seems to me that is like blocking the websites.

Folks, personal animosities aside, stand back for a moment & review what is going in Thailand under Mark Vejj's government.

The recent explosion in press controls, internet clampdowns & Les Majeste cases, should begin ringing any sane person's alarm bells. Something is very wrong at the moment, & it is getting worse by the day.

Ask yourselves why this is happening. What is the driving force behind it? Who has the most to lose?

Democracy, being, the rule of the people, by the people - where are you?

ah I see that the Red brigades are in full swings when it comes to propaganda, fallacy, and logical flaws, with DrB leading the charge
in the Lalala legion

A few facts:

- We had a coup, and that's when the division of society came about and started to be expressed. The monkeys discovered the Internet thanks to Thaksin cheap Internet initiative, and decided to use it to express their opinions

- The garbage of posting by Thai politician wannabe is beyond measurable. It's like monkeys who found fire for the first time and are trying to find a use for it, torching everything in sight.

- The Anti-Royal, Riot calling websites has increased by 1,000,000% because everyone has an opinion, making almost impossible for the government to keep up as they try to create stability. Again, you are dealing with monkeys on both sides, so it's all justified at the end.

We all know how all this would turn under Thaksin. But as our Red friends have reminded us so many times here, it's not about Thaksin (despite referencing him 1000 times in their arguments here). That said, the banning of Porn (under Thaksin) and extremists (under Mark) shouldn't be happening, it really doesn't work. Let the Reds express themselves and reveal the garbage that they have to say, eventually everyone will see that they have nothing under their belt, only hate and delusions.

The first casualty

April 16, 2009

As troops and antigovernment protestors clashed on Bangkok’s streets again this week, a furious battle also played out in the media over casualties. Government spokespersons and army officers insisted that bullets had not been fired into the crowds. Their opponents said the opposite.

Soldiers had at times pointed their weapons at people, and some of the red-shirted demonstrators had been shot, but there were few reliable details of who was hurt, how, where and why.

Staff at the prime minister’s office blamed Red Shirts on motorbikes for amelee with local residents that left two dead. Other sources were less certain about the identities of the protagonists, but doubtful voices were drowned out as local outlets obligingly reported the official version. Meanwhile, emailed narratives of battles around the city had it that the Red Shirts’ rivals were in some areas backing up the army, but there was no immediate evidence to support this claim either.

What all this goes to show is not which side is to blame for the street blockades and bloodshed of the last few days, but how difficult it has become to believe Thailand’s media. Since 2006, when domestic news agencies and many overseas ones fell over each other to enthuse about the army’s latest power grab, the biases of newspapers, magazines and broadcasters have become more pronounced, their coverage more partisan, and their opinion-makers seemingly more sure of themselves even as things get less certain.

In normal times, the impoverished domestic journalism which has become a hallmark of Bangkok has made following current affairs there difficult; with the city under siege and a state of emergency declared, it has made following them all but impossible.

Blinded by seething hatred of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, many journalists have transformed him from the authoritarian bully that he is into a superhuman bogeyman on whom everything and anything can be blamed.

Thaksin obviously provoked his supporters to violence this week, as he has done in the past. There is no need for the point to be made repeatedly. What is needed is to situate what has happened in a meaningful trajectory with which to make sense of it and to figure out what might occur next.

But instead of offering useful analysis, most newspaper space has been taken up with headlines jeering at the Red Shirts’ failed putsch accompanied by content-free commentary that has at best been infantile and at worst shameful.

A columnist for the Bangkok Post shrilled that Thaksin was responsible for turning the city into a war zone and for the death of a young man whose brother she heard speak on television. Does Thaksin have a soul? she cried out theatrically.

The paper’s main editorial was little better, branding the former prime minister’s crimes “heinous” and heaping praise on the incumbent, Abhisit Vejjajiva, who came to power on the back of prolonged violence of the same type last year.

