THAILAND: Midnight University seeks court ruling

School wants to reopen website; closed after coup for scholars' protests

Bangkok Post
Friday, October 6, 2006

By Anucha Charoenpo

Midnight University will petition the Administrative Court to seek the reopening of its website, which was closed by the Information and Communications Technology Ministry three days after the military coup on Sept 19. The informal learning school based in Chiang Mai will ask the court to rule on whether the ministry's decision was legal, the university's rector Somkiat Tangnamo said yesterday. He said the operators of the university had never been informed by the ministry of the reasons for the closure of the website, www.midnightuniv.org, which was opened for academic purposes to educate the people about the political situation and government policies affecting their lives.

Mr Somkiat suspected that the website closure was linked to the university's protest against the coup and the interim charter. The university had complained that it was only written by a small group of drafters and countered by proposing a people's constitution and opening its web board for comments and ideas.

"In my opinion, the military coup and the interim charter are unacceptable. The ministry is acting as cyberspace police. In fact, it should perform its duty to promote freedom of expression of the people and a free press," he said.

Fifteen lecturers from the university and legal advisers will hold a meeting today to gather details about the closure of the website and legal information to counter the ministry's action before lodging a complaint with the court.

"We will ask the court to give our website temporary immunity from closure until the court's ruling," he said.

Mr Somkiat said so far the university had received moral support from more than 1,000 academics, media people and writers worldwide who had learned about the closure of the website.

The names and signatures of those opposing the closure will be in the petition to show the court the website was useful to the public because it was an online society to educate people, he said.

The university website was launched six years ago by prominent scholars from Chiang Mai University, including Nidhi Eawsriwong.

It was a platform to express different views about the policies undertaken by ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra over the past five years.

Midnight University will also ask the National Human Rights Commission to investigate the matter, as the ministry's action was deemed as violating people's basic human right to gain access to information.

Even though the commission was not empowered by law to punish those people involved in the closure of the website, if they were found guilty, he at least wanted it to question ministry officials about the reasons for the closure and disclose the information to the public, he said.

Date Posted: 10/6/2006

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