Tuesday, January 15, 2008

The Thai communications satellite Thaicom stopped broadcasting Al-Manar TV a short time after it began.

That was the result of the public exposure of the services it was providing for Hezbollah (Follow-up report) 1. On January 9 the ITIC issued a Bulletin reporting that Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV had recently begun broadcasts via Thaicom, a Thai communications satellite. That meant a substantial increase in the dissemination of Hezbollah's hate propaganda to the Muslim countries in Asia and to parts of Australia , Africa and Central Europe .

2. Following the posting of the Bulletin, the Middle East correspondent for an American news agency called The Media Line asked the company operating Thaicom to comment on the Al-Manar TV broadcasts. It was asked if it were aware that Al-Manar TV disseminated anti-Israeli, anti-American propaganda and that the United States had designated Al-Manar TV as a terrorist organization.

3. The first, unofficial response was that the decision to broadcast Al-Manar TV had been a “purely business decision which had nothing to do with politics.” 2 However, a few days later Thaicom officially informed The Media Line that it had decided to terminate Al-Manar TV's broadcasts as of Friday, January 11, 2008.

4. An ITIC examination verified that Thaicom had in fact stopped the broadcasts (as of January 13, 2008).



1 Follow-up of the January 10 Bulletin “Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV channel has started broadcasting via the THAICOM communications satellite”

2 See Yaniv Berman's article “Millions Able to Receive Hizbullah TV” in The Media Line and The Jerusalem Post, January 10, 2008, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1199964890240&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

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