Every Libel Helps
For ten years now, Tesco Lotus, a subsidiary of Tesco PLC, has been operating in Thailand, dominating the local retail industry as anywhere else the Tesco footprint lands. For equally as long, it has trodden less than lightly upon the same trade and consumer issues that have dogged it from Europe to the US and China. Small retailers in Thailand have lobbied to rein in Tesco Lotus' expansion, and commentators and advocates have scrutinized every aspect of its behaviour – from how (or whether or not) it pays its proper taxes to how (or if at all) it gives anything back to the community.
Because none of this is new to the Tesco family, of course, Tesco Lotus has, with greater resources and savvy than “mom and pop stores anywhere”, typically invested in media and public relations to sell Thais on the virtues of the impersonal, monolithic, allegedly culturally disruptive shopping experience. One of its newest concepts in Thailand, for example, is that of the "Green Store": an environmentally-friendly mall, its website explains, with "70 energy-saving initiatives [that can] reduce energy consumption in a normal store by 30 percent…and carbon emissions by 40 percent."
Laudable.
But in winning hearts and minds, or at least silence, nothing saves on hot air (or methane) quite like the decision to finally just shut up, and compel everybody else to do the same. Thaksin Shinawatra, the former Thai Prime Minister who bought Manchester City, figured as much when his satellite and telecommunications conglomerate demanded $10 million in defamation damages against four Thai journalists and an NGO researcher who looked into Shin profits that skyrocketed on the first year of Mr. Thaksin's premiership. Taking a page from Shin, perhaps, Tesco has now filed four libel suits in a span of five months, seeking total damages of more than $40 million.
The latest of those suits, filed this month in Britain, targets The Guardian for a story questioning Tesco's tax filings. The three other defamation charges were all filed between November 2007 and March 2008 in Thailand by Tesco Lotus, and hail to court a consumer advocate and two columnists who all railed against the company's aggressive expansion in the land at the expense of small retailers. At least one of the columnists also raised questions about Tesco Lotus' accounting and tax filing procedures.
That the company would seek staggering damages against advocates and media practitioners signals to observers a resolve finally to abandon the civil discourse, and instead simply, by making examples of a few stunned souls, to stifle discussions and criticism altogether.
The hopeful view among free speech advocates in Thailand is that none of these cases will prosper in court. Shin Corp's case ultimately did not, and the fact is that Thai judges in the past have acknowledged a reasonable bar on defamation where public interest matters are concerned. But the heavy handedness demonstrated in such "mega defamation suits" arguably isn't about winning in court, but simply about showing one's heavy hand. In a developing country such as Thailand, especially, where journalists can earn less than $8,000 a year, $40 million in damages is staggering but also plainly ludicrous – yet undeniably there is enough of a chilling effect that comes with the hard and immediate costs of hiring a lawyer and attending hearings over a case that can drag on for years. Supinya Klangnarong, the researcher sued by Thaksin's Shin Corp. in late 2003, estimates that her two-and-a-half-year legal expenses cost her (and her supporters) more than $30,000.
It's worth noting that Tesco Lotus' defamation suits will have that much more of an intimidating edge as it tests a new law in Thailand that ironically seeks to protect and empower editors and publishing companies, but that apparently may also leave individual journalists feeling more vulnerable. Thailand's Press Registration Act of 2006, among other things, protects newspaper editors and publishers from automatically sharing in defamation suits brought against their writers. Under the 1941 law the Press Registration Act of 2006 replaces, the editor (and/or the publisher) had to share liabilities with the author. Now entities filing defamation charges have the option to sue just individual writers – which is exactly what Tesco Lotus has done. The strategy will no doubt resonate with individual journalists, while sending the signal to their principals and companies not to get involved.
It is as calculated and divisive, in other words, as even just a wounding attack on the isolated and the weak. Tesco Lotus actions in Thailand constitute harassment, pure and simple, not only of consumer advocates and civil society actors, but of journalists and commentators in general; of free expression and press freedom. The attack is on individuals, but the costs and reaping are, as it were, wholesale.
Roby Alampay is executive director of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA).
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