Thailand / Asia

DESPITE PRESS FREEDOM ADVANCES ACROSS ASIA IN RECENT YEARS, totalitarian regimes in Burma, China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos maintained their stranglehold on the media. Even democratic Asian governments sometimes used authoritarian tactics to control the press, particularly when faced with internal conflict. Sri Lanka, for instance, imposed harsh censorship regulations during the year in…

IN A COUNTRY PLAGUED BY CORRUPTION AND CRONYISM, the Thai press is taking advantage of constitutional reforms and a more open political environment to investigate official misdeeds. In late December, the leading opposition candidate for prime minister, telecommunications tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra, was indicted on charges of violating rules on the declaration of assets. The charges,…

EIGHTY-ONE JOURNALISTS WERE IN PRISON AROUND THE WORLD at the end of 2000, jailed for practicing their profession. The number is down slightly from the previous year, when 87 were in jail, and represents a significant decline from 1998, when 118 journalists were imprisoned. While jailing journalists can be an effective means of stifling bad…

A Thai editor pursues the men who tried to kill him.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply disturbed by the recent bombing of leading journalist Suriwong Uapatiphan’s residence in Bangkok. Police believe the attack was in retaliation for his writing.

Last April, four men tired to gun down Thai editor Amnat Khunyosying in Chaing Mai.  The journalist wants to know why.

Twenty years after the Khmer Rouge genocide, Khmer journalism is showing signs of life.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is dismayed by the recent assassination attempt against Amnat Khunyosying, owner and editor of the newspaper Phak Nua Raiwan, which is published in the northern city of Chiang Mai.

By Kavita Menon and A. Lin NeumannMuch of Asia remained hostile to a free, independent media, despite the growing consensus that Asian political and economic stability depends in great measure on governments’ willingness to improve transparency and lift restrictions on the press. In China, Burma, Vietnam, and even Malaysia, government suppression of the media is…