(SEAPA/IFEX) – On 15 January 2007, Thailand’s military leaders moved to block CNN broadcasts of the cable network’s exclusive interview with deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, less than a week after warning the Thai press about giving the ousted leader such access to the media. Thai papers are reporting that the Council for National Security […]
(SEAPA/IFEX) – On 15 January 2007, Thailand’s military leaders moved to block CNN broadcasts of the cable network’s exclusive interview with deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, less than a week after warning the Thai press about giving the ousted leader such access to the media.
Thai papers are reporting that the Council for National Security (CNS), as Thailand’s ruling military council is known, had asked for the “cooperation” of UBCTV, Thailand’s leading cable service provider, to pull the interview every time it gets play from CNN. As of 16 January, the three-minute segment was still being replaced by still images with no audio.
Meanwhile, Freedom Against Censorship-Thailand (FACT), a civil society movement, reported that CNN’s website, http://www.CNN.com , suddenly became inaccessible from the evening of 15 January to the morning of the 16th. Attempts to up-load CNN.com repeatedly turned up error messages. CNN.com was accessible again by the morning of the 16 January, but FACT suspects the involvement of the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT) in the night-inaccessibility of the website from within Thailand.
The week prior, CNS summoned media leaders to a meeting and “requested” that they refrain from airing comments from and interviews with Thaksin’s lawyers and cronies (see IFEX alert of 11 January 2007). CNS spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd said, in an interview on Channel 3, that while “CNS is still willing to listen to critics . . . we just feel that it is inappropriate to listen to opinions of the old political party that was the cause of disunity and confusion in the country.”
Last week’s meeting with the press marked the first time the CNS actually invoked military order No. 10 since issuing it on 20 September 2006, the day after it staged a bloodless putsch. The order urges media cooperation in reporting state affairs accurately and constructively, with peace and national unity as the primary considerations.
