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Thailand
“The foreign media fucked up as usual. They came late, ran around the disaster zone like a bunch of tourists and followed the official line that the Thai government dealt with the situation perfectly.”
-Rescue volunteer, 37
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Thailand's constitution contains 67 provisions protecting
freedom of expression and human rights. It's the most progressive
constitution in the region, but only on paper. Since the election of
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra there have been over 20 cases
of journalists and editors harassed or dismissed to appease the
government. The prime minister has shown little tolerance for
press freedom, but why should he? He owns Shincorp, a massive
media and telecoms conglomerate, and most of Thailand's TV and
radio stations are now either in the hands of politicians or the
Shinawatra family. Any remaining independent voices are easily
silenced, like Supinya Klangnarong, head of the Campaign for
Popular Media Reform, who is being sued by a Shincorp company
for criticizing the government's close links with big business. The
prime minister's media management skills were most recently
shown in the aftermath of the December 2004 tsunami,
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..when he [Prime Minister]
made several visits to affected areas and confidently pronounced
a death toll of 2,000. Rescue volunteers knew differently.
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when he
made several visits to affected areas and confidently pronounced
a death toll of 2,000. Rescue volunteers knew differently. “One
government official put the figure at 10 times that,” a volunteer toldCOLORS, “but only off the record. Blogs reported more accurate
figures, but they're only available to a small computer–educated
elite. The vast majority of Thais have no idea what happened down
there.” And a significant majority of them thought the prime
minister handled the situation so well that they voted him into
an unprecedented second term of office in February 2005. “The 200
Thai volunteers and survivors who were down there during the
crucial first four days reacted with disgust when they listened
to the radio broadcasts and politicians' speeches,” says the
volunteer, who prefers to remain anonymous. “But rescue
volunteers are used to that. They're always cleaning up events that
never happened.”
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Far left to right: Thai volunteers carry a corpse from the sea in Kao Lak.
Over 100 passports, mainly Swedish, discovered in the remains of a resort at Laem Paga Lang beach.
A lake formed by the tsunami in a street in Kao Lak. |
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