What a lot of international exposure the glossy white uniform new Thai government has received these past 24 hours. Unfortunately, the BBC, New York Times and Economist coverage is all pretty consistent with what is here. Since censorship necessarily undermines the possibility of informed opinion of worth on any and all censored topics, the primary purpose of censorship being without exception to enforce ignorance on the censored topics, the sad truth must be that the Thai people rely on foreign media if they aspire to informed opinion of worth about many of their own domestic affairs. And of course, the censorship to enforce ignorance extends to the blocking of foreign sources. Worse, since many Thai people cannot make use of foreign sources, the peculiar situation must obtain, as it does for the benighted North Koreans, where on many topics, your average non-Thai resident is able to have a better understanding of Thai affairs than is legally possible within Thailand. This is hardly a sign of a democratically inclined government. More disturbing still, as the awful Thaksin Shinawatr demonstrated with his abuse of libel and other laws to censor, the ignorance that follows from suppressing free speech, which is necessary if corruption, errors and other abuses are to be exposed, is even greater now than under the previous governments! It is not consistent to claim to oppose corruption and then to intensify the very conditions of impunity that enable and encourage corruption and other evils to flourish under officially imposed veils of secrecy at the expense of the people, to say nothing of the violation of basic human rights that such censorship with intimidation constitutes.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 13:06:58 +0000
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