Dark days for press freedom in Asia

		1	press freedom, Asia, journalists, massacre

Reading AsianCorrespondent.com over the past week or two has thrown into sharp focus the lack of press freedom in Asia. The shocking massacre of up to 37 journalists and media workers in the Philippines on Monday sent shock waves through the media world.

Journalism has long been rated as one of the more dangerous professions as reporters and photographers are regularly killed in warzones and targeted for their fight for freedom of information. Monday's carnage, however, has brought violence towards the media to a whole new level.

It would be easy to brand this as a local and isolated incident. It is not. Certainly the scale and the brutality of the slaughter is unprecedented. However, it is symptomatic of the harsh treatment of the press we see throughout Asia. Thankfully it rarely comes to murder, but restrictions on press freedom and mistreatment of journalists is rife.

Only one Asian country makes it into Reporters Without Borders' top 20 in the Press Freedom Index for 2009, which is Japan at No 17. The next best is Hong Kong at No 48. From there it goes steadily downhill. You just have to look at some of the correspondents' views and experiences from this website to see what is really happening with press freedom in Asia.
 

Singapore

Singapore has long had a reputation for restricting the media. On Monday, AsianCorrespondent.com blogger and journalist detailed his run-in with the powers that be.

“Having worked as a freelance journalist in Singapore for the last year, I was forced to leave last week after the government refused to renew my work visa without warning or explanation.

“I can only conclude that the government had a problem with something I wrote. I'd love to know what it was but all my attempts to elicit this information, through official and unofficial channels, have failed thus far.”

Ben is currently in London reassessing his options.

Update: Clement Tan posted his views on the Ben Bland affair on Wednesday.

Thailand

The Thai media enjoy much more freedom than their colleagues in Singapore but must still tread carefully when it comes to reporting on certain subjects. Negative opinions on the royal family are a big no-no, with strict lese majeste laws and a government that is more than happy to enforce them. Here are a few telling examples.

It is estimated that over 4,000 websites have been blocked this year for insulting Thailand's revered monarchy. The lese majeste laws are certainly archaic, but it is the fact that the government uses them as a threat to discourage wider criticism of the powers that be that is the real problem. AsianCorrespondent  blogger Bangkok Pundit regularly writes about how the lese majeste laws are used to stifle the press in this otherwise progressive country.

China

In his recent 'Town Hall' in Shanghai, US President Barack Obama launched a thinly veiled attack on the Chinese government for its restrictions on the press and the internet. True to form, hardly anybody in China got to see it because it was not broadcast.

In his recent post Obama lifts the Bamboo Curtain Kien Leong gives a fascinating insight into the 'Great Firewall of China. Here's an excerpt:

The censorship has turned to blogs and social media. This distributed, decentralised method is much harder to control than network and portal news. Even with the ten-thousands of network policemen that are at work at the Ministry of Public Security, it would be impossible to censor all of the content in blogs and other forms of social media. It is much easier to simple block any site with the words “blog” in the title, keywords or page description.

India

India is ranked 105 by Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), and it's a rating that would surprise even critics of the country's vibrant press. India's journalists fancy their country's media system as a vibrant Fourth Estate and as one of the two functoning democratic institutions, judiciary being the other. Although freedom of the press is not directly and explicitly guaranteed as in the United States, it is construed to be a fundamental right by virtue of Article 19 1A of the Constitution which mandates freedom of expression subject to several conditions. The press in India has traditionally enjoyed playing its watchdog function although there has been a distict loss of vigour in the last 15 or so years.

However, a closer look at the RSF archives on India (and also here) give you an idea why India's rating is so poor. Journalists are hobbled in exactly those areas where the country's federal government is faced with insurgencies or internal dissension: Kashmir most notably, but also a large part of the Northeast and a wide swathe through the heart of India populated by mainly tribal societies. It is in this periphery of the nation's psyche that India's ruling establishment finds itself reluctant to extend the indulgence that it willingly gives to the press in north, west and southern India.

It is in these regions that extrajudicial killings have been rampant. The fact that the nation's major media houses rarely, if ever, give their attention to this issue speaks of a conspiracy of silence. It is a self-serving and ultimately self-defeating silence. While the country's journalists boast about the freedom they enjoy, the state uses every sleight of hand to ensure that that freedom counts for little in defining the issues of the day. For instance, India has a Right to Information (RTI) Act by which a media house (indeed every citizen) can scrutinise government documents, but the government defines national security so broadly that all but the most innocuous information is exempt from RTI oversight.

In sum, India's media systems operate within a wide circle of free space, but do not explore its edges enough. Critics would say it is by mutual consent between the media owners and the state. 

These are just a few examples of the challenges the press faces in some of the more progressive countries in the region. The freedom of information issues under harsher regimes in countries like Myanmar and North Korea call for a whole other argument.