As US and Vietnam get closer, rights concerns grow – Christian Science Monitor
April 24th, 2012
Five days of joint US-Vietnam naval exercises that started Monday in Vietnam are the latest signals of growing cooperation between the one-time enemies.
But as the US and Vietnam get close, Vietnam’s human rights record is raising questions among activists regarding whether the US is sufficiently vocal about political, economic, and free speech violations in Vietnam, a one-party state ruled by the Communist Party where all other political parties are banned.
Deputy Asia Director at Human Rights Watch Phil Robertson says, “There is a real need for sustained US pressure on Vietnam to free political prisoners, respect freedom of expression and the vibrant blogosphere that is making Vietnam one of the fast growing users of the Internet in South East Asia, and repeal repressive laws that Hanoi uses to quash individuals and groups that the government doesn’t like.” (more…)
Thai censors say out, damned spot, to Macbeth film adaptation- Christian Science Monitor
April 4th, 2012
BANGKOK – The banning of a Thai cinema adaptation of William Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ is causing a stir in Thailand, after censors ruled that the movie “has content that causes divisiveness among the people of the nation”.
In a country where royalty is shielded by possibly the world’s strictest lese-majeste laws, a drama featuring regicide might be deemed taboo in some quarters, but Shakespeare Must Die seems also to have touched a raw nerve – with its angle on the playwright’s ambitious but guilt-ridden Scottish usurper blended in with scenes of protest and violence redolent of Thailand’s recent past.
The country has been beset by on-off street protests since 2005, and to some, the ‘Macbeth’ character in the movie is reminiscent of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose apparent vaulting ambition prompted royalist suspicions that he had a real-life anti-monarchy agenda. (more…)
Cautious hope for freedom of information in Burma – PBS Mediashift
March 29th, 2012
NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi readies to speak at election rally in Myawngmya in mid -February (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2012/03/cautious-hope-for-freedom-of-information-in-burma089.html
BANGKOK — A week out from special elections that are likely to see opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi take a seat in the country’s parliament, Burma’s long-straitjacketed journalists sat with local and foreign officials to discuss a new press law that could see the country’s censorship regime abolished.
Thiha Saw, editor of Myanmar Dhana magazine and Open News (two Rangoon-based publications), told an audience in Bangkok earlier this week that, according to the Ministry of Information, the censorship department will be abolished and there will no longer be pre-publication checking of articles.
Right now in Burma, daily newspapers are banned and existing weeklies must run their content by the censorship board for approval before publishing.
But change is nigh, it seems, and a second draft of a new print media law will go before the country’s parliament later this year. By then, the parliament could include Aung San Suu Kyi, the famous dissident who was denied her win in 1990 elections and spent much of the intervening years under house arrest.
That possibility is heartening for journalists.
“Hopefully the Lady will be in parliament by the time the second draft comes around,” Thiha Saw said. (more…)
Censors lighten their touch on Myanmar’s media – Christian Science Monitor
February 7th, 2012
Myanmar’s press has long been heavily restricted. But as the government promotes reforms, articles about just-released political prisoners and upcoming elections are getting printed
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2012/0207/Censors-lighten-their-touch-on-Myanmar-s-media
Inside the Myanmar Times in Yangon (Photo: Simon Roughneen
YANGON – Ko Ko Gyi unrolls a copy of the Messenger, one of 30 privately owned news magazines in Myanmar (Burma), and points – with an expression of disbelief – to a prominent picture of himself on the front page.
“I never imagined a Burmese paper could have a cover story with a full-page photo of me,” he says, holding up the magazine during an interview at one of Yangon’s many tea shops.
Mr. Ko Ko Gyi was one of some 300 political prisoners released in a Jan. 13 amnesty by the government. The article goes into the details of what it was like for him to spend 18 years in jail after taking part in pro-democracy protests in Yangon in 1988.
“It is not so long since such coverage would not have been possible here,” says U Myint Kyaw, editor of Yangon Press International, an online-only news start-up in the country’s main city.
Since 1962, Myanmar’s dictatorship has jailed the opposition, beat up monks, denied aid to disaster victims, and run scorched-earth campaigns against ethnic minorities. For the past four years, it has been ranked among the world’s five worst jailers of the press. (more…)
Thai court sentences American citizen to 2.5 years in prison for insulting monarchy – Christian Science Monitor
December 8th, 2011
Gordon's lawyer Anon Nampa, speaks to press outside the court after today's sentencing (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
BANGKOK - US citizen Joe Gordon was sentenced to 2-1/2 years jail today for translating a banned biography of the Thai king and posting it online while living in Colorado, drawing condemnation from free speech advocates and US officials.
Mr. Gordon is the latest to be charged on Thailand’s lèse-majesté laws, some of the strictest in the world, which include prohibitions on posting anti-monarchy slurs online and can mean a prison sentence of 3 to 15 years.
