A struggle for ‘truth’ and the NZ media myopic over Fiji, West Papua

The vigil for 58 victims of the 2009 Ampatuan massacre - including 32 news people - at AUT University last week.
Photo: © 2014 John Miller

INTERESTING that the Indonesian news agency Antara should send one of its most senior journalists all the way from Jakarta to cover last week’s Pacific Journalism Review conference in Auckland, yet the local New Zealand media barely noticed the largest-ever local gathering of activists, media educators, journalists, documentary makers and newsmakers in one symposium.

Apart from a half-hour interview on Radio NZ’s Sunday with Max Stahl, the Timor-Leste film maker and investigative journalist world-famous for his live footage of the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre – images that ultimately led to the world’s first independence-by-video triumph some eight years later – and a couple of bulletins on RNZI, you would have hardly known the event was on.

But the conference was packed with compelling and newsworthy presentations by journalists and media educators. Topics ranged from asylum seekers to the emerging “secret state” in Australia; from climate change to the logging of “cloud forest’ on the island of Kolombangara; from post-elections Fiji to the political ecology of mining in New Caledonia.

All tremendously hard-hitting stuff and a refreshing reminder how parochial and insignificant the New Zealand media is when it comes to regional Asia-Pacific affairs.

Mounting global pressure against Timor-Leste’s ‘death sentence’ media law

East Timor’s José Belo … courageous fight against "unconstitutional" media law.
Image: © Ted McDonnell 2014

CAFÉ PACIFIC and the Pacific Media Centre Online posted challenges to the controversial ‘press law’ nine months ago when it emerged how dangerous this draft legislation was.

Opposition quickly took off among independent journalists, civil society advocates and eventually media freedom organisations such as the regional Pacific Media Watch and global International Federation of Journalists and Reporters Sans Frontières took up the cause.

Yet even though this law was clearly a much bigger threat to Pacific media freedoms as a regional precedent than the military backed Fiji Media Decree, it took some time for mainstream news media groups to take notice.

And this is mostly thanks to the courageous efforts of Tempo Semanal’s editor José Belo, who is also leader of the fledging Timor-Leste Press Union (TLPU), to bring it to the attention of the global community.

This draconian draft law (not-so-draft as it has already been adopted by the National Parliament and has just been stalled temporarily by the Appeal Court over some "unconstitutional" sections) smacks of the worst repression days of Indonesian occupation and of the Suharto era of media censorship.

La’o Hamutuk calls for inquiry into Timor GAP ‘mismanagement’ of oil resources

The Suai project on the South Coast ... "liberated" land but confused communities.
Photo: La'o Hamutuk

AN INDEPENDENT Timor-Leste development and social justice agency has called for an inquiry into the Timor GAP corporation established to manage the country’s energy resources for the benefit of its citizens, alleging “poor management” and “possible corruption”.

La’o Hamutuk, which has been monitoring state management of the oil and gas industry reserves and government spending, has sent an open letter to the Court of Appeal president Guilhermino da Silva and other agencies.

The state-owned company Timor Gás & Petróleo, E.P. was established in July 2011 and it began operations three months later - but has never filed an annual report for the past three years as required by law, according to La’o Hamutuk researchers.

“La’o Hamutuk has asked them about this many times, and Timor GAP said that problems with the internal audit of their GAP-MHS subsidiary prevented publication of these reports for more a year,” the development agency said in its open letter.

"We believe that Timor GAP, E.P. may have committed legal violations, maladministration, poor management, and possible corruption, as well as ignoring legal obligations for accountability and transparency."

The letter called for an “external audit” initiated by the "Camara de Contas [Tax and Audit Tribunal] or Parliament".

