Attacks on the Press - Committee to Protect Journalists

attacks on the press in 2009asia: thailandwhich a journalist was found guilty of violating the country’s Prevention of TerrorismAct, a Colombo High Court sentenced him to 20 years of hard labor.Terrorism Investigation Division officials arrested Tissainayagam, an English-languagecolumnist for the Sri Lankan Sunday Times and editor of the newsWeb site OutreachSL, on March 7, 2008, when he visited their offices to inquireabout the arrests of colleagues the previous day. He was held without charge untilhis indictment in August 2008 in connection with articles published nearly threeyears earlier in a now-defunct magazine, North Eastern Monthly. The sentencingjudge, Deepali Wijesundara, said articles Tissainayagam wrote for the Monthly in2006 incited communal disharmony, an offense under the Prevention of TerrorismAct. She also found him guilty of raising funds to publish the magazine, itselfa violation of the anti-terror law.The government had backed off the anti-terror law in 2006 when, under acease-fire then in effect between the government and the LTTE, it pledged notto detain people under the statute. But as the government ramped up its militaryefforts, it began enforcing provisions of the law to rein in uncooperative media.In November, CPJ recognized Tissainayagam’s independent journalism,practiced under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, by honoring him with anInternational Press Freedom Award.THAILANDThai media were caught in the middle of a political conflictthat entered its fourth year of destabilizing antigovernment street demonstrationsand tough government responses. Both sides in the conflict—supporters and opponentsof exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra—threatened journalists,some of whom were openly aligned to factions taking part in the protestmovements.On April 12, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s government declared a stateof emergency, a decree that gave authorities the legal power to censor news considereda threat to national security. The red shirt-wearing United Front for DemocracyAgainst Dictatorship (UDD), an antigovernment group that aimed torestore Thaksin to power, had upped the ante by blockading traffic in the capital,Bangkok, disrupting an Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit meeting,and clashing violently with security forces.The day after declaring a state of emergency, the government blocked theUDD-aligned satellite news broadcaster D Station, which had run live broadcastsof the UDD’s protests. Thaksin had been making frequent video-link callsto D Station from exile in Dubai in which he frequently urged his supporters tooverthrow Abhisit’s government in a “people’s revolution.” The government, citingnational security, moved to shut the station under the Internal Security Act.Prime Minister’s Office Minister Sathit Wongnongtoey ordered local satelliteprovider Thaicom to cut D Station’s signal, and police raided the station’s officesatop a shopping mall in Bangkok’s gritty Lad Phrao district. Sathit told localreporters that D Station was targeted because it was “capable of causing chaos.”The government also ordered three provincial community radio stations to closeand blocked 71 Web sites the government saw as aligned with Thaksin. All wereallowed to resume operations when the state of emergency was lifted later thatmonth.UDD protesters also moved against the media, threatening journalists fromprivate and state-run news sources whom they perceived as unsympathetic to theircause. Coinciding with their ramped-up street protests in Bangkok, the UDDstaged demonstrations infront of several offices oft o p developments»»Amid partisan conflict, media owner istarget of failed assassination.»»Heavily used lese majeste laws criminalizecriticism of royal family.2,000key statisticWeb sites blocked bythe government forviolating lese majeste laws.Channel 11, operated by thegovernment-run NationalBroadcasting Services ofThailand. In several northeasternprovinces, Channel11 station managers wereforced at times to stop theirbroadcasts.On April 8, UDD protestersin Bangkok hurledbottles and spat at reportersfrom television channels 3and 7 for what they said was underreporting of the number of protesters attendinga mass rally staged by the UDD near Government House. Red-shirted protesterssurrounded Channel 3’s mobile broadcast unit and, threatening violence,forced reporters to take sanctuary in a nearby Buddhist temple, according to theEnglish-language daily The Nation.The next day, a UDD supporter threw a homemade explosive device nearthe offices of Asia Satellite Television (ASTV), a news station aligned with thePeople’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) protest movement that, since 2005, hascampaigned against Thaksin-led or -aligned governments. Nobody was hurt inthe attack. Police initially apprehended a suspect but were forced to release himafter they were surrounded by UDD protesters, according to The Nation.When troops clashed with protesters on April 13, local and foreign media142143