Laos to admit foreign media for ASEAN summit

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Laos said it would allow an unprecedented level of freedom to foreign journalists covering the 10th ASEAN Summit in the country in November and other ASEAN meetings there next year.

Laos took over heading the 38th ASEAN Standing Committee on Monday. Foreign Minister Somsavat Lengsavad announced the land- locked country would grant permission to about 1,000 foreign journalists to report on the summit and the subsequent ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) and ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) next year.

The country would allow foreign journalists free access into the country to document the life of all Laoatians, Somsavat said.

"We welcome all foreign journalists who wish to report on or document Laos," Somsavat was quoted as saying in an Agence France-Press report on Tuesday.

"(The government) has provided 1,000 rooms (to accomodate the) foreign journalists ... and we hope that we will meet this target," he said.

Laos' communist government has a history of restricting journalism inside the country, with those deemed to have harmed the government or weakened the state subject to criminal prosecution.

All domestic print media and television stations are state- owned and controlled, with TV news and talk shows only relaying the government's policies and differences in administrative approaches, according to the U.S. State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices issued in March last year. Internet services are also under the government's control.

However, the Laotian government does allow foreign TV and radio broadcasts from abroad, and limited Asian and Western newspapers are sold through private outlets with the government's permission. Laotians are also able to watch regular Thai TV programs and listen to Thai radio news, making the cultural boundary of the two nations somewhat blurred.

Foreign journalists, meanwhile, normally require special visas to enter the country and must travel accompanied by an official escort at all times.

Two European journalists were sentenced to 15 years in prison in Laos last year for entering the country on tourist visas and writing reports about the government's treatment of the ethnic Hmong minority group. The journalists were freed five weeks later.

Laos is a poor country with a population of about 5.5 million. It underwent economic reforms that favored a more market-oriented economy in 1986. However, the government still controls many of the banks and enterprises in the country and Lao is still heavily depended on official foreign aid and remittance from Laoatians living overseas.