Published on June 24, 2005

Anchalee Paireerak, the radio producer and journalist well known for her critical comments against the government, called it quits yesterday.

She announced she would stop hosting and producing radio programmes on FM 92.25 community radio and would leave the country to study abroad.

She said she could no longer tolerate government harassment following the shutting down of her www.fm9225.com website, which she depended on to relay her programmes to other community radio stations.

The new host of her “Thailand Review” programme made the announcement yesterday.

Anchalee later told reporters she could no longer withstand government pressure.

“The government has been harassing us in every way. We’ve been picked on from the beginning,” she said.

“At first, the government said our antenna was too high, making our signal interfere with the main radio stations. So we took down the antenna and broadcast through the Internet, which affected no one, but the government still shut down the website.”

She said that the FM 102.25 community radio station of Traffic Corner Co Ltd continued to broadcast at 4,000 watts, but the government took no action.

“I feel all alone in my fight for right and to bring the truth to the people,” she said.

She said she received a phone call from a “senior person” on Wednesday night telling her to stay away from home.

“I don’t want to live in fear, so I’ll study again and do other, non-political things,” she said.

Earlier in the day, she conveyed her fears for her life before the House committee on justice.

The committee, chaired by Democrat Party MP Suwaroj Palang of Chumphon, invited Anchalee and Surachai Nilsaeng, a cyber inspector from the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Ministry, to testify over the shut-down of the radio station’s website.

Suwaroj said that Surachai, who signed the order for the shut-down, declined to meet the committee because he was “too busy”.

Anchalee told the committee she had been warned on Monday by the Public Relations Department to “improve” her radio station’s programming, accusing host Samarn Sri-ngarm of using impolite words and fostering divisiveness in society.

She said that the next day, the cyber inspector sent her a letter about the website having to be “made legal” before it could continue broadcasting.

Then the senior person called and advised her to stay away from her home.

“Yes, I fear for my life, because I still have parents and younger siblings to take care of,” she said.

Suthas Ngernmuen, an adviser to the House committee, said he worried that Anchalee could “be disappeared” in a similar fashion to Somchai Neelapaijit, the Muslim lawyer who criticised police handling of a suspected Muslim terrorist case.

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