Exact figures are not available, but lèse-majesté cases and convictions have spiked in recent years amid political uncertainty since a 2006 military coup and concerns over what will happen when King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s long reign ends. (more…)
Thailand’s lèse-majesté taboo leading to witch-hunt – Asia Sentinel
December 7th, 2011
http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4020&Itemid=392
Caption - Rossamarin Tangnoppakul holds photo of husband Ampon with grandchildren (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
BANGKOK - Thailand’s growing curbs on freedom of speech have seen a grandfather sentenced to twenty years in jail for insulting the country’s monarchy, while a U.S citizen awaits a possible similar fate in a ruling due tomorrow.
Last month Ampon Tangnoppakul, 61 was sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of insulting Queen Sirikit in four sms texts sent to an official working for Thailand’s former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejajjiva.
Ampon’s crestfallen wife Rossamarin spoke to Asia Sentinel on Monday in a coffee shop near her home in Samut Prakarn in eastern Bangkok. Her jailed husband, she said, “is still very stressed by everything and gets sick often.”
In court last month, Ampon claimed innocence and his family insist that he does not even know how to send mobile phone text messages. (more…)
Keeping up with the neighbours: Thailand jails grandfather for 20 years – The Huffington Post
November 24th, 2011
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/simon-roughneen/thailand-hails-grandfather_b_1111483.html
In a sentence exceeding some those handed down for murder and rape in the country, Thailand yesterday jailed a man for 20 years, for no more than sending 4 text messages allegedly insulting the country’s Queen.
The evidence against Ampon Tangnoppakul seemed inconclusive, and the sentence handed down has been slammed by freedom-of-speech advocates as vastly-disproportionate to an offence which – at most – might result in a defamation suit in other jurisdictions.
However even that might be in doubt, given that it cannot be assessed whether or not the messages insult anyone, as the the content of the messages has not been revealed. To do so – even in court -could in itself be deemed an act of lèse majesté , an additional absurdity to Thailand’s laws on this matter and related computer crimes legislation, which allow any person to lodge a complaint about another who they regard as insulting the country’s monarchy. (more…)
Finding Cannibals: filling the North Korea news gap – PBS Mediashift
October 22nd, 2011
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/10/filling-the-news-gap-in-north-korea294.html
Byoung-Keun (middle) at work at the DailyNK office in Seoul. Photo by Simon Roughneen.
SEOUL, South Korea — “I am always worried about security for those who report information to us from inside,” said Byoung-Keun, a North Korean working in Seoul as a journalist for The DailyNK, a news website focused on telling the world what is happening in possibly the world’s most closed-off society.
Byoung-Keun is a pseudonym, because the former North Korean state official cannot divulge his real name to PBS MediaShift. Doing so could lead to reprisals for family and former colleagues living in North Korea, or even an assassination attempt on him in Seoul, if other recent reports about defectors being targeted by Pyongyang are true.
In North Korea, Internet and cell phone use are restricted to senior government officials and foreigners — and then closely monitored. (more…)
Journalists under pressure in southeast Asia – The Irrawaddy
September 15th, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22079
BANGKOK – Legal curbs on free speech, litigious politicians and self-censorship are making life tough for writers and journalists in southeast Asia. That was the message at an award ceremony in Bangkok yesterday, honouring under-pressure cartoonists, bloggers, editors, poets, musicians, webmasters from the region and beyond.
One winner, Chiranuch Premchaiporn of Thailand-based current affairs website Prachatai, is currently in court over alleged breaches of Thailand’s Computer Crimes Act, which makes it an offence for websites to contain content that breaches the country’s separate laws against defaming the monarchy. She was joined by Heng Chakra, a Cambodian journalist whose muckraking exposés of the country’s politicians and businessmen have earned him numerous lawsuits and physical threats, and by Zulkiflee SM Anwar Ul Haque. Better-known as Zunar, the latter is a Malaysian cartoonist and commentator whose work appears in Malaysiakini, a well-known news website that counters the usually-meek line toed by the country’s older print media, which are linked to the Malaysia’s governing parties. (more…)
Burma and Reform: All Talk and no Walk? – The Huffington Post
September 14th, 2011
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simon-roughneen/burma-and-reform-all-talk_b_961267.html
BANGKOK – It isn’t easy working as a journalist under Burma’s military rulers. The army has run the country since 1962, and although there were elections in November 2010 – the first in two decades – the army’s party won easily and the new Government is headed by Thein Sein, a former General and Prime Minister under the ancien regime.
On the face of it, the new man in charge is trying to ‘do reform’. He recently met with Aung San Suu Kyi – the extra-parliamentary opposition leader and now subject of a Luc Besson-directed film. She in turn praised Thein Sein, and to some, the new President is cautious ‘reformist’, apparently battling against ‘hardliners’ elsewhere in the Burmese Government. (more…)
