Participants in today's University of the South Pacific media freedom forum chaired by
Stanley Simpson (centre), founding editor of Wansolwara. Image: USP Livestreaming
Criminal cyber defamation, journalist killings with impunity and legal gags are growing threats to Asia-Pacific press freedoms, writes educator David Robie on World Media Freedom Day.
ONE OF Fiji’s best investigative journalists and media trainers ended up as a spin doctor and henchman for wannabe dictator George Speight. Like his mentor, he is now languishing in jail for life for treason.
Some newshounds in Papua New Guinea have pursued political careers thanks to their media training, but most have failed to make the cut in national politics.
A leading publisher in Tonga was forced to put his newspaper on the line in a dramatic attempt to overturn a constitutional gag on the media. He won—probably hastening the pro-democracy trend in the royal fiefdom’s 2010 general election.
The editor of the government-owned newspaper in Samoa runs a relentless and bitter “holier than thou” democracy campaign against the “gutless” media in Fiji that he regards as too soft on the military-backed regime. Yet the editor-in-chief of the rival independent newspaper accuses him of being a state propagandist in a nation that has been ruled by one party for three decades.
In West Papua, Indonesia still imposes a ban on foreign journalists in two Melanesian provinces where human rights violations are carried out with virtual impunity. Journalists in the Philippines are also assassinated with impunity.
WHILE a leading Indian politician was railing against media sensationalism and lack of credibility and a major Asian communications conference was meeting in Hyderabad this week, police in Mumbai were crowing over the arrest of seven alleged assassins of a prominent investigative journalist in a case that has shocked the nation.
Veteran MiDDay crime journalist Jyotirmoy Dey was gunned down in a street not far from his home on the outskirts of Mumbai in a daylight gangland style execution on June 11.
While police displayed the seven hooded suspects in a press conference after their arrest this week and showed off a .32 calibre American-made revolver and 20 rounds of “deadly and accurate” Czech-made extra long cartridges and five empty shells - which they claimed were used in the murder - no motive was revealed.
But the police claimed the journalist had been killed under a supari (contract killing) order by a notorious gangland leader, Chhota Rajan.
Six of the accused had criminal records, including the alleged gunman Satish Kalya, who is already facing three murder cases.
Welcoming the breakthrough by the police who were under tremendous pressure to crack the crime, the national newspaper The Hindu said in an editorial that the assassination had been meticulously planned over 20 days.
Investigations were still under way and the “3000 emails in Dey’s in-box have to be examined for crucial evidence”. The newspaper added:
Having caught the suspects, the police have an even bigger challenge – unravelling the motive behind the brazen killing. Most crime reporters have excellent contacts with the underworld and a network of informers. Dey did not speak to anyone of a threat to his life or demand protection.
News reports said the suspects, while confessing to the murder, claimed they did not know Dey was a prominent journalist.
Dey, 56, had been investigating and writing on the oil mafia in India, underworld links with policemen and other issues. Journalist groups were branding his murder as an assault on the Fourth Estate of democracy. He is the third Indian journalist to have been murdered so far in 2011.
As Indian media splashed reports about the arrest of the suspects, CNN-IBN was reporting on a new clampdown on the media by politicians, including assaults in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Its reports were billed with the speculative headline: “Is the media the new enemy of politicians?”
Ironically, The Hindu reported the leaders of various parties calling on the media not to sensationalise news and to maintain credibility in shaping public opinion.
Speaking at the launch of Jagruti Television news channel in Hyderabad last Sunday, government whip Y. Sivarami Reddy criticised some media for promoting a handful of politicians and the “street rowdy” instead of reporting on people who were “changing society for good”. Chairman of the state’s Economic Programme, N. Tulasi Reddy said media was the lifeline for survival of democracy. But he warned that as media organisations were increasing in India, their credibility was decreasing. He praised Jagruti channel for striving to promote a society with moral and ethical values instead of pandering to sensationalism.
