Congrats to Reporters Without Borders for launching “Censorship Paradise” about three nations regularly visited, Thailand, Mexico and Vietnam.

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Reporters Without Borders is launching a new awareness campaign today, one aimed at drawing the attention of holidaymakers to free speech and freedom of information problems in Thailand, Vietnam and Mexico.

“This campaign’s aim is to make people think before they set off for the sun,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said. “We are not calling for a boycott of these destinations but we want travellers to see what is behind the scenes. We have chosen three countries that are a paradise for vacationers and a hell for journalists: Mexico, Vietnam and Thailand.

“The palm trees, beaches and temples often conceal harsh treatment of journalists and bloggers. We advocate responsible tourism. It is your choice where you take your vacation but it is our duty to tell you where you are venturing.”

Eighty journalists have been killed in the past 10 years in Mexico. Covering drug trafficking has become a risky activity there. Murders of journalists go unpunished so nothing stops the killers from continuing to ply their trade.

Many subjects are taboo in Thailand and Vietnam. Criticising their rulers or exposing the corruption that permeates the upper levels of government can land you in jail for 15 or 20 years.

The campaign consists of three visual ads that will be placed in magazines and in free press publications covering all of France, and on the Internet. A dedicated website, www.censorship-paradise.com, will support the entire campaign, which will be relayed by Reporters Without Borders’ international bureaux and will be circulated to its network of correspondents all over the world.

The 1,203 newly blocked websites are located in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Vietnam.

Every blocked site has the internally noted reason of “lese majeste” — criticizing the King — however, it is obvious that many sites were blocked for quite different reasons. It would appear, in fact, that the judiciary did not examine most sites before issuing orders but instead rubber-stamped government requests.

Reporters Without Borders condemns the Thai information ministry’s decision at the start of the month to spend up to 12 million euros on creating an Internet firewall to filter out websites deemed guilty of lese-majeste.

Information and communications technology minister Sitthichai Pokai-udom has reportedly assigned 500 million bahts (12 million euros) to the creation of an Internet filtering mechanism that would track and automatically block websites that “insult” the monarchy. The firewall would above all be aimed at immediately blocking websites based abroad.

Thailand’s Information and Communications Technology Ministry sought court orders yesterday to shut down about 400 websites and advised internet service providers to block 1,200 sites it considers a danger to national security or disturbing social order.

The January 11, 2007 official blocklist contains 13,435 websites, an increase of more than 500% over the 2,475 sites blocked by MICT’s 13 October 2006 list, compiled following Thailand’s military coup d’etat on 19 September.

In addition to this figure, the Royal Thai Police make public that they block more than 32,500 websites directly; a further unspecified number are blocked at Thailand’s Internet gateway by the Communications Authority of Thailand (CAT). No identification of websites blocked has ever been disclosed to the public nor do these government agencies disclose which criteria they use to block.

Thailand, welcome to your new reality.