ECONOMIST STORY CENSORED IN THAILAND
Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) has released its so-called secret list of websites blocked by Thailand's Ministry of Information and Communications Technology. Now appearing on the list are links to both stories from the recent edition of The Economist that were subsequently not distributed in print form in Thailand. I can confirm neither story is accessible from Bangkok on Sunday afternoon via a True Internet connection.
This contents of The Economist story and editorial has been discussed and debated in the mainstream Thai media even if it the original story hasn't been printed, so I cannot see why the decision to restrict access so long after publication is necessary. It even produced a formal Government reply which was printed in last week's print edition.
I believe this page has been banned because of the publicity it received. A far less widely read (in Thailand at least) story in a Canadian newspaper a couple of months ago was far more scathing yet it remains freely accessible.
ADD: The stories in questions are HERE and HERE, but censoring of these pages in Thailand appears very random. My own ISP is directing these links to a page from the MICT.
3 comments:
I beg to differ.
The 2 articles are still online (True ADSL, Bangkok).
Today (and yesterday, and the days before, I've checked every day).
Where are you located ? It's important to remember that the list of censored websites changes with each ISP... and even worse... because they are so incompetent... probably with each gateways.
However, I have to say that I get a few times the MICT screen with the article id=12724832 (not the other one). But when I relaunch the URL it's okay. Try on your side.
So I guess, it's a new system : the random censorship. ;-)
I've also had another True user in Bangkok say the pages in question are still accessible. For me it's in the Tha Phra area.
... and both pages are being redirected to http://w3.mict.go.th/ which says 'Under Construction'.
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