Today, the MICT has lifted the ban on YouTube, but in other news Veoh and Metacafe have been banned as Asia Sentinel reports:
Veoh, a site similar to YouTube, was blocked earlier this month after a user posted a rrisque personal video purportedly of the Thai Royal FamilyICT Minister Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom has said that YouTube would be unblocked once Thailand’s internet service providers (ISPs) have installed cache engines that allow officials to block individual URLs instead of entire websites. Supposedly this was going to happen a month ago, but still today visitors get this Thai-language message when clicking on YouTube, Veoh or Metacafe: “Sorry [state telecom company] TOT as an organization of Thailand has seized the connection of this website due to certain content, messages and images that are inappropriate that have had a tremendous impact on the hearts of Thai people.”
COMMENT: Hmm. The first think any person who hears about the ban will go onto Veoh and look for the video. Has the government never heard of the Streisand effect?
The problem that free-speech advocates have is that YouTube’s closure comes amid a climate of suppression that has persisted since the military deposed premier Thaksin Shinawatra in a coup last September. While Thaksin also stifled the media through heavy-handed libel lawsuits, corporate maneuvers and withdrawing advertising dollars of his family’s firms to unfriendly papers, the new government has done nothing to improve media freedom.
Although the new constitution supposedly increases media freedoms, eight laws sitting before the military-appointed National Legislative Assembly will actually undermine the guarantees in the new charter, Joel Simon and Shawn Crispin of the Committee to Protect Journalists wrote in The Nation newspaper earlier this month.
“The government’s new willingness to openly censor Internet-posted news suddenly puts Thailand in league with Asia’s more notorious media freedom violators, including the likes of China, Vietnam and Burma,” they wrote. “More broadly, it shows how the application of laws intended to protect the honor of Thailand’s widely revered monarch can have a sweeping and adverse impact on freedom of expression. With YouTube blocked, the Thai people are cut off from a vital new tool of global communication.”
Supinya Klangnarong, secretary-general of the Campaign for Popular Media Reform, said in an interview that the government had yet to distinguish between sites that are truly offensive to the monarchy and those that express legitimate political opposition.
“The media environment is not better than under Thaksin; it’s worse,” said Supinya, who suffered first-hand when Thaksin’s Shin Corp leveled a 400-million-baht libel lawsuit against her — a case she eventually won.
“Thaksin tried to control things too much, but we were able to fight back,” she said. “But under this government when you try to fight back they say you don’t love the nation, don’t love the king, and you are a bad person. They scare people from upholding these rights, which deeply affects the country’s democracy.”
COMMENT: The anti-Thaksin media, who championed Supinya last year as a freedom-fighter, now ignore her. Suddenly, it seems she is persona non-grata because she doesn't subscribe to the coup was "good" philosophy.
Remember, as you pointed out before, the national security statute that enumerates the lese majeste law also outlaws criticism of foreign heads of states and ambassadors, so I wonder if those hypocrites at Google will start taking down videos that mock George Bush, etc. Well, we know the answer to that question.