December 15, 2003	Monday	Shawwal 20, 1424

KANCHANABURI (Thailand): India is often called the world’s biggest democracy, but journalists there are increasingly becoming targets for reprisals and police coercion, as well as legal action from state governments.

Thailand too is perceived as having a relatively open media, but the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has come under fire for undermining critical media and shrinking the space for independent reportage.

The Philippines has a reputation for being among the freest and noisiest media in Asia, but it is also there where 14 journalists have been killed since January 2001, many from small publications in the countryside. The seven killings in 2003 are said to be the highest number in a year ever.

These trends show that societies that have more room for free media rather than, say, nations like Burma or China are facing more sophisticated, subtler and trickier problems. Threats to media come in many other forms apart from open government control, use of advertising, or physical threats — or a combination of all of these.

“The press in India have suffered unfairly from the use of privilege by governments that cannot accept criticism,” stated Nirmala Lakshman, joint editor of Chennai-based ‘The Hindu’ newspaper.

The atmosphere of intolerance for dissenting views and exposes of corruption has led to 100 cases being filed against newspapers and magazines in Tamil Nadu state, she told a forum this week on media, human rights and democracy organized by Bangkok-based regional human rights lobby Forum-Asia and the South-east Asia Press Alliance (SEAPA). ‘The Hindu’ itself was a target of such action by the government of Tamil Nadu state, whose assembly in November sentenced the newspaper’s editor and four other journalists to 15 days’ imprisonment for “breach of privilege” for articles critical of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa.

Thailand’s media environment has deteriorated since the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, sensitive to criticism, came into power in 2001, says Kavi Chongkittavorn, deputy managing editor of the Nation Group, which runs the English-language daily ‘The Nation’.

The government’s cultivation of a more pliant media, its popularity and the use of business to weaken media, has made Thailand a “superficial democracy”, he adds.

When newspapers criticize government action, he said: “Read those newspapers. Let them write. When they criticize, listen to them. Thank them when they said the right thing, or tell them to take it easy when they give wrong criticism.”

Ahead of the 2001 general election, which Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai Party won with a thumping majority, Shin Corp, owned by Thaksin’s family, took over the television station iTV due to what it said at the time was purely business reasons.

Over in the Philippines, the irony is that the attacks on its journalists have not even been getting enough coverage in the media, says Carlos Conde, a journalist and officer of the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines.

Many of the attacks are carried out by those offended by stories carried by the media, including in some instances by police officers. On Nov 17, the police chief of Tangub city in southern Misamis Occidental province challenged a reporter for DXDD radio station to a duel because of his reporting on illegal gambling. “The predicament of Filipino journalists flies in the face of the myth being peddled that the Philippines has the freest press in South-east Asia,” he said.

“I would agree with the general description of our press as free-wheeling. But free? That would be a lie,” he wrote. —Dawn/The InterPress News Service.