Meanwhile, a four-day Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) organised annual conference on “the challenges and opportunities of globalisation, new media and the rise of Asia” featured five speakers from the Pacific among the more than 400 participants. The Pacific “delegation” was AMIC board member associate professor Martin Hadlow of Australia’s University of Queensland; Joys Eggins of the University of Goroka in Papua New Guinea; associate professor David Robie, director of New Zealand’s Pacific Media Centre; and Dr Munawwar Naqvi of Unitec in NZ.
Pictured: Top: The Hindu front page on June 28; left to right at AMIC 2011: Associate professor Martin Hadlow, Joys Eggins, associate professor David Robie and Dr Munawwar Naqvi.
THE NAKED and handcuffed body of a murdered Papuan journalist has incensed human rights activists and media freedom activists alike. The discovery of the body dumped in a river comes just days after the Obama administration has been widely condemned over the decision to resume engagement with Indonesia’s notorious Kopassus special forces. Kopassus has a bloody record throughout the republic, but especially in the former repressed "colony" of East Timor and in the annexed territory of West Papua.
The East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) has been among those groups at the forefront of protest against the Indonesian red-berets: "Slipping back into bed with Kopassus is a betrayal of the brutal unit's many victims in Timor-Leste, West Papua and throughout Indonesia. It will lead to more people to suffer abuses," says John M. Miller, national coordinator of the US-based ETAN.
"Working with Kopassus, which remain unrepentant about its long history of terrorising civilians, will undermine efforts to achieve justice and accountability for human rights crimes in Indonesia and Timor-Leste (East Timor)."
In an abridged translation by the Indonesian human rights movement Tapol of an article published by the Jayapura newspaper Bintang Papua, the Indonesian government has been urged to pass a law to protect journalists and civil rights activists.
Missing stringer A Pacific Media Watch despatch has summarised the Bintang Papua article about the tortured Merauke environmental TV journalist who had been reportedly investigating alleged military corruption. He had been a stringer for the national television broadcaster Anteve and had been missing for two days:
The death of Ardiansyah Matra'is , known to his friends as Ardhi, 31 years old, whose badly wounded body was discovered on the banks of Maro River, is deeply disturbing and is seen as a threat to other media workers and civil society activists.
The Regional Representative Council - DPD - and the Anti-Corruption Institute, has called on the Indonesian government to immediately adopt a law guaranteeing protection for activists and media workers and called on the security forces to investigate this case, to find out who was behind this murder of the Merauke TV journalist.
Saly Maskat, speaking on behalf of the institute, said that democracy in Papua was now dead because there was no guarantee of safety for journalists who were seeking the truth.
It is ironic that shortly before his death, Ardhi and several of his colleagues had received SMS death threats.
The government has for too long delayed adopting a law providing protection for activists and media workers. Only recently, an ICW activist was beaten up by unknown persons while carrying out an investigation into several cases involving government officials.
Saly said that colleagues have frequently been threatened by unknown persons while investigating cases concerning Papuan officials similar to the cases in Merauke.
Such incidents, which have also occurred in Bali, have had a serious impact on our activities, he said, as well as on our organisation.
People feel constrained about continuing with their activities in the media if there are no legally guaranteed safeguards from the government.
He also called on the police to thoroughly investigate these incidents and find out who was behind the ghastly murder of the journalist. "This is essential to provide journalists with a sense of security in the pursuit of their journalistic activities."
The chairman of the Papua branch of the journalists organisation, PWI, has also called for the murder of the journalist in Papua to be thoroughly investigated.
West Papuan activists welcome a statement from the Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General, Tuiloma Nerom Slade, highlighting a forum theme to “protect the most vulnerable communities within the Pacific”.
A media release from West Papua National Coalition for Liberation (WPNCL) spokesperson Rex Rumakiek said it was the sincere hope of the West Papuan people - "who continue to suffer under Indonesian rule - that the forum will not keep ignoring the genocide and will actively address the truely vulnerable communities in West Papua".
