THAILAND: Government Cracks Down on Websites in Censorship Drive

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, May 4 (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.

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