Media and Culture
This category contains a wide variety of articles on the media, technology, society and culture.
The September 2006 coup in Thailand
On the evening of 19 September 2006, the ‘City of Angels’, capital of the ‘Land of the Free’, became a city of soldiers. Tanks rolled down the streets of Bangkok, Thailand, their destination – Government House. According to a report in the Bangkok Post (21 September 2006), the nation’s Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, who was in New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly, appeared on Thailand’s state-owned Channel 5 at 9.30pm declaring a ‘state of emergency’. But his announcement was cut short and replaced, claims that same report, with “royally-authored songs” and documentaries about the nation’s greatly revered monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Ninety minutes later, the newly formed Administrative Reform Council issued a televised statement claiming the Army had taken control of Bangkok and the Government of Thailand (The Nation 21 September 2006). The Prime Minister had been ousted – a coup d’état had taken place. Less than a week later, the tanks had moved out and not one shot had been fired. Meanwhile, political figures from governments around the world had been quick to express their disapproval of such military intervention deposing a democratically elected leader. But while the media published those statements of disgust and disdain, there was also considerable reportage of local public and academic support for the coup, as well as, perhaps more importantly for the Thais at least, the stamp, according to The Weekend Australian (22 September 2006), of royal approval. A study of this reportage from news media in Thailand and other nations in the region, in particular, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia, suggests that rather than being the coup that no democracy would like to see happen, this was a coup that had to happen in order for Thailand to have the opportunity to be a democracy.
Trouble brewing in the ‘colony’?
On 18 April 2006, the ABC reported eight Australian Federal Police officers had been injured during a protest in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands. The protest occurred after the election of Snyder Rini as Prime Minister following that nation’s general election on 5 April 2006. The officers were in Honiara as part of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), an intervention force which has been in the Solomon Islands since July 2003. The aim of RAMSI is, according to the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, to “create a safer and more secure Solomon Islands” (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade n.d.). How RAMSI dealt with the civil unrest, which continued overnight and throughout the following day and resulted in the looting and burning of most of the capital’s ‘Chinatown’ district, has raised concerns about the intervention force’s ability to achieve and maintain that goal.
A stalk of spinifex?
On 14 August 2006, the ABC’s Four Corners program ran a story on the AIDS epidemic that threatens to destroy the nation of Papua New Guinea. It is a distressing tale of inadequate education, inadequate health resources and inadequate, inept official and administrative action, response and regard. It is a tale unravelling before our very eyes, on Australia’s doorstep, a doorstep cluttered by people suffering the pain of social, economic and political turmoil. Papua New Guinea, its land neighbour, the Indonesian province of West Papua, to the west, and the former Papua New Guinea provincial, now semi-autonomous, island of Bougainville to the east are regions on that doorstep each struggling in their own way to achieve a sense of freedom, independence and selfhood.
An outside influence?
In January 2006, 43 ‘boat people’ from the Indonesian province of West Papua landed on Australian soil seeking political asylum. Australia at first granted temporary protection visas to 42 of them, and some months later approved the 43rd applicant. This incident caused a major disruption to relations between Australia and Indonesia. The Indonesian ambassador to Australia, Hamzah Thayeb, interviewed on ABC-TV’s Asia Pacific Focus (‘Asylum claim strains Australia Indonesia relations’ 2006), said “it would imply that they are being persecuted” – the granting of asylum, by its very nature, implicated Indonesia in the violation of human rights. Hamzah Thayeb was recalled to Indonesia as an expression of Indonesia’s disagreement with the refugee status granted by Australia to those asylum seekers. On August 9 2006, the Australian Government will vote on legislation changing how this country deals with asylum seekers, a move seen by many in the media to be placating the Indonesian Government. In the meantime, the Indonesian Ambassador has returned.
A widening divide?
While some may feel that new technologies are bringing about a homogeneous or classless society, the divide created by digital technologies would seem, from my perspective at least, to be widening. There are three examples of this which I can draw from my own personal situation as someone living in a rural community: mobile phone; broadband Internet; and, digital television.
