Censors hurt the country
The week following the Songkran festival saw a so-called ''great debate'' over culture, society and individual freedom. Three young girls kicked off the generally intemperate discussion with their now famous dance.
One of the important persons disgusted with the risque display, Culture Minister Niphit Intharasombat, said that the exhibition had destroyed the country's reputation. If that is the standard by which to judge, then a survey by the international watchdog Freedom House is even more important. As Songkran holidays drew to a close, the agency released a study which declared that the internet censorship in Thailand made the country ''not free''.
Mr Nipit would have us all believe that the image of the country can be shattered by one titillating performance seen by hundreds in an internet video. In fact, the international reputation of Thailand is shaped by far more than a one-time street dance.
Democracy, corruption, openness, rule of law and international cooperation all count hundreds of times more than the topless dance. In a country where it is commonly said that ''Thai means free'', heavy-handed restrictions on freedom harm the reputation of the country, sometimes irreparably.
Freedom House last year rated the overall media freedom of Thailand as ''partly free... threatened''. But the more closely focussed report on the internet, released a week ago, made Thailand the only aspiring democracy among 10 true dictatorships, including China, Iran and Belarus.
Freedom House reckons that Thailand is one of the five countries in the world that are ''particularly vulnerable to deterioration'' of what internet freedom remains, along with Jordan, Russia, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. This is not just bad company, but truly bad for the international image of the country.
The excesses of government and its deep involvement in deceptive censorship is well known. Websites and pages have been banned, blocked and blacklisted by the tens of thousands. No one knows just how many pages are blocked; even Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva claims not to know how many court orders his minister in charge of the censorship has obtained.
Counting police edicts, military ''emergency action'', independent action by the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, the blocked web pages may total half a million.
Last June, Information and Communication Technology Minister Juti Krairiksh said that any internet provider which did not instantly comply with his ''request'' to block a website would lose its licence.
The Freedom House report cites April 7 of last year as a watershed day. That is when the Abhisit government declared a Bangkok emergency, turned censorship over to the army, and immediately saw a decline in media freedom, particularly on the internet.
The emergency is over, the government has given lip service to reconciliation, and the censorship has increased. Freedom House rightly condemns the self-censorship of many, perhaps even most online media in Thailand _ what it calls pre-emptive action by internet service providers and content hosts.
The maximum penalty for the so-called obscene display by the three girls was a fine of 500 baht. But those who have placed the video of their actions online face five years in jail. When the penalty for reporting an event is so much greater than the penalty for the actual crime, something is amiss. This is the sort of action which will actually harm the reputation of the country.
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