Timor-Leste’s Parliament handed ‘humiliating’ defeat over harsh media law

East Timorese journalists raise their hands to approve the Timor-Leste Journalist
Code of Ethics in October 2013. Photo: Tempo Semanal

PACIFIC SCOOP reported this week that East Timor’s Appeal Court had scrapped the country’s draconian new Media Law and sent it back to the National Parliament. The ruling was welcomed with open arms by journalists, foreign correspondents, civil society advocates and democrats.

Problem is that some legal interpretations doing the rounds seem to suggest this isn’t quite the full story. In fact, perhaps, some say, reports “jumped the gun” in suggesting that the court had ruled the law completely “unconstitutional”.

Tempo Semanal, the independent publication run by investigative journalist  José Belo, is probably closer to the mark by saying that parts of the law “violate” the Constitution of Timor-Leste. It is an embarrassing defeat for Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao who had backed the law.

This law is far harsher than the controversial Fiji Media Industry Development Decree imposed by the military-backed regime in Fiji in 2010, which casts a shadow over next month’s election, yet while New Zealand media has had a lot to say about the Fiji media law, it has largely ignored the legislation ushered in by a democracy in Dili.

This is what the Tetum-language Tempo Semanal report said in its stilted English - and the Timor-Leste Press Union, which has been fighting this law from the start, gave a big thumbs-up:

Balibo's ghosts and Timor-Leste's controversial media law

A Timorese broadcast journalist working in Dili's Santa Cruz cemetery at a 2013 memorial event marking the
1991 massacre by Indonesian troops. Photo: David Robie

CAFÉ PACIFIC opened up public debate on the progress of Dili's widely condemned Media Law in February after a visit to Timor-Leste. Since then there has been a critical mass of coverage and analysis on this flawed piece of legislation. The latest commentary by Human Rights Watch's Phelim Kine is an indictment of Australian policy over Timor-Leste. He says the Australian government should "make it clear that media freedom is an indispensable component of a prosperous and stable society and demand that East Timor nurture a free media, not undermine it". Ditto for New Zealand policy. Read on:

Australia's stake in East Timor's media freedom is rooted in that country's hillside town of Balibo. It was there on October 16, 1975 that invading Indonesian military forces killed, execution-style, five journalists - Greg Shackleton, Tony Stewart, and New Zealander Gary Cunningham from Melbourne's Channel Seven and Brian Raymond Peters and Malcolm Rennie from Sydney's Channel Nine - to prevent them from reporting on the invasion.

Indonesian troops on December 8, 1975, killed Roger East, an Australian reporter drawn to East Timor to determine the fate of the Balibo Five.

Four decades later, East Timor's journalists and foreign correspondents are again under threat. A new media law that East Timor's Parliament passed on May 6 has the power to stifle the country's still-fragile media freedom. East Timor's Court of Appeal is reviewing the law's constitutionality in response to a July 14 request by president Taur Matan Ruak.

Bad news from East Timor as media faces petro fund 'guided democracy' gag

Timorese students protest over Australian spying in its efforts to manipulate Timor-Leste's oil industry
... free speech at risk under the new media law. Photo: Global Voices

By Tempo Semanal editor/publisher José Antonio Belo

SADLY, I have bad news to report from East Timor. It is not yet clear how long my colleagues and I will be able to freely report the news. But readers should know, things are not what they seem in the glowing press releases from Government Palace in Dili.

The government, through its members in the national Parliament, is taking steps to limit basic freedoms held by Timorese citizens.

East Timor is now a vibrant and peaceful young democracy, but a few weeks ago it took a significant step backwards towards the days of the Suharto regime, when Indonesia occupied East Timor for 24 years between 1975 and 1999.

On May 6, the national Parliament of East Timor passed a law to regulate the media and freedom of expression in East Timor. The law has yet to be promulgated by the President of the Republic, Taur Matan Ruak, although it was sent to him to pass last week.

The law is not only undemocratic but is also in violation of the constitution. The constitution gives rights to the media and citizens for freedom of expression in articles 40 and 41, but the new law seeks to limit, restrict and in some cases terminate those rights.

