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Dark days for Asian
journalism
By Alan Boyd
Globalization pressures and the war against
terrorism have brought an abrupt end to the new
information age that accompanied the democratic revival
of 1997-98 in much of Asia.
Human rights groups
have charted a steady tightening of media controls since
the Asian economic tigers emerged from their worst
financial upheaval with an enhanced commitment to
individual liberties, including free expression.
There are more reporters behind bars than ever
before. Newspapers are being closed at an accelerating
rate and radio and TV stations gagged in the name of
national unity. Even the cyber jockeys are being pulled
from their seemingly unassailable pedestals.
Media watchdogs fear that the brazen manner of
the latest purge could point to a hardening of official
attitudes toward information flows in both the
established democracies and their less-developed
neighbors.
"The situation in many parts of Asia
remains bad, with China confirming its position as one
of the biggest jailers of journalists, Bangladesh
continuing to prove extremely dangerous, Vietnam still
giving no place for press freedom, North Korea being as
closed a society as one can imagine, Nepal ranking first
in the wake of the harsh crackdown on the Maoist
insurgency... Burma [Myanmar] still a highly repressive
regime, and regular attacks on press freedom in the
Philippines ... ," the World Association of Newspapers
warned in its annual review of press freedom.
Only five years ago, new magazines and
newspapers were hitting the streets daily in Indonesia,
as expression flowered under the patronage of interim
leader Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie following the ousting
of hardline president Suharto in May 1998.
Evergreen political weekly Tempo was allowed to
reopen, with founder and chief editor Gunawan Mohamad
pledging to "develop a culture of transparency and
accountability in the government [and] become a place
that will help defend and expand our freedoms".
Malaysia's muted opposition media bloomed in the
same year, as the persecution of fallen deputy prime
minister Anwar Ibrahim triggered a massive backlash
against state-owned newspapers and broadcasters.
Reporters took a rare political stance, resigning en
masse from the official media to set up boisterous
internet sites that were able to circumvent the
government's information laws by exploiting regulatory
gaps.
Cyber networks proved equally difficult to
contain in socialist China and Vietnam, posing a bigger
threat than traditional radio broadcasts from the BBC
and Voice of America, hitherto the main source of
external news.
External opposition groups took
full advantage of the initial indecision over how to
control the Internet. Myanmese exiles were able to reach
their repressed compatriots through alternative
websites. Right-wing Laotian emigres in France and
Australia vented their displeasure with the communists
in Vientiane.
Only in South Asia, with its
perpetual security overtones, did conditions worsen.
Pakistan suspended all constitutional safeguards after
detonating a nuclear bomb, while Sri Lanka imposed
military censorship on reporting of its civil war.
The liberal breeze elsewhere was not felt only
at a consumer level. Lured by International Monetary
Fund (IMF) cash offers for their beleaguered financial
systems, East Asian states began to alter the entire
culture of suppressing official data.
Thailand
became the first Asian country to incorporate freedom of
personal information in its constitution, establishing a
public channel for accessing government documents and
dismantling state communications monopolies.
Indonesia scrapped security laws that had been
used to silence reporters for four decades. South Korean
president Kim Dae Jung, a former political prisoner,
loosened operating restrictions and installed a
long-time critic as head of the government news agency.
Taiwan legislators launched a campaign for the
review of criminal libel statutes that were hampering
the island's 300 newspapers, four TV networks and 74
radio stations from offering one of the freest
information sources in Asia.
But there were
signs as early as 1999 that it wouldn't last. As the IMF
and other lending agencies shifted their gaze to new
challenges in Russia and Argentina, the reluctant hand
of Asian autocratic reform stilled and was replaced by a
jarring note of political realism.
"The flow of
information became a crucial variable as governments
responded to the social and political dislocations of
the economic crisis; some leaders lifted virtually all
restrictions on freedom of expression, while others
tightened their hold on what was reported and how it was
presented," noted the Committee to Protect Journalists.
By 2001 the trend was definitely towards the
latter, as reporters learned, often at heavy personal
cost, that pluralism and politics do not mix.
Nor could the media remain impervious to the
nationalist outpouring that followed the IMF's
departure, as critics took aim at the ostensible foreign
bias of the structural reforms packages it had demanded
in exchange for financial bailouts.
Globalization became an emotive issue as
multinationals bought up ailing financial institutions
in fire sales, transformed retail markets and forced the
dismantling of state cartels across East Asia.
