From another list (pointed out by Bala Pillai...)
In the light of Malaysiakini's case, a regional analysis may be interesting
for some on this list.
May also be helpful if some of those in the countries mentioned
validate/debunk things written down by Alan Boyd...
>
> Asia Times Online
> 30 January 2003
>
>
> 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.
>