[Foundation-l] Thai government blocks English wikipedia page about the king

[Dominic]

Ian A. Holton wrote:
> Can anybody confirm this?
>
> Ian
>
> On 11/10/08, Waerth <waerth at asianet.co.th> wrote:
>   
>> It seems that the Thai government has decided to block wikipedia's page
>> in English about the King .... . If going there by interwiki link from
>> the Dutch wikipedia I end up here: http://w3.mict.go.th/
>>
>> W

I did some research to see if anyone else is reporting this, and it 
seems that others are experiencing the same problem, but it has not yet 
made the news (in reference to Wikipedia's block explicitly).The Freedom 
Against Censorship Thailand blog reports that it has been blocked since 
at least October 1, and though I can't read the Thai sites they cite, it 
seems pretty well independently verified. 
<http://facthai.wordpress.com/2008/10/22/wikipedia-blocked-by-some-thai-isps-fact-exclusive/> 


Thailand enforces a lese majeste law, which means people may be 
prosecuted for "insulting" the king 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se_majest%C3%A9#Thailand). As a 
result, Thailand has a rather active internet censorship program that 
has become more active during the recent political crisis 
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7696101.stm>. (Incidentally, 
the author of that article, BBC's Thailand correspondent, was himself 
under investigation earlier this year, accused of insulting the king: 
<http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/08/asia/AS-GEN-Thailand-BBC.php>.)

It seems that several media agencies, like BBC, reported the recent 
surge in censorship, but none of them mention Wikipedia explicitly, 
while it is likely that it was one of the sites targeted in the October 
crackdown. Incidentally, last year's brief blocking of YouTube by 
Thailand 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_of_Thailand#YouTube_controversy) led 
to much greater international media scrutiny, and it seems likely that 
if it continues, Wikipedia's block may yet be newsworthy, especially 
since unlike the inflammatory YouTube videos, the Wikipedia article 
seems relatively neutral.

Dominic