[APWSLMembers 370] Fwd: Public stages its first protest and 'Failed media in a failed democracy'

[parat nanakorn]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: lek <lek at thailabour.org>
Date: Sep 23, 2006 12:59 AM
Subject: Public stages its first protest and 'Failed media in a failed
democracy'
To: thai_labour at yahoogroups.com, WTO-INTL at listserver.citizen.org,
econlit-gender at gn.apc.org, pga-asia at cupboard.org,
Asia-social-movements at yahoogroups.com

Dear friends,

Two more updates for today. A report on first public protest and an article
from a journalist on 'Failed media in a failed democracy'

In solidarity,

Lek....


*A: Public stages its first protest
*[image: []]
*Nearly 100 people staged the first civilian protest against the coup last
night, calling it illegitimate and a violation of Thai democracy.

*The protesters in front of Bangkok's Siam Centre included university
students, lecturers and social activists. All wore black to mourn the death
of democracy and condemned the coup as counter-productive.

The demonstrators urged the public to resist the new military regime and
vowed to continue their fight until democracy was restored. They called on
people who opposed the coup to wear black or carry black banners.

"We believe that a military coup is not the answer," said Giles Ungphakorn,
a well-known political scientist at Chulalongkorn University.

He said the 1997 Constitution should be restored along with press freedom
and freedom of assembly.

Giles said the coup had annihilated the rights and liberty of Thais. When
asked if he was speaking for the majority of Thais, he said: "We believe we
speak for a significant number of Thais who are too worried or too afraid to
speak."

Protesters held small banners which read "No to Thaksin. No to coup", "Don't
call it reform - it's a coup" and "No to martial law". One small poster
depicted the Democracy Monument with a text in English reading "On vacation
again".

Nonetheless, all protesters denied backing ousted premier Thaksin
Shinawatra.

The protest attracted several bystanders and around 100 Thai and foreign
journalists. Nobody was arrested.

Colonel Manit Wongsomboon, deputy commander of Metropolitan Police Division
6, said police had recorded the protest on video and would examine the tape
to see if protesters had broken martial law forbidding an assembly of more
than five people for political purposes.

Meanwhile, a website has been set up to collect signatures demanding that
the Council for Democratic Reform under Constitutional Monarchy (CDRM)
should not arrest or harm protesters who planned to express their
disagreement with the coup.

The online petition, www.petitiononline.com/thaicoup/petition.html, was the
initiative of Thongchai Winichakul, a professor of history at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States. He declared that all the
signatories regretted the September 19 coup and hoped that democracy would
be restored as soon as possible.

The petition also urged the CDRM to respect freedom of expression, a basic
human right, by allowing those who disagreed with the coup to express their
opinions in the media, on websites and at public gatherings.

More than 400 people from various countries have signed the petition.

In England, a group of postgraduate Thai students at Oxford University
called the Oxford Initiative said it planned to issue a statement to express
disagreement with the coup. It hopes the CDRM will return civilian rule to
Thailand as soon as possible.

However, the statement does not necessarily reflect the opinion of all Thai
students at Oxford, said one of the group leaders.

Pravit Rojanaphruk,

Subhatra Bhumiprabhas,

Pennapa Hongthong

The Nation
http://nationmultimedia.com/2006/09/23/headlines/headlines_30014455.php

-----------
The article below - 'Failed media in a failed democracy' by Pravit
Rojanaphruk, a senior staff member at The Nation, was refused by his own
newspaper. Having just recommended this newspaper I feel ashamed and sad
that the only sound English newspaper we had is rejecting critical writing
on the coup!

-----------------
*B: Article from Pravit Rojanaphruk, *'Failed media in a failed democracy'.

Despite the seemingly wide acceptance of the public, especially the urban
middle classes and old elites, towards Tuesday's night coup, there's still
no solid guarantee that the coup will solve more problems than it may end up
creating.

Did the coup leaders "solved" Thaksin Shinawatra dilemma only to have
created more newer problems? Can two wrongs make thing right, is a question
that needs to be considered.

While it may be too premature to be conclusive about it, the current facts
speak for itself that on Tuesday's night, Thailand was transformed from a
police-state in the making, run by business-political group led by Thaksin,
into to a militarised society ruled by guns and tanks, calling itself the
"Administrative Reform Council under Democratic System with His Majesty the
King as the Head".