Timor-Leste raises bar in media suppression with new law

Graphic from the latest edition of Index on Censorship with a profile on the new law.
Image: Shutterstock/Index on Censorship

JOURNALISTS and civil society critical of the flawed Fiji mediascape in the lead-up to the first post-coup general election in September should also be up in arms over the attempts to muzzle the press in Timor-Leste.

A new law passed by the National Assembly in Dili early last month raises the Asia-Pacific bar in suppression tactics against probing media.

The law, not yet endorsed by the president, severely limits who can qualify to be “journalists” and could potentially curb overseas investigative journalists and foreign correspondents from reporting from the country as they would need advance state permission.

It also sidelines independent freelancers and researchers working for non-government organisations in quasi media roles.

In a fledgling country where the media has limited resources, media officers and other researchers working for NGOs have been providing robust reporting and analysis of the country’s development progress – especially over the oil producing industry.

RSF ‘information hero’ fights new media law in Timor-Leste

Gagged José Belo at a Media Law Seminar in Dili hosted by the Secretary for Communication.
Image: Jornal Independente

Bob Howarth files a special report from Dili for Café Pacific

IT WAS a stunt that arguably, in any democratic country on any given day, would have led the media headlines and stopped anyone that cared about their rights to speak freely in their tracks.

But as the man who was this year included in Reporters Without Borders 100 “information heroes” list for his contribution to journalism world-wide, José Belo, sat quietly on the head table at yesterday’s Secretary of State-led media capacity workshop in Dili with a bandana fixed across his mouth, the noise was sadly minimal.

For almost an hour Belo sat, his mouth forced shut as a sign of the gag the veteran journalist believes will soon be forced on Timor-Leste’s fragile media under a new law.

As the nation’s first new media law now sits waiting presidential approval, Belo warned that, in its current form, its restrictions on who can and can’t operate as a journalist, government control of the regulating press council body and worrying stipulations on information access would signal the death of Timorese journalists’ spirit.

Sobering times, but is it too little too late to save freedom of expression and plurality of voices in a country that so many times has proudly paraded its own long fight for freedom?

Parliament soft-pedals over East Timor’s harsh draft media law

East Timorese media ... fears draft media law could lead to censorship.
Photo: Diariu Timor Pos

JOSÉ BELO, Timor-Leste’s celebrated champion of investigative journalism and advocate for a free media, recently vowed he was prepared to go to jail rather than allow his fledgling independent nation muzzle the press.

Belo, 42, publisher of the small yet probing Tempo Semanal online and print weekly, says he won’t give up in the current struggle over the fate of the media.

He has been campaigning against a draconian draft media law over the past few months.

“It’s about the future of our country,” he told Fairfax Media’s Lindsay Murdoch.

But the news about a draft law that is feared could lead to censorship is not getting any better. Since Café Pacific broke this story in early February, the Timorese non-government organisation La’o Hamutuk has been monitoring developments closely – and making quality submissions.

Australia ‘shockingly close’ to oil companies in discredited Timor treaty

AUSTRALIAN government negotiators were “shockingly close” to the oil companies in a controversial maritime treaty signed with the emerging nation of Timor-Leste in 2006, it is claimed in a new documentary about the recent spy drama that has stirred allegations of industrial espionage by Canberra.

The ABC Four Corners investigation, “Drawing The Line”, by Marian Wilkinson and Peter Cronau, will be broadcast on Monday night.

It provides fresh insights into Australian national security in the Asia-Pacific region in the post-Cold War environment.

“Do governments too freely use espionage for economic advantage? And is it in the national interest?” asks the investigation.

Earlier this month, a ruling by the International Court of Justice banning Australia from using documents seized during a controversial intelligence raid on the Canberra home of Timor-Leste’s Australian-based lawyer was hailed as a David-versus-Goliath victory by Australia’s neighbour.

