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MEDIA
NEWS IN EAST TIMOR
I. State radio
closes East Timor service.
Indonesia’s state-run Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI)
announced Thursday [23rd September] it has officially
closed its service in East Timor due to threats of
retaliation against Indonesian journalists in the former
Portuguese colony following the killing of a Dutch
journalist [on] Tuesday.
“Goodbye,
Bumi Loro Sae (the land of the rising sun),” an
announcer of the RRI said in its last broadcast.
“You gave a promise, but you broke it. You started
it, but you ended it,” he said.
RRI had been
broadcasting in East Timor for 23 years.
Dozens of
Indonesian journalists working for national and foreign
media decided to leave the East Timor capital of Dili on
Thursday following phone calls threatening retaliation
against them.
The warnings
came after the killing in Dili of Sander Thoenes, a
Jakarta-based writer for London’s ‘Financial
Times’, who was stabbed to death by a group of men
wearing Indonesian military uniform shortly after his
arrival in the territory.
The body of
the 30-year-old Thoenes, who also reported for the
‘Christian Science Monitor’ and the Dutch
publication ‘Vrij Nederland’ , was found
Wednesday morning with multiple wounds and an ear missing
behind an abandoned house in Dili’s Becora
subdistrict.
Thoenes, who
was killed less than two hours after he arrived in Dili,
was the first foreign journalist killed on assignment in
Indonesia and East Timor since six Australian journalists
were killed in East Timor in 1975.
The
International Force for East Timor (Interfet) has advised
non-accredited foreign journalists to immediately leave
East Timor. Interfet said it can only guarantee the
safety of 41 accredited foreign journalists.
Meanwhile,
Indonesian journalists are under the protection of the
Indonesian military.
Indonesia
invaded East Timor in 1975 and annexed it the following
year, claiming it as the country’s 27th province, a
move unrecognized by the United Nations, which still
regards Portugal as the administering ruler in the
territory. (Kyodo News Service, Tokyo, 23 September 1999)
II. Indonesian
radio stops broadcasting from Dili.
The Indonesian state radio (RRI) slogan “We never
stop broadcasting” is in tatters in Dili. At 1500
local time yesterday, RRI officially ceased broadcasts
and withdrew from East Timor, as announced by Dili
station manager Parlin Tobing.
On the same
day, some 80 domestic and foreign journalists also left
Dili. They left as a result of the failure of Interfet to
guarantee their safety. Some 100 reporters had left
previously.
Indonesian
reporters arriving at Kupang’s El Tari Airport from
Dili said that Interfet under Australian command would
only guarantee the safety of reporters who had
accompanied them from Darwin. The journalists also said
that they had been forced to leave East Timor because of
intimidation by unknown groups, following the killing of
‘Financial Times’ reporter Sander Thoenes at
Becora, East Dili, on Tuesday evening (21 September). . .
.
Important
broadcasting equipment had already been removed to Kupang
or Atambua. This had been done in accordance with RRI
instructions to staff not to allow its broadcasting
equipment to be utilized by the enemy that wanted to
bring about the destruction of the nation. . . .
“There
are rumours going around that Malay [as received]
reporters will be killed in revenge for the death of the
‘Financial Times’ reporter,” said an RRI
journalist from Dili, Poli Laiyan. . . .
Military
Emergency Commander Maj-Gen Kiki Syahnakri told the press
in Dili yesterday that the death of the foreign
journalist was still being investigated by TNI
[Indonesian Military Forces] and Interfet. Suspects and
motives had yet to be established. He regretted the
attitude of the foreign press that had jumped to the
conclusion that TNI was responsible for the killing,
whereas the victim clearly had a stab wound(s), not a
bullet wound(s). (‘Republika’, Jakarta, 24
September 1999)
III. Western media
“tarnishing” Indonesia’s image.
Indonesia and its military are now being unfairly
targeted by Western media conspiracy, with Australian
press on the foreground, sometimes using false data or
groundless accusations aimed at tarnishing
Indonesia’s international image, an Indonesian
senior journalist has said.
“I myself
am a journalist. It is quite easy for me to see such
tendencies, particularly those related with problems in
East Timor,” Rosihan Anwar told Antara here on
Tuesday. [28th September]
Anwar, who was
a war correspondent in the 1940s, said that both the
Indonesian government and the Indonesian Defence Forces
(TNI) are not white angels with no sins. Mistakes and
irregularities might have occurred in East Timor, but
there have also been lots of positive things they have
done for the territory and its people in the past 23
years, he added.
“Who can
deny that Indonesia is better than Portugal in terms of
providing education for East Timorese? Thousands of them
are given the opportunity to study in universities both
in Indonesia and overseas. How many locals were given the
same opportunity during Portugal’s
colonization?” asked the noted journalist who has
held various senior capacities in the Indonesian press
world.
He emphasized
that after the Portuguese irresponsibly left the
territory in 1975, causing a bloody civil war that
followed suit where thousands were killed, it was the
Indonesian military that came to stop the war.
Indonesia then
was only known by the international media as an invading
power despite the fact that the United States and
Australia were behind the move, he said.
“Now,
after the UN ballot, Western press is shattering the
TNI’s images by saying it has killed thousands of
people, forcibly relocating them to West Timor, linked
itself closely with the militias and the likes,”
Anwar pointed out.
Anwar said
Western press had also reported such groundless stories
as the killing of Xanana Gusmao’s parents, which are
not true, and the story about the attempt at Baucau
bishop Basilio do Nascimento’s life, that he had
seriously been wounded was also untrue. . . .
“If the
Australian press corps has been that fair in its coverage
of East Timor, why should (Australian Defence) Minister
John Moore decide to cancel the daily media briefing? Why
should Major-General Peter Cosgrove, the multinational
force commander in East Timor, ask for a closed handover
ceremony on Monday in Dili?” Anwar said, adding that
he has information telling that the Australian force in
East Timor had found that the media sometimes grossly
exaggerated their reports from East Timor. (Antara news
agency, Jakarta, 28 September 1999)
IV. Christian
radios in Europe focus on East Timor.
European Christian radio stations will send greetings of
solidarity to East Timor today. This is an initiative of
the European Conference of Christian Radios [CERC].
Five hundred
stations have decided to dedicate a day of transmissions,
today, to making their listeners aware of the Timorese
cause. Nelson Ribeiro reports:
[Ribeiro]
On 19th September, CERC unanimously approved a motion
condemning the genocide in Timor Loro Sae. Meeting in
Vienna, more than 500 European Christian radio stations
could not ignore the dramatic events in which thousands
of Timorese have been killed and continue to be killed.
In addition to condemning the violence, the CERC stations
decided to dedicate today to East Timor. Throughout
Europe, more than 15m listeners will today hear about the
dramatic situation in the territory. This is a greeting
without frontiers, a Radio Renascenca idea as explained
by Fernando Magalhaes Crespo, CERC chairman and
Renascenca’s executive manager.
[Crespo]
This means there is a common cause which has enabled the
establishment of a gigantic chain involving 500 Christian
radios from the Atlantic to the Urals, that is from
Portugal to Russia, in defence of the fundamental human
values which are being violated in a veritable genocide
in East Timor.
[Ribeiro]
Promoting the defence of human rights is one of
CERC’s raisons d’etre. One of the main
objectives of this European conference, set up in 1994,
is to promote understanding among peoples. For this
reason CERC wanted to show firmly its solidarity towards
the Timorese. (Radio Renascenca, Lisbon, 29 September
1999)
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