The WPNCL and other NGO groups claim more than 100,000 people have died during the past 40 years of Indonesian colonial rule. Pictured: Papuans in tribal dress protest for independence outside the US Embassy in Jakarta in 2007. Photo: Irwin Fedriansyah, agencies
EIGHT members of the clan accused of being responsible for the obscene slaughter of 57 people - including up to 30 journalists - in the southern Philippines province of Maguindanao late last month have been rounded up and charged.
The accused include the so-called "Godfather" of the clan. Hundreds of police and security agents have been detained and reports say the entire police force of the province will be replaced.
Women victims were reported to have been mutilated.
Bai Genalin Mangudadatu, wife of Buluan Vice-Mayor Esmael Mangudadatu, suffered 17 gunshot wounds and several "incised wounds," according to a medical report of the National Bureau of Investigation. But the NBI reportedly found no sign of rape among the 15 female victims it had examined.
Genalin had been on her way to file her husband's certificate of candidacy for Maguindanao governor when gunmen blocked her convoy and killed her and at least 56 others on November 23.
Maguindanao Governor Andal Ampatuan Sr is one of eight members of his clan indicted by prosecutors probing the massacre.
He has been described as the "Godfather" of the political clan favoured by President Gloria Arroyo.
The prosecutors have charged him with multiple murder, destruction of property and robbery.
Ampatuan Sr's son, Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr, is already in jail on charges of masterminding the election-related killings and on 25 counts of murder.
Another of Ampatuan Sr's sons, Governor Zaldy Ampatuan of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, has also been asked by Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno to answer within five days allegations that he had failed "to protect the civil, human and political rights" of the victims.
An Al Jazeera report described the powerful Ampatuan clan as "political untouchables".
A congressman accused the government on Friday of being the biggest arms supplier of Filipino warlords after the discovery of a large arms cache near the mansion of Governor Zaldy Ampatuan Jr on Thursday.
"The arms cache found near the Ampatuans' mansion confirms that the government, particularly the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines), is the biggest arms supplier of the country's warlords," Bayan Muna Representative Teodoro Casiño said in a text message.
“This bloodbath is beyond human understanding,” says a journalist from the nearby city of Koronadal. He told Reporters Sans Frontières: “I have lost 12 of my colleagues in this massacre.”
Nonoy Espina of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), who is in Mindanao, told Reporters Sans Frontièresbefore the latest arrests of the clan leaders: "The government is not doing enough to arrest those responsible."
Eight of the journalists have now been buried and media people will stage a protest rally at Mendiola, Manila, on Wednesday, December 9.
Meanwhile, an international emergency mission led by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has arrived in the Philippines to support local journalists and the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) in the wake of the massacre.
The delegation comprises representatives from leading journalists' rights and press freedom organisations including the IFJ, the Southeast Asia Press Alliance (SEAPA), the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ), the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance MEAA - Australia), the Thai Journalists' Association (TJA), International News Safety Institute (INSI), International Media Support (IMS), the Institute for Studies on the Free Flow of Information (ISAI) and Union Network International (UNI).
BALIBO, the film about truth and justice in East Timor and the brutal murders of six journalists while the fledgling nation struggled for its independence against the Indonesian invasion in 1975, is certain to cause shock waves in the region.
The film, being screened at the Melbourne film festival next month and due for general release in August, is an indictment of successive Australian governments.
And New Zealand authorities are also bound to be embarrassed by the chilling story of political betrayal and death.
Five journalists – including a New Zealander – working for Australian television networks – were killed in the border village of Balibo on 16 October 1975 and a sixth in the capital of Dili eight weeks later.
Indonesian special forces led by Yunus Yosfiah murdered Australian-based journalists Greg Shackleton, Tony Stewart, Gary Cunningham (a New Zealander), Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie, who were reporting on Indonesia’s then covert invasion of East Timor.
Roger East, who went to investigate their deaths, was also murdered in Dili during the formal invasion, on December 7 – he was among 86 people summarily executed on the Dili wharf and their bodies dumped in the sea.