Judging from its name, the coup leaders want to break the law, overthrow a
corrupt and abusive but albeit legally elected government, and still calling
themselves "democratic".

The name of the coup group is itself a contradiction in term as it called
itself "democratic" while it opted for undemocratic means to "restore
democracy".

Thailand's status as a failed democracy became all too apparent on Tuesday's
night. Actually it has become a failed democracy long before Tuesday, and
that status continues today.

 Majority of the Thai media have failed to uphold it often boast as its
sacred principle of press freedom and has over the past three days been
quite accommodating or even supportive of the coup makers. They directly or
in-directly helped reinforce a belief that the coup is not only inevitable,
but acceptable and even inherently good.

The coup leaders even summoned all news editors yesterday (Thursday) to
discuss how the media can remain "constructive" in carrying out their duty
into the foreseeable future.

On Wednesday, the coup leadership had already used its gun-boat power to
order all media to censor any writing or reporting that could jeopardised
its efforts "to reform politics towards democracy". That was on top of
another order banning political gathering of five or more persons, making it
"illegal" and subject to maximum of six months imprisonment.

So on Tuesday's night, Thailand's press went from being under the vicious
threat, control and manipulation, of a savvy billionaire-turned-prime
minister to that of one literally being under control and "protection" of
the military's guns and tanks.

As this article went to press, 40 armed soldiers are still guarding the
Nation Multimedia Group (NMG) which owns and ran The Nation newspaper and
Nation Television, for the third consecutive day.

Critical BBC and CNN coverage on Thailand, broadcasted through the kingdom's
UBC Cable Television, Thailand's biggest cable TV operator, have also been
interrupted with music and pictures of Hollywood stars like Angelina Jolie
and Tom Cruise appearing instead. The programming will return shortly, was
the message on the screen in English which appeared yesterday, without any
explaination while the programmes have to disappear at all.

Some journalists even think like the coup leaders, saying it's "natural" for
coup makers to curb press freedom because they would need sometime to
crackdown on pro-Thaksin media and elements.

 Thaksin infamously think that any media which criticise the then
ruling-party and his administration are not being "constructive" and is his
enemy, and tries to eliminate them through various means. Now, the junta
leaders, and even some journalists, appear to think just like Thaksin's.
When journalist's thinking and rationale are becoming akin and approbatic to
the coup leaders, then democratic culture is truly endangered.

The public who support the coup, they were said on some local televisions
yesterday (Thursday) that the media is "free at last".

At present, the broadcast media is encouraged or even insisted upon, to
cricise Thaksin at will. When state-controlled broadcast media chameleonly
changed colour overnight after a coup, it has neither become free nor
independent - it just got a new boss - who's expecting those televisions to
be equally subservient to them.

Both Thaksin and his nemisis, the coup leaders who toppled him, apparently
believe that Thai people are not mature enough to be able to make sound
judgement, through open debate and free press, by themselves. Both the old
administration of Thaksin and the new regime apparently do not think that
people can and should think for themselves.

For the press to continue to give the coup leaders the luxury of a honeymoon
period and resigned itself to the inevitability of the coup, citing half a
dozen or more reasons why people should simply accept and endorse the new
regime, the Thai press is itself committing a professional suicide in the
eyes of the world. It has abandoned its responsibility as a watchdog, and
turning itself into a lapdog.

They have failed to litmus test of press freedom.

 How long such illegitimate and unconstitutional orders will last, we do not
know. But surely, it will have a long-lasting impact instilling into the
mind of a younger generation of Thais that indeed using brute force to
settle differences, is not only an acceptable but a preferred method of
solving political and all other differences.

source:
http://www.prachatai.com/05web/th/home/page2.php?mod=mod_ptcms&ContentID=5098&SystemModuleKey=HilightNews&System_Session_Language=Thai

Junya Lek Yimprasert
Thai Labour Campaign
P.O. Box 219, Ladprao Post Office
Bangkok 10310

Tel: + 66 1 617 5491
Fax: + 66 2 933 1951

www.thailabour.org
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