Fighting for East Timor's right to free expression and information for everybody, not just journalists

La'o Hamutuk ... submissions for free speech and the right to information
for everybody in Timor-Leste. Photo: David Robie

EARLIER this month Café Pacific published two commentaries on the draconian proposed media law for Timor-Leste and why journalists are up in arms about it. They were republished on Pacific Scoop.

But it isn't only journalists who are concerned, non-government organisations that often carry out independent investigations on issues that local media don't have the resources to tackle are also upset.

It is the narrow definition of "journalists" and freedom of information for the public at stake. One of the provisions essentially gags freelance and independent journalists, and also foreign correspondents are blocked as the draft currently stands.

The International Federation of Journalists has issued a statement criticising the draft law and Reporters Sans Frontières is believed to be sending a letter to the Timorese legislators reviewing the draft law.

On February 19, Committee A of Timor-Leste's Parliament invited La'o Hamutuk and the HAK Association to present and discuss our views.

East Timor journalists form press union as concerns mount over draft media law

Timorese journalists check out their stories in two of the daily newspapers while
waiting for a media conference in Dili. Photo: David Robie

By DAVID ROBIE

TIMOR-LESTE Press Club has this week transformed itself into the fledgling Timor-Leste Press Union and now seeks to become affiliated to the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists.

It is also seeking collaboration with the National University of Timor-Leste (UNTL) to establish a training programme for journalists in the industry.

These are just two of the current moves by journalists in response to mounting concern over a proposed media law that some fear may curb a free press in the country.

While journalists are worried about the legislation, some are reluctant to openly condemn it. Timor-Leste ranked 77th in the latest 2014 Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index report.

Timor-Leste Press Union president Jose Belo, the country’s best known investigative journalist and publisher of the independent Tempo Semanal, has confirmed the new status of his journalists advocacy group and says he is concerned over “government control” of media.

Timor-Leste's media law ‘secrecy’ lifted, but draconian content revealed

East Timorese journalists at work ... no more freelancers
under the draft media law? Photo: David Robie

By DAVID ROBIE

THE PROPOSED Timor-Leste media law is a draconian mixed bag. And it is ironical that such a document with lofty claims of protecting the freedom of the press should be shrouded in secrecy for the past six months.

After being approved by the Council of Ministers last August 6, it has languished in the “don’t touch” basket since then, apart from a critical airing at a conference on the state of the media last October.

And then suddenly, with few copies of the document being in circulation previously, a hurried “consultation" was held with journalist representatives this week. A journalists' submission is expected by Parliamentary Committee A by Monday.

But other people with a stake in the future of media regulation – such as academics, bloggers, book publishers, non-government organisations, political commentators and media users themselves – haven’t yet had a chance to give any input.

While the document contains an interesting attempt to define “duties” of journalists in an evolving new democracy such as Timor-Leste and professes to support freedom of information and the right to be informed, in reality many clauses seek to effectively gag the press and debate.

'Pak' Prabowo seeks to 'clear' his name over Timor atrocities allegations in media jousting

Beatriz looks for her husband among the bodies after the 1983 Kraras massacre, as portrayed in
Beatriz's War, East Timor's first feature film.

By DAVID ROBIE

INDONESIAN presidential hopeful ‘Pak” Prabowo, the retired Kopassus general notorious for his alleged human rights violations in Timor-Leste, has finally broken his silence and made a statement to the Jakarta Post denouncing a recent article about his past as “scurrilous allegations”.

Yet his odious record speaks for itself.

He claims in an open letter that allegations about his actions three decades ago, notably the massacre in August 1983 in Kraras - now known as the “village of widows",  were "based on unproven allegations, innuendos and third-hand reports".

What was he forced to reply to? Journalist Aboeprijadi Santoso, a contributor  to The Jakarta Post writing from the safety of Amsterdam, had written an article entitled: “Whatever happened in Kraras, Timor-Leste, ‘Pak’ Prabowo?”

