UPDATE: This AP story confirms that Wikicong, the anonymous group behind Thaileaks, “has ‘no official ties’ to Wikileaks”. The group goes on to say:

“Wikicong is defending freedom of information everywhere, and right now we experience that Wikileaks is the target of several states and organizations who wish to stop them. We have stepped up in defence of their work,” the group said.

Earlier today I asked if Wikileaks is committed to Thailand in response to its muted reaction to being blocked in the country, however I’m delighted to see that the organisation’s response today is an emphatic yes.

How is this for timing…Wikileaks has countered its censorship in Thailand by rolling out Thaileaks, a dedicated site for Thailand – now that is commitment for you.

It contains strong words for the Thai government and censors as below:

This is sensitive material, all quoted from Wikileaks. Please note - This is not about disrespecting the Thai State or the Royal family. It is about making a statement for the freedom of information.

No offense, this is about the internets! 

If you are a censorship regime, expect us!

It remains to be seen how long it will be until this new site is subject to blockage in Thailand though Wikileaks/Thaileaks is clearly preparing to go head with Thailand’s prolific censors with the following message appearing on the site.

Thai website Prachatai is one example of site that has been forced to generate new URLs to avoid constant blocking from Thai censors, let’s hope Thaileaks is left to be.

In the meantime, the fact that the organisation – which has seen its visibility grow hugely after incurring the wrath of the US government by leaking classified Afghanistan war documents – feels it needs to go to the lengths of creating an entirely separate entity just to cover Thailand, is likely to put the Thai government’s censorship program under the global media spotlight.

Thailand was recently recognised as the first country to block 100,000 websites having ramped up its censorship since introducing a dedicated cyber crimes unit in June of this year. More information on Thailand’s censorship can be found at this post.

H/t journalism.co.uk for breaking the news

UPDATE

Wikicong/Telecomix – who are involved with hosting/running the site and its main Wikileaks umbrella – published the following open letter to the Thai government online in conjunction with the launch of Thaileaks:

Dear Government of Thailand,

So you blocked Wikileaks in your national firewall of oppression.

Some wonder what information you wished to keep away from the people. Was it the 1,203 freshly censored websites, the political prisoner Harry Nicolaides?

Your reasons are however irrelevant to us. We are in your internets, defending the free flow of information. No matter what you take down, we bring it up again. We were born and raised in tunnels, and we speak natively in cryptographic code.

Today we release thaileaks.info in order to bypass your simple filter. You can add it to your block list if you want, but we don’t worry much, because there are hundreds, maybe thousands of internauts ready to make that information reach its true destination: the people of Thailand.

You may access the entire Wikileaks site by browsing to wiki.thaileaks.info or use secure connection (you need to accept the certificate) on the https-enabled version.

We are Wikicong an independent sub-commando of the Telecomix Crypto Munitions Bureau

we connect people

we isomorphy

we are jellyfish

and we are never gonna give you up!