Bangkok Inside Out - Equinox Publishing
Racy Book on Bangkok Pulled from Shelves as Official Suffers Attack of Prudery
By Simon Montlake
A glossy coffee-table book on Bangkok has been pulled from bookstores after a government official objected to its depiction of the city's infamous go-go bars and other "negative subjects".
The book,
Bangkok Inside Out, was published last year to critical acclaim and had sold briskly. But in the past two weeks, Thai bookstores have been clearing copies from their shelves after reportedly being warned they could be prosecuted for selling them.
The skirmish over the book, published by Jakarta-based Equinox Publishing, is the latest sign of intolerance by officials of critical reporting and appears to flout the press freedoms guaranteed by the nation's 1997 constitution.
Ladda Tangsuphachai, director of cultural monitoring at the Ministry of Culture, ordered the clampdown and has asked police to consider legal action against the authors, Guy Sharett, an Israeli national, and Daniel Ziv, a Canadian writer based in Jakarta.
Ms Ladda complained to a Thai-language newspaper that the book had focused too much on "fake goods, gambling and gay performances", as well as nightclub zones such as Patpong and Nana.
In particular, she objected to a photo of a foreigner with a bare-breasted bar girl on his lap in one section of the book.
"According to the constitution, the press has the freedom to publish. So all we can do is to take the problematic books off the shelves," she said.