By the time the Post was published, the government had closed the satellite station that the protest organizers were using for increasingly vociferous broadcasts. Whether or not the shutdown can be justified, the same has not been done to the Yellow Shirts’ mouthpiece. It continues to churn out propaganda even as the leaders of last year’s Government House and airport takeovers run around on bail, while a number of their red-shirted counterparts have either been locked up or are in hiding. Perhaps the yellow-shirted bosses have not felt the need to go on the run because no one is actually chasing them.

And while the authorities have moved against their adversaries’ use of modern technology, they have also been working overtime against sources of news that might have filled some of the gaps, corrected some of the errors, and exposed some of the lies in the big media and authorized accounts.

The Prachatai website has been on the back foot since its director was hit last month with a volley of ambiguous charges over supposedly unlawful comments that readers – not the service itself – had posted. It continues to put out news and views that cannot be found elsewhere, such as a recent careful critique of the prejudiced and simplistic television coverage of the newest battles in Bangkok. But its weekly radio feature has fallen silent.

Many bloggers have been trying their best to keep abreast of things, but they can’t make up for the paucity of trustworthy periodicals and professional broadcasters. The bureaucracy has been fighting a war against them too, blocking the domestic audience from reading thousands of web pages since the start of this year alone on spurious grounds relating to the monarchy or national security.

A few foreign correspondents who have worked on and in Thailand for some years have filed informed and critical stories of what has been going on, but they are in the minority, and their reporting does not have much reach back inside the country where it would count the most.

During Thaksin’s time as prime minister, police and bureaucrats routinely harassed journalists and media advocates: searching premises, issuing warrants and making threats. He and his government rightly attracted censure for their efforts to intimidate and silence critics, and for their misuse of state agencies toward these ends.

But in Thaksin’s time there was at least a struggle for freedom of opinion and expression that extended across different parts of the media. Since 2006, it has fallen to small committed groups like Prachatai to keep that effort alive, often at considerable risk to those involved. None of the mainstream print and broadcast outlets can today be counted as defenders of the right to speak freely. This last week is proof of that.

“The first casualty when war comes,” U.S. Senator Hiriam Johnson once famously said, “is truth.” While both sides in the latest battle for Thailand’s future were arguing furiously about how many lives and limbs they had claimed, the first casualty went uncounted. Its passing is now more obvious than ever, its presence sorely missed.

Source: Bangkok’s first casualty of political war


Thailand’s democratic crisis, Tyrell Haberkorn (openDemocracy)
Thailand’s loyal sub-plot, Andrew Walker & Nicholas Farrelly (Inside Story)

Bangkok Pundit has covered this and I like and agree with his comments here.

http://bangkokpundit.blogspot.com/2009/04/first-casualty-of-war.html

BP: Were these websites telling people to attack soldiers/Abhisit or telling people to take to the streets? There is a difference. They are also the same sites which have been providing video and pictures alleging government wrongdoing. Prachatai has a list of most of the blocked siteshere.

Matichon reportson a search warrant issue in relation to a community radio station in Lampang which notes that that the radio station incited the red shirts to oppose the government and attack the bureaucratic polity, supports TRT and then Puea Thai.

At Prachatai, Jom points out that, as per normal, it was only Channel 11 and TV Thai (formerly ThaiPBS) closely followed the situation throughout the day. You don't need to be surprised as Channel 11 reported all information as it was created for the government. Hopes rested with TV Thai which was specifically created for the public benefit, but there was disappointment. He says it was not that different from Channel 11 as acting as the voice of the government. I closely followed the situation from April 13 and commentary from the TV channels was not that different. I was surprised that there were no live reports from the site - there was only BBC and CNN. The TV programs were showing damage caused by the red shirts, but no explanation from the red shirts at all

[BP: Cant any find the article with one of the red shirt leaders, Nattawut, complaining that Thai TV wouldn't talk to him].

