Censorship in Thailand

by Thai Travel Meister

I don’t want to get deep into the censorship debate that shadows over Thailand nor do I wish to delve into anything negative about anything in this blog (other than the news section of course which is RSS fed direct from The Bangkok Post). But today I witnessed a form of censorship firsthand and it just irked me enough to write this article.

To read the long and nasty article on censorship and how it relates to Thailand click here for the entire WikiPedia article.

Today on Thai Visa they emailed an alert to everyone that a gag order would be applied for by deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s children who are still in Thailand.

“IMPORTANT UPDATE FOR THAIVISA MEMBERS

The Supreme Court may issue a media gag order banning all Thai media to speculate on the judicial decision ahead of the Thaksin verdict session, scheduled for February 26.

If the gag order is approved, we may not be able to discuss or update you on current news via our forum, website or newsletter.

NOW: Be sure to follow Thaivisa on Facebook or Twitter to keep you instantly updated:

IT’s EASY:

Join us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/farang
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/georgebkk”

To me, this sounded like normal Thai politics and their ways of censoring things without ‘censoring’ things but calling it ‘other things’. Did you follow that? What struck me was that this gag order is apparently something quite serious as in 7 years I’ve never gotten a notification like this from Thai Visa. They said that they may not be able to report on any speculation leading up to the court’s ruling on the seizure of Thaksin’s assets but that they will circumvent the Establishment by posting the news anyhow on Twitter and Facebook.

I’m trying to wrap my head around why it’s OK for the apparent owners of this foreign-hosted website, ThaiVisa.com, to post censored information on social networks, just not their forum. Perhaps they don’t want to risk their asset, being www.thaivisa.com from being blacklisted by the MICT. If that’s the case, then why slap them in the face and report the ‘forbidden information’ on another platform? It would seem to me that directly posting ‘forbidden information’ on their site or indirectly via another platform (with their names all over it) would have the same repercussions.

What do you think? Discuss;

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