Thai junta clamps down on media
Junta's deputy-chief says 'Any media found spreading inappropriate content will face criminal charges.'
BANGKOK
The Thai junta is continuing to impose increasingly strict controls on local and international media as it efforts to contain criticism and what it calls “the spread of false news” - in particular "information that provokes public hatred against the monarchy.”
Police General Adul Saengsingkaew, the deputy-chief of the junta’s National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), announced this week the establishment of a series of panels that will “monitor the media content” of radio, TV and print media and websites – including foreign news outlets.
“Any media found spreading inappropriate content will face criminal charges,” he told local newspapers.
Academics say the military has frequently evoked respect of the monarchy as a tool to repress anti-establishment discussion and create a spirit of national unity.
A Thailand-based sociologist - who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisal - told the Anadolu Agency earlier this month that “There is no movement against the monarchy. It is just the imagination of the military.”
Junta spokesman Colonel Yongyuth Mayalarp has said efforts to stamp out such discussion - Thailand has some of the most draconian lese majeste laws in the world - are aimed at “getting the country in good order and to move forward.”
A Thai female journalist, who also did not want to be identified for fear of reprisal, told AA on Thursday that the junta's announcement was ridiculously harsh.
"A blanket of fear already exists among journalists, with many already exercising self-censorship,” she said. “They don’t have to impose these stricter controls... We are going from moderate media freedom to zero.”
The Thai Journalist Association has said that the criteria fixed by the NCPO is too broad and could result in the trampling of media rights.
Kulachada Chaipipat, a representative of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance, a regional organization protecting press freedoms, told AA that “the (junta’s) move creates a chilling effect on the media environment" - already severely restricted by previous orders regarding content censorship.
"This latest move could only be interpreted as interfering in the editorial independence of the media,” he added.
In an early sign of the stronger stance, soldiers on Wednesday raided the office of local daily newspaper “Kom Chad Luek” and ordered the editor-in-chief not to run a story on the establishment of an anti-coup organization overseas.
The controls have not gone without challenge, however. On June 24, some journalists established a group called “Reporters without Censors,” vowing to “defy the junta’s censorship and insist on people’s right to information.”
“Our aim is to offer news reports that are free from censorship, together with honest and balanced discussion and analysis – something that cannot be found in most Thai media at present,” the group said in a statement.
Junta spokesman Colonel Winthai Suwaree this week tried to allay fears, saying that the junta “had no intention of curbing the media, but only asked for their cooperation in ensuring the accuracy of news.”