It should be noted though that an analyst from Media Monitor has an article in Matichon stating that coverage by free TV was fair. He states that they initially favoured the red shirts in Pattaya in terms of coverage, but this shifted to the government afterwards.

BP: Jom is consideredby the PAD crowd for in December 2007 daring to interview Thaksin for TITV (now Channel 11) in 2007. To be honest, BP does not think that highly of Media Monitor - for example, they viewed TITV's news coverage under the junta as being too slanted towards PPP and critical of the Democrats in November 2007.

On TV Thai's coverage, well it is difficult for BP to comment as was on holiday over the period and didn't watch as much TV coverage as normally do. Normally, they are reasonably fair in their coverage although didn't detect much investigation into the military or any questioning of the military. They just repeat statements from whoever makes them. It certainly may be the case that no red shirts died, but we are not going out anymore based on simple army denials. Then again, being under a state of emergency and regulations related to censorship is hardly conducive to investigative journalism.

There seems very little coverage or pushback from the Thai mainstream media over the new censorship. Well aside from Pravit in The Nation:

Supinya suggests that the government seek court orders before shutting media outlets that it claims incite violence or insurrection or spread rumours. She also warns that some people may see the current crackdown as a exhibiting a double standard vis-เ-vis the anti-Thaksin People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), which has multimedia resources on its side as well.

Ubonrat Siriywasak, former lecturer of mass communications at Chulalongkorn University, said the crackdown reflected the refusal of the government to accept the basic principle of freedom of expression.

"How can it claim we're in a democracy?" Ubonrat asked.

She said there should be trust that debate will lead towards finding out what is true, and the government should not look at the red-shirt media as parts of a mere propaganda machine.

She also urged all media operators to exercise responsibility in what they reported or wrote and not incite violence or hatred.

BP: Why can't we be told or at least some details provided of the content of those websites which caused them to be censored? At least one of them downmerng.blogspot.com, mostly chooses mainstream Thai language newspaper articles it likes and posts them in full. It sometimes posts links to translations from the other pro-Thaksin sites. If spreading rumours is going to be the standard for a shutdown, which media outlet would survive?

Political Prisoners in Thailand also has some comments here.

the funny things with blogs is that they will discredit eventually all information from the Internet as they are so easy to setup and have an immediate audience

but at the same time, the truth is more likely to come out from a blog than any main source media, but the lack of standards just mean that the truth is buried with the lies so at the end the audience doesn't really get a chance to see the truth, but why should they anyhow ?

Originally Posted by gjbkk

[BP: Cant any find the article with one of the red shirt leaders, Nattawut, complaining that Thai TV wouldn't talk to him].

there were comments by Journalists since the red shirt protests began in BKK that they were harassed and intimidated by the red shirts and did not feel safe around them.

New: Continuing the use of lèse majesté - another charge

Prachatai (18 April: 2009: “Woman arrested for photocopying offensive leaflets in Nakhon Ratchasima”) reports that Thossaporn Ruethaiprasertsung, aged 48, has been arrested at a photocopying shop in Nakhon Ratchasima, “with several leaflets whose contents reportedly were offensive to the monarchy and the Privy Council.”

Of course, despite what this report implies, insulting the Privy Council is not against the law.

Thossaporn claimed she found the leaflets. She said she “picked up some to read, and found they were about the monarchy. She brought them to the market and wanted to share with friends, so she went to the shop just to make copies, with no other intent.”

The police charged her under Article 112 of Criminal Code with lèse majesté and despatched a team to find the source of the leaflets.

The Matichon report, which is the source, is here: ตร.รวบสาวใหญ่โคราช ถ่ายสำเนาเอกสาร “หมิ่นสถาบัน”

Thossaporn claimed she found the leaflets. She said she “picked up some to read, and found they were about the monarchy. She brought them to the market and wanted to share with friends, so she went to the shop just to make copies, with no other intent.”

anyone looking at the big pic has to see very dark clouds on the horizon