Beijing - Political conflict has significantly reduced media freedom in Thailand and Fiji, a media watchdog said Tuesday, while six Asian countries remained among the 10 lowest-ranked nations on its global list on press freedoms. "In Thailand, the endless clashes between 'yellow shirts' and are d shirts' had a very negative impact on the press's ability to work," Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said, referring to competing anti-government groups.
Journalists have been assaulted at their demonstrations while in a separate development, the government has cracked down on criticism of the country's revered king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, by employing lese majeste laws, the group said.
Thailand dropped from 124th to 130th place out of 175 nations in the annual list, remaining one place above Malaysia and three places above Singapore.
The worst Asian countries for media freedom were communist-ruled China, Vietnam, Laos and North Korea, plus Myanmar and Turkmenistan, Reporters Without Borders said.
"The media in China (168th) are evolving rapidly along with the rest of the country, but it continues to have a very poor ranking because of the frequency of imprisonment, especially in Tibet, internet censorship and the nepotism of the central and provincial authorities," it said.
"Similarly in Vietnam (166th), the ruling Communist Party targets journalists, bloggers and press freedom activists over what they write about its concessions to China," it said.
Two of Asia's wealthier nations, Taiwan and South Korea, both fell sharply from last year to 59th and 69th, respectively.
"The new ruling party in Taiwan tried to interfere in state and privately owned media while violence by certain activists further undermined press freedom," Reporters Without Borders said.
"South Korea plummeted 22 places because of the arrests of several journalists and bloggers and the conservative government's attempts to control critical media," it said.
Fiji's military coup caused it to sink 73 places to 152nd as troops entered newsrooms to censor stories and foreign journalists were deported.
"Authoritarianism" elsewhere in Asia "prevented journalists from properly covering sensitive subjects such as corruption or human rights abuses," Reporters Without Borders said.
"The Sri Lankan government," it said, "had a journalist sentenced to 20 years in prison and forced dozens of others to flee the country.
"In Malaysia, the interior ministry imposed censorship or self-censorship by threatening media with the withdrawal of their licence or threatening journalists with a spell in prison."
It said war and terrorism again "wrought havoc and exposed journalists to great danger" in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
But Reporters Without Borders said there was some good news for media freedom in Asia as Indonesia and India both improved their rankings to 100th and 105th, respectively.
"Asia's few democracies are well placed in the rankings," it said with New Zealand, Australia and Japan all in the top 20.
The Maldives climbed to 51st "thanks to a successful democratic transition" while Bhutan rose to 70th after "further efforts in favour of media diversity."