Newspapers, the only media to gain a large
measure of independence in the reformist spring, were
cowed by an insidious strategy that now viewed
commentary critical of the authorities as an attack on
the national interest. With the onset of the global
terrorism alert, reporters found their access to state
information blocked on flimsy security grounds.
"Many governments stepped up and justified their
repression of opposition or independent voices using
anti-terrorism as an excuse," reported Reporters Without
Borders, the French-based media watchdog. "This included
journalists accused, often without proof, of supporting
Maoist 'terrorists' in Nepal ... Chechen 'terrorists' in
Russia and Tibetan and Uighur 'terrorists' in China."
Indonesia, widely viewed as the litmus test of
press freedom due to its transformation since 1998, drew
heavily on the security card as conservative Megawati
Sukarnoputri brought a pro-military platform to the
presidency.
In November 2001 the Indonesian
parliament established a national broadcasting
commission with the power to revoke licenses or censor
content, and stopped TV and radio stations from
re-broadcasting foreign programs.
With its
provincial insurgencies in Aceh and West Papua,
Indonesia had ample scope to use these laws. Media
monitors were worried that some of the more liberal
governments in the region might follow suit. "In some
countries of Southeast Asia where press freedom is
usually respected, there is a fear that restrictions
might come back, like in Indonesia," noted the World
Association of Newspapers.
"In the Philippines,
journalists are especially vulnerable in the island of
Mindanao where separatist Muslim guerrilla groups are
battling the Philippine army. Three journalists have
already been killed there [in 2002] and the Philippines,
which has an outstanding tradition for investigative
journalism is, at the same time, a very dangerous place
to practice this discipline," the association reported.
Philippine newspapers have been at the forefront
of Asia's liberal media since they played a pivotal role
in the overthrow of dictator Ferdinand Marcos and helped
block his attempted comeback in the mid-1980s.
With their Thai and Indonesian colleagues,
Philippine journalists formed a Southeast Asian Press
Alliance in 1999 to maintain the reformist momentum, and
sought a similar pact within the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). But both fell victim to
the changing domestic climate of press information. Thai
reporters walked out of the ASEAN grouping in late 2000,
complaining of a lack of accountability and
transparency.
Thai journalists had their own
problems at home, with political leaders drawing
increasingly upon legal avenues to silence critics for
the first time since the end of the military era in the
late 1980s. Bank accounts of senior staff at one
newspaper were probed by graft investigators in an
apparent bid to lodge fraud charges that could be used
to suppress reports critical of the government.
Journalists were sacked from a TV station owned by the
prime minister's family.
In the Philippines,
president Joseph Estrada, later hounded from office by
media coverage of his alleged corruption, brought an
opposition newspaper to heel with a tax blitz, a freeze
on state advertising revenues and an interview ban on
its reporters.
Elsewhere, the pattern has been
depressingly similar.
Two conservative
journalists were jailed and a right-wing magazine
temporarily banned in South Korea after they published
separate articles questioning the political leanings of
senior government leaders.
Vietnam acknowledged
in October that one man had been under house arrest for
two years and another was being investigated for
criticizing the government on the Internet. Access to
overseas websites has been restricted.
Malaysia
forced the resignation of an independent newspaper
editor and suspended two of his colleagues last year for
publishing an article on a stalled plot, that was never
officially refuted, to kill prime minister Mohammad
Mahathir. Police in Malaysia forced the temporary
closure of website Malaysiakini.com in January after it
published a letter questioning the special economic
rights accorded to native Malays (See Malaysia: Raid bad news for free
media January 22, 2003).
Burma briefly
banned two privately-owned magazines last year - in one
instance, for carrying an advertisement for a company in
neighboring Thailand, with which it has a strained
relationship.
Reporters have been beaten up for
writing articles critical of political leaders in
Cambodia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and
India. China has singled out reporters from ethnic
minorities for harsh treatment and Laotians are required
by law to write stories favorable to politicians.
In all, Freedom House rated only five countries,
or 21 percent of all Asian states, as having a free
press in 2002, and the same number as partly free. The
remaining 13, representing 54 percent of the total, were
not free.
There were 11 killings of reporters,
making Asia a dangerous news beat to cover. As of
December, another 53 reporters were being held in Asian
prisons, led by Nepal with 18 inmates, Myanmar with 16
and China with 11.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co,
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
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