Timor-Leste soldiers and young citizens paying homage
to the Kraras  massacre victims in 2013.
Photo: David Robie

He was referring to the massacre that has been immortalised in Beatriz's War, the harrowing new film about the Timorese struggle for independence from Indonesia, especially telling the story from a woman's perspective.

Heroine Beatriz (a composite character created from real life people) was a survivor from the Kraras massacre. Prabowo is depicted as being responsible for many human rights atrocities in the film.

Santoso recently described Prabowo as one of the “most interesting – and most controversial” presidential hopefuls in the Indonesian elections due in July because he has reinvented himself as an anti-corruption campaigner. 

Timor-Leste’s Max Stahl – documenting the audiovisual and development ‘war’

Filmmaker and digital historian Max Stahl with an image from his 1991 Santa Cruz
massacre footage in Timor-Leste. Photo: David Robie

By David Robie

A YEAR after Indonesian troops killed more than 270 peaceful demonstrators at the cemetery of Santa Cruz in the Timor-Leste capital of Dili in 1991, news footage secretly shot by a cameraman surfaced in a powerful new film.

The Yorkshire Television documentary, In Cold Blood: The Massacre of East Timor, screened in six countries and later broadcast in other nations, helped change the course of history.

Until then, countries such as Australia and New Zealand – in spite of a New Zealander being killed in the massacre – had been content to close a blind eye to the illegal Indonesian invasion in 1975 and the atrocities committed for a quarter century.

The cameraman, Max Stahl, who risked his own life to film the massacre and bury the footage cassette in a freshly dug grave before he was arrested, knew this evidence of the massacre would be devastating.

In a documentary made a decade later by Yorkshire Television’s Peter Gordon, Bloodshot: The Dreams and Nightmares of East Timor, that interviewed key players –including Stahl himself - in the transition to restored independence in 2002, Timorese leaders reveal just how critical this footage was in telling their story of repression to the world.

East Timor's shocking saga of the principal, the minister and a schoolgirl

The controversial image on a Timorese Facebook group.

By Alex Tilman of Di'ak Ka Lae? Timor-Leste Reconsidered

OPINION: THIS STORY will make you cringe! Last month photos of a middle-aged man (one of which is reproduced here) embracing what looked like a uniformed schoolgirl inside a car, lip-locked, surfaced on a popular Timorese Facebook group.

It was soon revealed that the middle-aged man is the principal of a Catholic high school in Dili, the Colegio de São Miguel in Rai Kotu (Comoro), and the alleged uniformed schoolgirl, one of his students.

Needless to say, the photo instantly stirred a controversy surrounding what most people see as a highly inappropriate and despicable relationship between teacher and student even though no other detail of the relationship exists.

Various individuals, including members of Parliament, called for criminal investigation and the principal's sacking. Most were appalled by the principal's behaviour, yet there were a persistent few who attempted to trivialise the significance of this photo.

The case is currently being heard in a court (see article below). But the nature of the controversy took on a new twist after journalists confronted Timor-Leste's Vice-Minister of Education in charge of secondary education, Virgilio Smith.

Tear gas, hidden truth and news media 'fudging' over East-Timor

Timorese protesters condemn Australian policy over the Timor Sea oil and gas reserves issue
and call for justice over the disputed maritime boundary. Photo: La'o Hamutuk

Quote from the Timor-Leste development and resources watchdog La'o Hamutuk over the recent news agency 'false report' on a demonstration over Australian duplicity over the Timor Sea disputed oil and gas industry:

Why are the world's media so eager to report lies about violence committed by people from Timor-Leste, but so reluctant -- in the past and still today -- to report truthfully on those who commit violence against them?

This was from a recent article posted by the NGO on its blog over allegations of fabrication by a news agency stringer and condemning media reluctance to correct the facts.

