A well-known Syrian activist and filmmaker was slain on Monday while filming clashes in Homs. Bassel Al Shahade was a Fulbright Scholar studying at Syracuse University before leaving his studies in film to document his country’s revolution at the start of unrest in Syria last year. Shahade had been in Homs for two months training citizen journalists before his death.
Chiranuch Premchaiporn, director of the news and current affairs website Prachatai, was today convicted by the Bangkok Criminal court and sentenced to a fine and a suspended eight month prison term.
Her crime was to fail to act quickly enough to remove user comments that were defamatory of the monarchy. At the time that she was charged, Prachatai ran very active discussion boards and provided a unique platform for the kind of political debate that was impossible to have elsewhere. Thousands of users contributed to discussions every day on issues ranging from education to politics.
Chiranuch, Jiew to friends, had faced a sentence of 20 years in prison on 10 counts of “insult” to the monarchy, or lèse majesté and the court showed some leniency in convicting her on only one count and suspending the prison sentence. Judge Kampol Rungrat based his guilty verdict on one particular post that was left on the Prachatai site for 20 days, which he considered too long.
Chiranuch’s case brought together two sets of particularly restrictive laws: the Computer Crimes Act and the lèse majesté law. Thailand’s Computer Crimes Act and associated regulations have been relied upon to shut down or block tens of thousands of websites. In 2010 alone, the authorities themselves reported that 40,000 web pages had been blocked — while activists put the number at at least 110,000. Many of these include political sites.
Thailand’s lèse majesté law has been used to stifle political expression and dozens of people have been convicted to lengthy prison sentences. Only three weeks ago, a 62 year-old man convicted for sending insulting SMS messages to the personal secretary of the prime minister — which he strenuously denied — died in prison while serving a 20-year sentence.
The combination of the two sets of laws in this case was a highly toxic one and in a way, today’s verdict was perhaps the best possible outcome for Chiranuch. The court had very little leeway. She may still appeal and seek to clear her name but to do so would risk a more severe sentence being imposed.
But while today’s outcome was moderately good for Chiranuch (the suspended prison term does mean she will have to tightly control her website for fear of the sentence being activated) it is bad for freedom of expression. The discussion board on which the comments had been posted and which allowed space for political debate that was not permitted elsewhere has already been shut down because of the case. Others will no doubt follow.
The international free speech community had made Chiranuch a poster child for internet freedom. She shared a platform with Hillary Clinton at a Google-sponsored conference in the Hague in 2011 and spent the last two years traveling the world raising awareness of her case as well as the wider issue it stood for. Chiranuch’s lawyers conducted a solid defence and had pointed out that a strict interpretation of Thailand’s Computer Crimes Act would put the country out of step with international standards on freedom of expression – and that it would be bad for the development of online commerce in the country. Google and others had made it clear that a guilty verdict would impede the development of their business in Thailand.
The Thai courts convicted her nevertheless. This sent a clear signal: the authorities will not hesitate to press charges no matter how high the defendant’s profile. This can only lead to increased self-censorship and a further tightening of the space for free and open political debate in Thailand.
Peter Noorlander is chief executive of the Media Legal Defence Initiative, which assisted in the defence of the case
Israel’s Attorney General will indict a journalist from daily newspaper Haaretz, for possession of classified documents. The State Prosecutor’s Office claims that Uri Blau had thousands of top secret and military documents in his possession, which are believed to have been stolen by former IDF soldier Anat Kamm. Blau will be charged with “aggravated espionage” under Israel’s Penal Code, for which he faces a maximum of seven years in prison.
Business secretary Vince Cable has said he had heard of “veiled threats” to his party connected with News Corp’s bid for full control of satellite broadcaster BSkyB.
“I had heard directly and indirectly that there had been veiled threats that my party would be done over in the News International press. I took those things seriously and I was very concerned,” Cable told the Leveson Inquiry this morning.
When asked about the source of the threats, Cable, who was initially in charge of adjudicating the bid, said he believed they came in conversations with News Corp lobbyist Fred Michel but could not be absolutely certain.
In his witness statement Cable said he received reports that several of his Lib Dem colleagues were approached by News Corp representatives “in a way I judged to be inappropriate”.
“This added a sense of being under siege from a well-organised operation,” he added. “Coming from a party that had hitherto been at best ignored by News International, this was a new and somewhat unsettling experience.”
Cable was removed from his role in judging News Corp’s £8 billion bid for BSkyB, launched in June 2010, after he told two undercover Telegraph reporters in December of the same year that he had “declared war” on Rupert Murdoch. His comments led to accusations he was biased against the media mogul.
Cable said he had “offloaded pent-up feelings” in language he would not normally use, and described the situation outside his constituency surgery at the time as a “near-riot”.
Cable wrote in his witness statement that his references to “war on Murdoch” were “making the point, no doubt rather hyperbolically, that l had no intention of being intimidated. Clearly, I should not have volunteered my unprompted opinion, even in a private, confidential conversation in a constituency surgery. I subsequently apologised.”
He also wrote that he was “concerned about the unhealthy political influence of some newspaper proprietors including the Murdochs”, but added this was “not a view about the particular circumstances of the BSkyB takeover.”
Cable outlined that there were plurality problems presented by at 100 per cent ownership of BSkyB, namely that the number outlets under different owners would have been reduced and the possibility of new owners replacing management who would have influenced the choice of editors.
News Corp’s bid for the takeover was dropped last summer following the phone hacking scandal.
The Inquiry continues this afternoon.
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