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Asia's community media struggle to be
heard
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - Satien Chantorn, a fruit farmer, has
become the symbol of defiance of an information
revolution that is gradually spreading across Thailand.
In mid-November, the police were ordered to
arrest Satien, 52, for a program he broadcast from a
community radio station in Ang Thon province, central
Thailand. Earlier, the local police had seized the radio
station's transmitter.
Satien's act, according
to officials at the Post and Telegraph Department, was a
violation of the rules governing the airwaves in this
Southeast Asian country. Communities cannot set up such
stations and take to the airwaves because parliament has
not yet passed laws overturning feudal arrangements that
give government authorities control over them. This is
despite the 1997 constitution that recognizes a
community sector - separate from the government and
commercial ones.
However, the outpouring of
support for Satien from some academics and media reform
activists has given him a reprieve. The police have
still to act on the arrest order.
But the most
significant backing has come from the over 150 local
communities who for about a year now have turned away
from the diet of information served by the mainstream
media to set up their own radio stations. The first such
station to go on air was in Kanchanaburi, in western
Thailand, in December 2001.
"This is to be
expected," said Supinya Klangnarong of the Campaign for
Popular Media Reform, a Bangkok-based non-governmental
organization (NGO). "Communities want a medium to
express their voice, their views and to gain information
that matters to them, and the government is denying them
that."
"The growth of so many community stations
this year is also a challenge to the mainstream media,
which does not serve local community needs," added
Ubonrat Siriyuvasak of the faculty of communication arts
at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University. "There is a heavy
Bangkok focus in the mainstream media."
Satien's
case - one that will determine if the Thai authorities
will stick to their threat to silence the community
radio revolution or recognize communities' right to
their own media - is emblematic of a drama being enacted
in a few other countries across Asia. An increasing
number of communities in the region are struggling to
assert their right to gain space, a voice and
recognition by establishing their own media, be it via
radio or on the Internet.
"Community radio
stations and other forms of community media are still at
a pilot stage and are struggling to assert themselves in
Asia," said Pradip Thomas, editor of Media Development,
a quarterly journal published by the London-based World
Association for Christian Communication. "In some places
it reflects the political realities of the countries,
where civil society groups and communities are involved
in pushing for more space to establish community media.
In spite of good things that have happened, it is always
a one-step-forward-two-steps-back situation."
A
seminar held here over the weekend provided snapshots of
the struggles of community media as well as the inroads
they have made so far.
In South Korea,
homosexual communities have had to endure government
pressure. A popular gay and lesbian website was shut
down by the country's Information Communication Ethics
Committee.
In India, communities aspiring to set
up radio stations cannot do so due to laws that give the
government control over the airwaves. This has
continued, said Thomas, despite a Supreme Court decision
in the mid-1990s declaring that the airwaves are owned
by the public. The rest of South Asia has little to
offer by way of community radio stations thanks to its
political climate, say experts at the seminar. The few
community stations that exist include one in Sri Lanka
and two in Nepal.
As a result, many in India are
turning to small newspapers, Internet sites and videos
to "create space for their voices to be heard," said
Gargi Sen of the Magic Lantern Foundation, a New
Delhi-based NGO supportive of local communities creating
their own media outlets. "Through such efforts
communities are trying to fight for their right to
communicate," she added, pointing to examples in such
places as Goa and Madurai.
The Philippines "is a
special case in Asia" where communities have turned to
their own media outlets to assert their rights and
identity, said Alan Alegre of the Foundation for Media
Alternatives, a Quezon City-based NGO. "There is the
free-media tradition that has helped, and the law." A
typical example is that of the farmers in Negros
Occidental province in central Philippines, where they
used community media to help get land back from the
region's landlords.
But on the whole, Asian
communities have still to chalk up the impressive
achievements of their counterparts in regions such as
Latin America, said Bruce Girard of the Campaign for
Communication Rights in the Information Society
Campaign.
Community media are "widespread in
Latin America", he said, but there is growing interest
in some Asian countries about its significance. The best
example is war-ravaged Afghanistan, where President
Hamid Karzai backs the introduction of community radio
stations, Girard said. "There are only two community
radio stations now, but with plans to promote growth of
local communities, the stations could grow."
But
those like Girard and Thomas do not expect community
media to dent the monopoly on information held by the
mainstream media. "These are little drops in the ocean,"
said Thomas.
So activists are looking to the
World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), to be
held in Geneva in December 2003, to gain recognition of
communities' right to have their own media. "The WSIS
will be the ideal place for this issue to gain
legitimacy. A community's right to communicate must be
recognized as part of the human-rights language," Sen
said.
(Inter Press Service)
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