PRESUMPTION OF VIOLENCE

ANALYSIS: ON Thursday, 5 December, about 20 students and activists peacefully protested across the street from the Australian Embassy in Dili to urge Australia to respect Timor-Leste's sovereignty and rights to its undersea oil and gas.

In their statement (original Tetum), they urged Australia to "stop stealing and occupying the Timor Sea, but show your good will as a large nation which follows democratic principles to accept a maritime boundary based on international legal principles."

Mandela, Indonesia and the liberation of Timor-Leste

Australian and English cricket fans observe a minute's silence for the passing of a global
icon of freedom and justice. Photo: Gurtong Trust

Nelson Mandela, who became one of the world's most beloved statesmen and a colossus of the 20th century when he emerged from 27 years in prison to negotiate an end to white minority rule in South Africa, has died. He was 95. His death closed the final chapter in South Africa's struggle to cast off apartheid, leaving the world with indelible memories of a man of astonishing grace and good humor. - Al Jazeera

In July this year, on the occasion of hs birthday, journalist ABOEPRIJADI SANTOSO wrote this tribute to Mandela’s role in Timor-Leste independence. 

WHEN he turned 95 years old, the late South African president Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela may have reflected on his struggle and his contribution with great satisfaction more than anyone else could. Popularly known as Madiba, he became an icon of freedom, reconciliation and hope the world over.

Much less known is his legacy to help liberate the people of Timor-Leste.

In 1955 Mandela lauded the historic Asia-Africa Conference held in Bandung. Two leading members of the African National Congress (ANC) - including his close ally Walter Sisulu - were there to represent their country.

Indonesia continued its support for the movement and provided the platform for the Asian struggle against apartheid, which Mandela respected.

Mandela, fond of batik shirts, loves Indonesia and visited four times: 1990, 1994, 1997 and 2002. The first time he came he visited the site of Bandung conference and said he was inspired by the Asia-Africa Conference and Sukarno's role.

Australia condemned over 'stolen' oil, gas and Timor Sea 'neocolonial greed'

Timorese protest in Dili over Australian 'greed' over the Timor Sea boundary issue.
Photo: Juvinal Dias/La'o Hamutuk

An alternative view to the mainstream media coverage on the Timor Sea issue. A statement from the Movement against the Occupation of the Timor Sea, a Timor-Leste activist group that has been smeared by a false AFP report about a demonstration across the road from the Autralian Embassy in the East Timorese capital of Dili on December 5:

FOR MANY years, Australia has been stealing the oil and gas from the Timor Sea, in an area which belongs to Timor-Leste under international legal principles.

Sadly, Australia has shown its manner and its greed to make our small and poor country in this region lose our resources and sovereignty.

After it became aware of the oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea, Australia supported Indonesia for more than two decades as it committed genocide against the people of this land, stealing and using its strong economic and political power to trample us, making themselves rich by leaving us in poverty.

A few days ago, the Australian government used its intelligence service to seize documents from Timor-Leste's lawyer in the CMATS (Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea) arbitration case, and to put pressure on a "whistleblower" so that he could not testify.

Taking on the challenge of Timor-Leste's media in transition

Tempo Semanal's Joe Belo ... exposing corruption. Photo: David Robie/PMC

By DAVID ROBIE in Dili

TIMOR-LESTE newspaper editor and investigative journalist Jose Belo is no stranger to controversy, legal threats or the inside of a prison cell.

He was imprisoned and tortured by the Indonesian occupation forces for a period during the 24 years of illegal occupation of Timor-Leste while smuggling out reports to the world from the beleagured resistance movement.

Five years ago he was threatened with a seven-year prison sentence for criminal defamation over allegations of corruption against the then justice minister.

This prompted a high-profile international appeal by journalists, academics and media freedom campaigners to then President Jose Ramos-Horta to have the case dropped.

Threats are common over Belo's campaigns to root out corruption and nepotism in his fledgling Asia-Pacific state - the world's newest nation barely a decade old.