One of its key instruments for political control has been the Public Entertainment and Meeting Act which bars gatherings of more than five people without a government permit. Under the new act even one person with a 'cause-related' intention will need a permit, a measure which will effectively allow the government to eliminate any opposition political activity or any demonstration of which it does not approve. One would have to look to Russia, China or the Central Asian states to find provisions as draconian. It all adds up to a very frightened state with a populace even more under pressure than has previously been the case.

Analysts believe that the government has taken a lesson from the terrorist attacks on the Mumbai hotels. There is some evidence that suggests that the gunmen's controllers in Pakistan were able to conduct their operation according to information on the deployment of government counter-terrorist security forces that they were able to glean from watching cable television channels. Evidence that this was part of the motivation of the government comes from the fact that the Singapore government has also banned the filming of security forces and their actions.

The government has also clearly been spooked by political unrest on its doorstep in Thailand where the opposition managed twice to bring normal conduct of business to a halt. First, last year when anti-government forces managed to effectively close down the country's principal international airport outside Bangkok, bringing the tourist industry to its knees, and then earlier this year when the annual summit meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) was forced to conclude its business prematurely when protesters compelled the government to airlift participants from their hotels by helicopter. Neither of these events did much to promote investment into the countries of Southeast Asia or underline their claims to stability.

So far so logical and understandable were it not for the fact that the Singaporeans are being hit harder than most by the economic downturn. In a country used to sky high rates of growth and seemingly inexhaustible energy and progress the results for the first quarter — a fall in growth of more than 10 per cent — has come as a hammer blow. The PAP government has always been able to boast that it could deliver economic progress better than anyone else, indeed for much of the time over the past 30 years it has had little else to offer its populace. The government knows how quickly economic disenchantment in other countries leads to street protests and how vulnerable is the country and its economy. But how much better to allow a safety valve for such concerns through the opposition parties which together mustered more than 30 per cent of the vote at the last election. Instead the government has used its tried and tested quasi-legal methods of running the opposition into the ground through legal actions run through sympathetic courts followed by bankruptcy proceedings and, in the case of the main leader of the opposition, Chee Soon Juan, banning him from travelling out of the country.

The Singaporeans may also have taken a lesson from the success of so-called 'citizen journalists' in giving the lie to the authorities' explanation of certain incidents with mobile phone and other footage of police violence which has been denied by the security authorities. The most notable of these was at the London Group of Twenty Summit when police beat a man who subsequently died of a heart attack. Initially such an incident was denied by police, a cover-up that was revealed to be such by key mobile phone images.

By banning images of security forces the authorities clearly believe that they can bring such 'inconvenient' information under control. 
Singapore has long been a leader in the control and monitoring of internet access so the authorities must have high hopes that they will have the situation under control come the annual economic summit of the APEC countries in Singapore this November.

A mix of fear of internal dissent and terrorism drives the authorities' control and monitoring of internet access, with the emphasis on the former.

Despite promises of greater openness at the time of the Olympics, the Chinese authorities have again clamped down on the internet with sites being blocked and other methods of interference deployed but with apparently relatively little success in dealing with bloggers. The consensus on dealing with unacceptable bloggers seems to be to deploy as many 'tupenny' bloggers as possible in support of the authorities. The latest Freedom House report indicates that in some countries as many as 250,000 bloggers may be employed to put across the authorities' view.

In their study Freedom House rated only Cuba worse than China and Tunisia in terms of internet freedom with Russia rated 'half free' on the internet front. But then Moscow and the Russian mafia have more direct methods of dealing with people who cross them: they kill them.

Happily with media freedom under pressure all around the world and new rules being applied in the West in terms of the coverage of the ever-more significant conflicts in which they are involved, a new centre has been set up to monitor, debate and assess media standards around the world.
The Centre for Freedom of the Media (CFOM) is part of the University of Sheffield's Department of Journalism Studies in Britain. CFOM is a unique body which, for the first time, will form a research network by bringing together experts and scholars of the media, with public figures and the newsmakers themselves to research and evaluate the role of free and independent news media in building and maintaining political and civil freedom.

Its aims and objectives are: to endorse journalism of the highest standards around the world; to be an interdisciplinary centre of knowledge and research into media freedom and standards across all media through the study of: the contested nature of the terms 'media freedom' and 'freedom of expression'; areas of global conceptual commonality with regard to media freedom, standards and governance; the behaviour of governments; the effects of laws and regulation/deregulation; the new media landscape opened up by fast-changing and new technologies; the effects of increasing commercialisation of the media sector on news media; the effectiveness of the media as civil journalism and the links between media freedom and other parts of civil society and democracy.

The International Director of CFOM, William Horsley, formerly of the BBC, focussed on declining freedoms in Russia when he wrote an article marking the launch of CFOM earlier this year:

'Twenty years after the end of the Cold War, Russia seems intent on re-writing the rules on media freedom, democracy and security on which a new, more cooperative relationship was to be built. Moscow's crackdown on freedom of expression may make conflict more likely,' he wrote.
All the more reason that those defending media freedom in the West must be alert to the maintenance of high standards.

http://mediafreedom.group.shef.ac.uk/

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