Thai media criticize government for ordering foreign journalists' expulsion

The Thai media accused Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of turning the country into a dictatorship today after his government ordered the expulsion of two foreign journalists for writing a critical article.

At a meeting on Monday night, scores of foreign and Thai journalists slammed Thaksin and expressed solidarity with Rodney Tasker and Shawn Crispin of the Far Eastern Economic Review magazine.

The Immigration Department revoked the visas of Crispin, an American, and Tasker, a Briton, on Friday following a January 10 article in the Review, which alleged tensions between Thaksin and King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the constitutional monarch who is held in high esteem among Thais.

On Tuesday, most newspapers carried editorials expressing outrage at the government, which has accused Crispin and Tasker of being a threat to national security. Thaksin has in the past been criticized for trying to muzzle the local media.

Crispin, the magazine's Bangkok bureau chief, and Tasker, its correspondent, will be allowed to stay in the country until a government committee decides on their appeal against the expulsion order within the next 30 days. The Hong Kong­based Review is owned by US­based Dow Jones and Co.

"The manner in which the administration has struck back at the foreign media ... is simply shocking and beyond comprehension," Thepchai Yong, the editor of the English­language Nation newspaper, wrote in an editorial.

"Freedom of press is a strong measure of any nation. By even seeming to attack this principle puts Thailand at risk in the court of world opinion," the Bangkok Post, another leading English daily, said in a front­page editorial headlined "Let tolerance, reason prevail in Review case."

The Thai­language Matichon newspaper said "patience and tolerance to different opinions are the essence of democracy. Only dictatorship governments will think of impinging on the freedom of media, the freedom of expression."

It is the first time in decades that Thailand, which has one of the freest presses in the region, has taken such a harsh action against foreign journalists. It has provoked widespread condemnation by human rights activists and opposition members also.

The government maintains that it has nothing to do with the expulsion order, which it said was initiated by police, a claim met with ridicule by Thai newspapers and others.

Thaksin "is taking Thailand back to two decades ago when dictators ruled," said Somkiat Onwimon, a journalist–turned senator.

Last month, Somkiat's political talk show on an army­owned radio station was taken off one day after he read out and analyzed the January 10 article in the Review.

In Washington, the US State Department expressed concern at the events in Thailand.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "We encourage Thailand to uphold its reputation as a strong supporter of freedom of the press consistent with its constitution and its past practices."