Section 14

Former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra is still having an influence on the country’s politics despite not having been back to Thailand since the coup that removed him in September.

The military government is unhappy about this and has attempted to block interviews with him from being shown. This week an interview he did while visiting Singapore was broadcast on CNN, which was blocked both on-air and online.

Thanks to YouTube you can see both sides (and with the speed that technology moves, the people of Thailand should be able to see both sides as well, no matter how many web-sites the government blocks).

Here’s what the rest of the world saw:

And here’s what was broadcast in Thailand:

Ironically, one of the original complaints that the military made against Shinawatra when deposing him was that he used his position to compromise freedom of the press. Plus ça change…

Hat tip: Boing Boing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 18th, 2007 at 8:49 am and is filed under Dictatorship, Television, Internet, Censorship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.