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Bangkok -- I spent the better part of last week talking with local journalists in Kuala Lumpur, all of whom were trying to come to terms with the arrest, trial and civil unrest related to the ouster of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. But the conversations were not about reporting; they were about not reporting. Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad is openly contemptuous of the press and the mainstream media are controlled by the ruling party. He has reacted to the economic crisis by tightening controls on his currency and his people. Reporters are not free to tell the story. ''This is tearing us apart,'' said a senior editor with the New Straits Times newspaper, because nobody trusts the newspapers anymore. ''My own father told me that he won't read my paper anymore.'' Her sentiments were echoed in newsrooms around the city. He will report everything we say, said one reporter nodding towards a colleague from his paper who had been listening in on a conversation we were having in a hotel lobby. Report to whom? I asked. ''Special branch, the police, editors,'' said the reporter. ''They keep track of what we are thinking.'' Mahathir summed up the situation perfectly when he spoke before last week's biennial conference of the Commonwealth Press Union in Kuala Lumpur. "In Malaysia, the press is free, but they are also responsible. Of course, there is a licensing system here but how else do you control irresponsible behavior?" Fortunately, Mahathir may be out of step with the rest of the region. Elsewhere, the economic debacle has yielded greater openness and more press freedom. In Indonesia, anger over widespread corruption helped to force President Suharto from office in May. His successor, B J Habibie -- despite his ties to the old regime -- has so far grasped that political and economic reform are the keys to political survival. As part of the process, the government has lifted most restrictions on the press. Thailand's July 1997 currency devaluation triggered the regional collapse but attempts to calm the crisis with authoritarian strategies failed, leading to Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh's November 1997 resignation. The new prime minister, Chuan Leekpai, of the Democrat Party, presided over the implementation of a new constitution with the strongest protections for the press in the region. Thailand is now in the forefront of a regional movement to encourage more transparency within Asean. The Philippines' authoritarian neighbors once held its rowdy democracy and free press in contempt. During the current crisis, however, the Philippines has held a peaceful election, withstood government transition and gone through the first stages of the economic meltdown with fewer negative effects than its Asean partners. If Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines are any guide, Malaysia can at best fight a rear-guard action against the right to know. The Internet, cable television, and global calls for transparency in financial dealings all require that the region come to terms with open public debate. Nations can no longer afford to use hollow authoritarian arguments to justify repressive social systems that perpetuate one man or one party in power. It is now taken as virtually a given that the Asian crisis was aggravated by the absence of a vibrant and vigilant press. After decades of cooperation with repressive governments and avoidance of sensitive media issues, even the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) now see press freedom as an ally in global recovery. Free expression is the first right, and without it democracy and accountability are impossible. The big lie of so-called 'Asian values' was the demeaning notion that freedom was somehow less valuable to an Asian than it was to anyone else. The new openness in Indonesia, the democratization of Thailand, and the tradition of freedom in the Philippines are creating a culture of free expression that forces the world to acknowledge the right of Southeast Asians, as much as anyone else, to have access to information. The growth of a free press in Asean has given independent journalists in the region the opportunity to band together to protect one another. The press in Burma, Vietnam, Malaysia, Laos, Singapore, and Cambodia are either directly controlled by their governments or forced into self-censorship. Instead of relying on protests lodged from outside the region by organizations like the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York, journalistic organizations in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand can use the new openness to expand press freedom both within their borders and regionwide. At stake is the future of free expression in Southeast Asia and the ability of the Asean nations to emerge from crisis into a stable and more open future. ''Those of us in Indonesia know what it is like to lose our freedom,'' said Goenawan Mohamad, the editor of Indonesia's Tempo magazine, which recently reopened after being banned by the Suharto regime for more than four years. "But if we can right ourselves, maybe we can serve as something of an example for the rest of Asean. There are still so many problems in the rest of the region. We have to work together. A. Lin Neumann is a consultant to the Committee to Protect Journalists and a member of the board and advisor to SEAPA. This article originally appeared in the Nation newspaper in Bangkok. |
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Copyright@ 2003 Southest Asian Press Alliance. All rights reserved |
ASEAN Journalism in Transition:
The Emerging Free Press in SE Asia