SEAPA News Release

March 11, 2002

BANGKOK -- Newly-elected President of Thai Journalists Association (TJA) today urged the Senate and the House of Representative to set up a special committee to investigate into Thaksin government’s latest attacks on media freedom.

“We want the parliament to examine whether the government’s actions against media was unconstitutional or not,” Veera Pratheepchaikul said after submitting an open letter signed by 1,195 media professionals to Senate Chairman Manoonkrit Roopkhachorn and House Speaker Uthai Pimchaichon accordingly at the Parliament House.

“We agreed that the latest government’s crackdown on critical media not only infringed upon press freedom but also basic rights of the people as guaranteed under the Constitution,” Veera said. Those are the right to free expression, the rights to access to information, and individual rights.

The letter referred to last week’s suspension of political radio programs of Nation Multimedia Group Co and Anti-Money Laundering Office’s prior order to investigate the banking transactions and assets of prominent journalists who are critical of the government and their family members.

“We hope the parliament as one of the three pillar democratic institutions will rightly perform its check-and-balance role when the executive branch abuses its power, ”he said.

“We fully understand the senate chairman and the house speaker must be impartial in politics but the government’s current abuse of its power to threaten media freedom represented a monumental problem of basic rights and freedom of the people being violated,” he said

“We still have high hope that these two institutions will kindly attend to our demands and will not let the people down,” he said.

TJA will tomorrow submit the same letter to the National Human Rights Commission.