Press Relations Chilled as Southeast Asia Governments Crack Down on Reporters

Relations between press and government are chilled in Southeast Asia, with domestic and foreign publications alike facing restraints. A young generation of Asian reporters has been exposed, in theory at least, to Western press freedoms, and many are chafing under the controls.

“I think that it is time we made a strong stand,” Yazid Othman, a Malaysian and president of the Confederation of ASEAN Journalists, told a recent conference in Bangkok. He called on the member governments of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations “to work together with the journalist bodies for a free and independent as well as responsible press.”

But editors in the region, members of an older generation, still get what an editor in Singapore called “those phone calls”--direct government guidance on how to present a story.

Meanwhile, government actions affecting the press continue:

-- In early April, the Singapore government refused to renew the work permit of Nigel Holloway, the resident correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review, an influential Hong Kong-based weekly magazine. In effect, said Derek Davies, Holloway’s editor, his reporter has been expelled.

The Singapore Immigration Department defended its authority to withhold Holloway’s permit but gave no specific reason for its action. Holloway was ordered to leave the country by the end of April, but the Review presumably can replace him.

-- In February, in the most celebrated press-government conflict in the region so far this year, Singapore accused the Asian Wall Street Journal of meddling in domestic politics and, under a 1986 law, restricted the Journal’s distribution in Singapore to 400 copies a day, 8% of its normal circulation.

A spokesman declared that a Journal story on a new Singapore securities exchange contained inaccuracies and “defamed the government.” The Journal rejected the charges and refused to run in whole a government letter that detailed the charges, contending that the letter slandered its reporter.

The circulation of Time magazine was sharply restricted under similar circumstances last year, and there is no indication when either of the restrictions will be lifted.

Meanwhile, the active financial world of Singapore struggles to satisfy its appetite for the Journal’s economic coverage and statistical data.

Barry Wain, the Journal managing editor, wrote in an article that needled Singapore’s government:

“A black market has developed, with vendors hoarding copies for customers willing to pay as much as . . . four or five times the normal price. Some newspaper stands in hotels are offering to repurchase copies, after they’ve been read by guests, at 60% of the sale price.”

-- In Malaysia, a toughened Official Secrets Act became law at the beginning of the year, mandating prison terms of up to 14 years for violators, including both those who leak secrets and those who report or publish them. The new law also gives administrative officers the authority to designate official secrets, something that had been reserved to the judiciary.

Former Prime Minister Hussein Onn predicted that the law will gag society, and he compared the effect to the days of Japanese occupation.

In 1985, reporters for the Far Eastern Economic Review and the New Straits Times, an English-language local daily, were fined under the old official secrets law, and two Asian Wall Street Journal reporters, both Americans, were expelled from the country on charges of violating national security under another regulation. The charges were later dropped.

Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, where the press censors itself and the second largest newspaper was shut down by the government last fall, are former colonial territories. Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and President Suharto of Indonesia have been in power for more than 20 years, and in Malaysia the ruling political coalition has held office since independence in 1957. Leaders of these countries tend to see the press as part of a team for “nation-building.”

“We do not want our journalists to model themselves on the Americans or the British and take an adversarial, anti-Establishment role,” Lee said last year. “Our journalists have a responsibility to help, not hinder, national unity and solidarity.”

The press in this part of the world most independent is in Thailand and the Philippines.

In Manila, the fall of strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos in February, 1986, brought an explosion of daily newspapers to replace those largely controlled by the Marcos government or its friends.

More than two dozen dailies sought readers in the politicized Philippine capital. One of the better ones, faced with fierce competition, was reduced to publishing a regular Page 1 item entitled “Rumor of the Day,” although it was hardly alone in printing rumors.

Earlier this year the government of President Corazon Aquino closed down a paper, the longtime pro-Marcos Daily Express. The assets of the Express had been sequestered by Aquino’s Presidential Commission on Good Government on grounds that they may have been acquired with tainted funds. The commission closed the Express as a money-loser.

In Thailand, the National Assembly recently enacted a new press law that lifts censorship provisions of the old law and sets professional standards for journalists. However, various security laws still give the government the power to move against the press.

The press in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, typical of Communist countries, is designed to promote government and party programs. As in the Soviet Union, however, the press often publishes letters to the editor criticizing official misdeeds, including corruption.