Asia-Pacific, Headlines, Human Rights, Press Freedom

THAILAND: Government Cracks Down on Websites in Censorship Drive

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, May 3 2010 (IPS) - In her newspaper-strewn office on the ground floor of a quiet apartment complex, Chiranuch Premchaiporn surveys the options before her in case the government’s censors come calling again.

Her first brush with the censors came when they blocked ‘Prachatai.com, the Thai-language online news site she runs with an editorial staff of 12. The day after the censors struck, on Apr. 7, Chiranuch’s team in Bangkok was supplying political content via a new website.

But the second act of the censors – blocking the Facebook fan page of the six-year-old news organisation – has proved more daunting. “We have to go through a proxy to place information on Facebook,” says the executive director of ‘Prachatai’. “It is inconvenient but it is okay.”

Yet Chiranuch, who has come to symbolise the struggle for free expression in this South-east Asian kingdom, is prepared to make it difficult for the censors to have their way. “If they block our domain, we will set up a new domain. We will even send information on mailing lists, which is more difficult to block,” the 43-year-old reveals. “We will not stop informing our readers.”

They are brave words in the face of a drive by the administration of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to freeze the flow of anti-government information on the Internet. The latest licence to censor came after Bangkok and neighbouring provinces were placed under a state of emergency on Apr. 7.

‘Prachatai’ was one of 36 websites that were initially blocked as the government tried to curb the reach, via cyberspace, of an anti-government protest movement, which rallies under the banner of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD).

The government’s censors were out for more, as the UDD continued to draw support to its protest sites in the Thai capital since mid-March. A further 190 websites were blocked in a second sweep of websites critical of the government, a figure that rose to 420 blocked sites by the end of April.

The bulk of the blocked websites is more partial to the UDD than ‘Prachatai’, known for its critical coverage of successive Thai administrations since 2004. The pro-UDD websites, on the other hand, have been avenues for angry anti-government rhetoric and streaming videos of the UDD’s round-the- clock rallies in Bangkok.

The pro-UDD media supply stories that run counter to the government’s narrative of the street demonstrators who have occupied parts of Bangkok’s streets, including a glitzy shopping district.

Most troubling for the government have been revelations on video-sharing websites of clashes between soldiers and the UDD supporters, dressed in their signature red shirts, that offered a different version of the official narrative broadcast on state-controlled television stations and published in the largely pro-government newspapers.

A botched military crackdown of anti-government demonstrators on Apr. 10, where 20 civilians and five soldiers were killed, remains among the contested narratives.

“Concern for hate message against the government in the pro-UDD media is a worry,” says Panitan Wattanayagorn, a government spokesman, to justify the on-going censorship. “Security experts are looking at the media to see how it is affecting our national security.”

The 16-month-old coalition government, headed by Abhisit’s Democrat Party, runs a centre set up after the emergency law was imposed to go after anti-government websites. “The centre has a working group to advise us on regulating of websites,” Panitan confirmed during an interview.

The Internet censorship is having an impact on the UDD’s reach to its supporters beyond the Bangkok protest sites. “It is getting difficult for our supporters to receive our message with the ongoing censorship on the Internet,” admits Kokaew Pikulthong, a UDD leader.

Yet supporters of the anti-government movement, which is calling for a dissolution of parliament and an immediate general election, have found ways to work around the censorship. When the government closed People’s Television, the UDD’s mouthpiece, and its website after imposing emergency, the broadcast material was still available through online video, says Jon Russell, a digital media blogger based in central Thailand.

“Someone overseas was supplying the content. At one point, there were 3,000 computers connected to the People Channel TV feed,” the British national said in an interview. “It is a cat-and-mouse game.”

The growing climate of media suppression on the Internet has naturally alarmed media rights campaigners in Thailand.

“The government is clearly afraid of the Internet. It is getting away with this censorship under the emergency decree,” says Supinya Klangnarong, vice- chairperson of the Campaign for Popular Media Reform, a Bangkok-based media rights lobby.

“What next?” she wondered aloud of cyberspace in Thailand being silenced for political content critical of the government on top of “censorship on the Internet before the red shirt demonstrations – censoring websites and blogs commenting on the monarchy.”

Media rights campaigners estimate that over 6,200 websites have been blocked over the past two years for insulting the Thai royal family. Over 4,000 other websites are under surveillance by information technology sleuths for anti-monarchy remarks.

Till now, Thais have been forced into silence by two laws – the older, draconian lese-majeste law, which condemns anyone deemed to have tarnished the image of this kingdom’s revered monarchy to a maximum 15- year jail term, and the more recent computer crime act, where a single violation could mean five years in jail.

Chiranuch of ‘Prachatai faces such a troubling prospect after being charged for content that appeared on the message board of her website in 2008. If found guilty, the Bangkok native could be thrown into jail for 50 years.