Thailand has seen sweeping government legislation impose “state of emergency” decrees that give the government absolute power over what they believe to be true or false news. Local news sources have said many of the banned sites are prominent sites which report on the country’s ethnic minorities. In Myanmar, the government arbitrarily closed 221 news websites last month on the grounds they were spreading “fake news” about Covid-19. Twelve of the 30 people are associated with the dissolved opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) which was disbanded in 2017 after the government arrested CNRP leader Kem Sokha on dubious treason charges. ![]() Since late January, the Cambodian government has arrested 30 people over their dissenting views concerning the Covid-19 pandemic which has currently spread to 187 countries and infected over 3.5 million people worldwide. “The fact that politics are on hold, the public is stunned and protests are out of the question, in order to impose measures that would be impossible in normal times,” Deloire said. In a statement in RSF’s 2020 World Press Freedom Index report, secretary-general Christophe Deloire warned that public health crises provide authoritarian governments opportunities to implement “shock doctrines” that take advantage of the epidemic. The Asia Pacific region has seen the greatest hit to press freedom violations globally, with a rise of 1.7% of violations compared to the previous year.Īdding to the clamp-down, human rights organisations have flagged Covid-19 as amplifying the war on truth, signalling that countries are utilising the pandemic as a means to undermine independent media and control their political agenda. Regionally, there has been a marked increase in media violations in Southeast Asia, according to the press freedom advocacy group, Reporters Without Borders (RSF). ![]() ![]() As we ring in the new decade, the first few months of the year have proven to be a critical juncture for media freedom and how news is distributed. 2020 has already marked a tough year for press freedom.
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