The military commanders involved in these atrocities today lead lives of impunity in spite of their crimes.
Director Robert Connolly unveiled some of the footage in a preview of his film at the recent 58th World Press Institute conference in Helsinki, Finland, earlier this month.
Balibo tells the story of the six murders through the eyes of war correspondent Roger East (played by Anthony LaPaglia) and a young José Ramos-Horta (now President of Timor-Leste).
In 2007, New South Wales deputy coroner Dorelle Pinch ruled that the Balibo five were deliberately killed by Indonesian troops to cover up the invasion of East Timor.
Associate Professor Damien Kingsbury, of Geelong’s Deakin University Centre for Citizenship, Development and Human Rights, writes:
As a movie, Balibo is confronting, heart-wrenching, and raises a sense of legitimate anger. These responses parallel how many Australians responded to events in East Timor in 1999, when by their numbers they compelled the Australian government to finally intervene.
Such responses also parallel how many Australians felt in 1975, and in the years since. If the concerns of 1975 faded, it was because our governments so effectively covered-up the truth of these events, and the horrors subsequently perpetrated upon the people of East Timor. The Indonesian government led that complicity, culminating in the carnage and its ignominious departure from East Timor in 1999. But our own governments, under Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke, Keating and Howard, participated in that complicity.
The movie Balibo also captures the reality that East Timor’s people were just ordinary human beings caught in terrible circumstances. The scenes, too, in the forests and of streams, over the steep mountains and of the sea and sky are so accurate because they are East Timor. Dili’s emblematic Hotel Turismo had, and retains, the atmosphere of a Graeme Greene novel.
Balibo’s critics will attack it not for its art, but citing that Australia’s relationship with Indonesia is, these days, positive, and East Timor is now an independent state with its own aspirations and struggles. What they are unlikely to admit it that the problems that East Timor has endured since independence have been rooted in its brutal past.
IT'S HEARTENING to see New Zealand filmmaker and associate professor Annie Goldson and her team raking in the kudos for a poignant and challenging doco about Fiji politics, the gay rights community, ethics and human rights. It has just picked up the Grand Prix award at the sixth Pacific Documentary Film festival in Tahiti.An Island Calling is far more than a film about a particularly gruesome and high profile double murder. Based, in part, on the book by Owen Scott, Deep Beyond The Reef, it tells the story of the killing of former Fiji Red Cross director John Scott (Owen's elder brother) and his partner Greg Scrivener in mid-2001 by Apete Kaisau. As Lumière Reader describes it, there is a real irony in the film:
Scott’s great-grandfather was one of the missionaries who brought The Bible to Fiji in the 19th Century. That same Bible was used as a justification by Kaisau to murder Scott and Scrivener. In the process of telling this tale, Goldson draws in issues such as history, colonisation, evangelical Christianity, homosexuality, turning what could have been seen as a simple murder into something much more complex and morally ambiguous.
Following the impressive track record that she has set with other films such as the 1999 documentary Punitive Damage on the killing in East Timor of Kamal Bamadhaj, Goldson told Lumière's Brannavan Gnanalingam:
“I’d always been a bit of a Pacific watcher. Given we live here in New Zealand I’ve always been interested in the politics of the region. Fiji is one of the hotspots of the Pacific.”
Goldson's awareness of John Scott emerged during the 2000 coup by maverick businessman George Speight, when he risked his life to deliver aid to the hostages - including Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry - held by the coup leaders. After causing a stir at New Zealand film festivals last year, Goldson has now won the coveted Pacific award. This year, apart from the Grand Prix, the festival awarded three special awards to River of No Return (Darlene Johnson, Australia), Sevrapek City (Emmanuel Broto and Fabienne Tzerikiantz, France), The Oasis (Sascha Ettinger-Epstein and Ian Darling, Australia), and a special prize from the public to Marquisien, mon frère (Marquisian, My Brother, Jacques Navarri-Rovira, France, French Polynesia). Image: John Scott in filmmaker's promo picture.
