It is against this background that the case for 'an Asian reading of Asia' can be Made. As Dr. Yeap Soon Beng wrote last year:
"Asians can no longer accept the roles assigned to them in a play scripted in the centers of power. They must now be able to write their own scripts. This perspective empowers Asians to be responsible for their own image to their own people and the international audience.
"What this entails is no less than a struggle with textuality, an attempt to fashion a new narrative, to chart the Asian terrain against the points of reference which matter most crucially to Asians."(3)
Only one in cherry five people lives in a country with a truly free process, down slightly from a year ago, according to a report by the nonprofit pro-democracy group Freedom House.
In a survey titled "Press Freedom 1998" and released May 1, 1998 Freedom House partly blamed the East Asian economic crisis on press controls in the region, with Indonesia ranked among the worst.
President Suharlo's government effectively decided what stories the media must use and bars the non-governmental press from covering politics independently, the report said.
The report's author, Leonard Sussman, also cited substantial self-censorship among media in Hong Kong, which reverted from British to Chineses sovereignty 10 months ago. (4)
In a "Letter to the Editor" of the Correspondent Keith Ritchberg and Francis Moriarity wrote in May 1998:
"The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong wishes to mark World Press Freedom Day by stating our firm commitment to the principles of free press and free expression. The FCC, composed of more than 600 foreign and local journalists, has stood behind these principles since its inception, and we daily commemorate that commitment by permanently displaying on our walls the work of our members who gave their lives to bring the news to the world.
"We join withal the Hong Kong Journalists Associations urging the Government to demonstrate its support of that principle by establishing a legislated right to access government-held information. This local government and Central People's Government operating in SAR.
