GROUP BLASTS THAI GOVERNMENT OVER REPORTERS’ DEATHS

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has demanded that the Thai government reveal the results of official autopsies into the shooting deaths of Reuters cameraman Hiro Muramoto and Italian photographer Fabio Polenghi that occurred during its suppression of protest demonstrations in Bangkok last April and May. In a lengthy statement that included comments from other print and broadcast journalists who were wounded in the violence, the CPJ claimed that the government is refusing to cooperate with private investigators looking into the deaths of the journalists. It maintained that the Thai military has declined to make soldiers believed to have been near Muramoto available for interviews by the investigators. “The concerns about official transparency coincide with a mounting government clampdown on the local media and criticism of foreign reporting of recent events,” the CPJ said.