Asian media overcoming censors, though slowly

However they caution government-imposed and self-censorship continue to plague the region while corruption, intimidation and violence often descend on the press as soon as freedoms are gained.

China and Vietnam continue to be among the worst offenders, with Beijing's current crackdown on the feisty press in the south of the country illustrating the communist rulers' determination to quash attempts at free expression.

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"In both countries obviously all the communists have left is political control," Bangkok-based Asian consultant for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Lin Neumann, told AFP.

"They are doing everything they can to keep people from using the Internet and the press to challenge the government's authority."

According to the CPJ, China is the world's leading jailer of journalists with 38 members of the press currently imprisoned.

Reporters without Borders said in its just-released annual media summary for 2003 that 48 "cyber-dissidents" were now languishing in Chinese jails.

But Neumann and other industry monitors agree the Internet, mobile phone text messaging and other new technologies are gradually overcoming the scourge of censorship across Asia, not only in China.

"It's difficult to exaggerate how extensively it has changed the whole system... it's not just the Internet, it's the whole means of communication," Political and Economic Risk Consultancy managing director Bob Broadfoot said.

In China, authorities have reacted by filtering e-mails, blocking websites and ordering Internet service providers to censor their own sites, as well as orchestrating the high-profile and intimidatory arrests of on-line dissidents.

"The arrests of a few prominent Internet users who distribute politically sensitive articles serve as a potent warning to all Internet users," the CPJ's senior research associate for Asia, Sophie Beach, said.

But Neumann was adamant the Chinese authorities would not be able to hold back the tide.