Global Voices has an excellent round-up of recent web censorship in Southeast Asia featuring details from Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailland, Vietnam and Myanmar.

The full article is a highly recommended read, but a few choice excerpts are below – lots of bolding for emphasis as there is a lot of insightful analysis.

Regulating internet content today is viewed as an anti-democratic practice but Southeast Asian governments seem able to justify it by invoking the need to save the young from the scourge of indecent sexual behavior.

Southeast Asian governments do no always need sex scandals to censor the web since they can always cite other reasons, like national security, to filter and monitor internet content. For example, Thailand became the first country in the world to shut down 100,000 websites for containing “dangerous” material. It punishes bloggers, writers and website administrators for violating the lese majeste law.

But politically-driven internet regulation often encounters strong opposition from internet users and it always elicits condemnation around the world, especially from media groups and human rights organizations. Governments can always ignore the noisy critics but they will also lose credibility. Governments with democratic trappings cannot afford to censor the online media for an extended period.

The aggressive drive to eliminate sex and sexual imageries in the online domain may be a symptom of the rising tide of conservatism in many Southeast Asian nations. The morality card is being played to produce desirable attitudes, sentiments and behavior among the population even if this strategy disrespects the diverse cultures in the region.

Another problem is the vague definition of what constitutes images and actions that are pornographic, indecent, immoral, and obscene.

Governments have mastered the tools and techniques of censorship in the traditional media. They are now testing the limits of online regulation. Indonesia’s plan to enforce an internet blacklist should be monitored because of its impact in the region. Indonesia has more than 40 million internet users and it is acknowledged as the Twitter capital of Asia. If Indonesia succeeds in filtering web content, other countries in the region are expected to follow this model.

Web censorship does not only cut access to information; it also weakens the power of internet users to form online solidarities. To really protect the young and innocent, the best solution is to give them, their parents, and the community in general, the proper education and relevant information about the potential and risks of surfing the web.

The article is a little light on referencing Thailand so, with internet censorship in the country arguably the most worrying, here are some thoughts.

Censorship in the name of pornography, albeit that it is being abused with wide berth, is one thing but censorship based on disagreement with the government – a basic freedom of speech – is altogether more sinister.

Many of Thailand’s 100,000 blocked sites featured comment critical of the government content but were not written by red-shirt supporters.

While the government may argue that red-shirt sites are a threat to the country, anti-democratic, chaotic and a whole host of other anarchic descriptions, the blocking of non-red blogs which dared to question, or hold the government to account, gives cause for concern.

Added to that concern is the recent witchhunt of Mark Thawkumlue, a contestant in Academy Fantasia, who dared to express a personal opinion criticising the government and Prime Minister on Facebook. Though Thawkumlue used crude language, his persecuted – which saw him step down from the reality TV show – illustrates the current limate in Thailand, which some liking to McCarthyism.

Online has traditionally be a bastion of free speech particularly within oppressive/censored regimes, but recent developments, including the continued extension of ‘temporarily’ website blockages and Thailand’s CRES, beg the question long will it be until Thai residents enjoy freer speech offline than online?

**Note: Global Voices Southeast Asia is now on Twitter here