Governments across Southeast Asia have a history of using laws and the judiciary to curb press freedoms. Now, they have found a handy crutch to lean on as they intensify clampdowns: US President Donald Trump’s “fake news” mantra.
Most worrying to media rights advocates is that several countries are promoting new legislation or expanding existing regulations to make publishing fake news an offence. The fear is that, rather than focusing on false stories published on social media, authoritarian leaders could use the new laws to target legitimate news outlets that are critical of them.
“When the leadership of the United States consistently targets legitimate media reporting as fake, it opens the way for leaders the world over to do the same,” said Shawn Crispin, who represents the Committee to Protect Journalists in the region. “It’s a dangerous trend that is giving authoritarian and democratic regimes alike justification for targeting or shutting down reporting they don’t like.”
The term “fake news” has entered the lexicon of ASEAN, whose leaders in a statement issued at the end of the association’s summit on Nov. 13 and 14 last year commended the work done by their governments in countering it.
Like everywhere else, Southeast Asia does sometimes have a problem with information on social media that is intentionally false, but there is little sign that the problem has been anywhere as bad as it was, in the run-up to the November 2016 US presidential election.
Last week, after the Philippines’ corporate regulator revoked the operating license of Rappler, a news Web site that has been a thorn in Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s side for its scrutiny of the government’s deadly war on drugs, Duterte told reporters that it was “a fake news outlet” that had been “throwing trash and shit all along.”
Duterte denied influencing the regulator’s decision, which was followed by the justice minister ordering an investigation into Rappler for possible criminal liability and the National Bureau of Investigation summoning its CEO to answer a complaint related to cybercrime.
Philippine Daily Inquirer associate editor and a columnist John Nery, whose paper has also come under attack from the government, said that “fake news” is now glibly used by people who do not like what they hear.
“Unfortunately for us, those parties include the government of the Philippines. So it is used to intimidate,” he said.
Legislation to fight “fake news,” which would impose fines and prison terms of up to 20 years for spreading false information, is under consideration in the Philippines.
Philippine presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the laws are being promoted by two senators, not the Duterte administration.
Asked if the government felt the need to regulate fake news, Roque said: “We believe in free market place of ideas.”
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen regularly accuses critical media outlets of spreading “fake news.”
In his latest attack on Saturday, he backed Trump for announcing “fake news” awards.
“I think President Donald Trump has correctly created an award that he just announced in recent days, the Fake News Award,” he said. “And in Cambodia there is also this type of media.”
“Everyone, including ordinary citizens, has to fight against fake news because fake news is like poison or a gun and it can kill our beautiful society,” Cambodian Ministry of the Interior Undersecretary of State Huy Vannak told reporters.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has accused opponents of using the media to spread fake news on a scandal over state fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB).
1MDB is being investigated in at least six countries for moneylaundering and misappropriation of funds, including an alleged US$681 million transfer into Najib’s personal account.
The US Department of Justice last year filed several lawsuits to seize more than US$1.7 billion in assets believed to have been stolen from the sovereign fund that was set up by Najib.
Najib has denied any wrongdoing. His government has suspended media and blocked Web sites that hounded him over 1MDB, and — with elections looming — he has launched a Web site to counter “fake news.”
The government of Singapore, where curbs on free speech have often been criticized by human rights advocates, is planning legislation to tackle “fake” online information it has said could threaten national security.
Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper this month cited seven cases of “fake news” that came up in a parliamentary discussion: Three were about other countries and one was about an image of “halal pork” allegedly being sold in supermarkets that went viral in 2007.
Singaporean Minister of Law and Home Affairs Kasiviswanathan Shanmugam told lawmakers that combating falsehoods is not contrary to the exercise of freedom of speech, but rather it “enables freedom of speech to be meaningfully exercised.”
A Singaporean government spokesperson, asked to comment, referred reporters to Shanmugam’s speech and to a paper presented to parliament that said “the dissemination of deliberate falsehoods ... attacks the very heart of democracy” and, if unchecked, undermines faith in the country and its institutions.
Thailand already has a cybersecurity law under which the spread of false information carries a jail sentence of up to seven years and the military government strictly enforces lese majeste laws that shield the royal family from insult.
Still, Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the country’s junta leader, has warned that tough action will be taken to enforce laws against “fake news and hate speech.”
Myanmar has assailed foreign news organizations for “fake news” about a military crackdown in Rakhine State that triggered the exodus of more than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims to Bangladesh.
It has detained at least 29 journalists since Burmese State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi came to power in 2016. Among them are two Reuters reporters who had covered the crisis in Rakhine and are being investigated for alleged breaches of the country’s Official Secrets Act.
“Fake news” is “a convenient phrase” for governments that would in any case find ways to crimp press freedom, said Philip Bowring, a former editor of news magazine Far Eastern Economic Review, which closed in 2009.
He said the mantra is “just a new gimmick” that allows governments to justify their behavior.
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