Prachatai, and, Free, Speech

At the "Thailand in transition: a historic challenge and what's next?" event on December 8 (Bangkok Governor Sukhumbhand's speech blogged about here), former Senator and founder of Prachatai (and current Board member of the government-funded channel ThaiPBS) Jon Ungpakorn spoke and introduced the speakers. Nirmal Ghosh of the Straits Times has blogged on what Jon said. Key excerpt:

It was former Senator Jon Ungpakorn, who founded Prachatai, who put the issue in a nutshell, speaking of the 'stifling of the media' under democratically elected and military governments alike.

'The media does not discuss many of the bad things that take place in strong institutions in Thailand,' he said. The military budget, for instance, is never questioned.

'Since the coup of 2006, Prachatai has been subjected to a lot of persecution by the police and establishment. Unfortunately the laws in Thailand and the way they are interpreted make it difficult for freedom of speech.'

Prachatai's director Jiranuch Premchaiporn, he noted, is under prosecution for alleged violation of the Computer Crimes Act – passed by an unelected military-appointed government. Ms Jiranuch was in the audience [BP: See BP's post on the arrest on Chiranuch here). 

'Prachatai will always be controversial,' he said. 'If it stops being controversial, it's not worth the bandwidth it takes up.'

BP: The last sentence relates to the role of Prachatai, as an alternative media source. As blogged about just before the September 19, 2006 coup:

Prachatai provides an "independent, alternative" news source and was setup by senator Jon Ungphakorn (source). Prachatai is run by a "mixed board of NGO and media representatives" and is (has been?) funded by the Open Society Institute and other organisations. It certainly has a left wing perspective on events, but is not simply an anti-Thaksin website. I find the best articles on Prachatai are its interviews with academics - unlike certain media outlets it publishes the full interview and you don't get the selective quotes pushing the newspaper's agenda. Two good interviews are this interview with Dr Pichit Likitkijsomboon - see this Bookish post for a good explanation - and this recent interview with Dr Srisompob Jitpiromsri.

As Jon noted in his speech, Prachatai gained popularity after the 2006 coup where it was one of the few sources of information critical of the coup and then the coup-installed Surayud government. Criticism started to follow about 6 months after the coup in other segments of the media, but many segments of the media ignored what the military as up to in 2007 as BP blogged about at the time:

Prachatai were one of the first Thai media sites to contain a statement against the coup. They then carried one of the few critical articles on Surayud (critical in the sense that it was not "fawning" like most articles on Surayud). They also were on top of the CNS propaganda campaign (sorry CNS public information awareness campaign) from the beginning. Some media outlets have just ignored the story. Prachatai has almost exclusively been a Thai language news site, but now they are translating some of their opinion pieces and articles into English.

BP: Jon makes an important point about the lack of investigation into the military budget. In the year and a half after the coup, the military budget went up from 86 Billion Baht to 143 Billion Baht and has continued to increase since then. You also had 2006 coup leader admit to a 1 Billion Baht slash fund for "food and drinks" as a reward for those who staged the coup. The Thai media are so pathetic that they devote almost no resources to looking into this or raising the questions even when others raise valid questions that there is more than a possibility of corruption - see here and here. The media are happier to go after other corruption scandals with a vengeance, but don't dare/want to go after the military.

Talking of the military and free speech, the military is directly involved in spreading rumours and then suppressing speech.