Post 3 Censorship in Thailand

In Thailand on April 12, 2009, the government put together a decree that gave officials power to censor news if it was perceived to be a threat to national security. After this took place, the Committee to Protect Journalists, a media rights group, asked that the government reverse this order of censorship.
On April 13th, the Thai government gave an order to block Station D (Democracy TV, DTV) which is a satellite news broadcaster. This station supports the anti-government United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (U.D.D.) protest group which is for the former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who is in exile. This station had been having live broadcasts of protests by the U.D.D. in front of the Government House. The station had been providing video-link call-ins by Thaksin who had been urging his followers to rise up against the government as part of a "people's revolution."
A Minister at the Prime Minister's office explained to the local media that D Station's signal was cut because what it was broadcasting was "capable of causing chaos." This Minister ordered the local satellite service provider Thaicom to cut the signal for D Station.
Bob Dietz is the program director for the Committee to Protect Journalists in Asia. He said that, "Silencing media during political crises does a disservice to the Thai people.
It looks like the Thai government will continue to face protests concerning their efforts to censor the news. It could be a long struggle to regain a greater measure of intellectual freedom in Thailand.

References

"Media Rights Group Urges Thailand to Rescind Censorship Order." BBC 15 April 2009. Found in the LexisNexis Academic database.