A grim reminder of the Maguindanao, or Ampatuan, massacre on 23 November 2009. Photo: DanRogayan
A TOP Filipino investigative journalist will be speaking about the “worst attack” on journalists in history and her country’s culture of impunity in a keynote address at a media education conference at AUT University next week.
Ces Oreña-Drilon, an anchor for the ABS-CBN flagship current affairs programme Bandila, has been investigating the 2009 Maguindanao massacre when 32 journalists were among the 58 people killed in the atrocity carried out by private militia recruited by a local warlord.
She has been reporting on the controversial legal and political contest around the massacre with nobody yet having been successfully prosecuted out of almost 200 people charged over the killings.
An update on Ces Oreña-Drilon and the Maguindanao massacre investigation. Her justice corruption allegations have led to a National Bureau of Investigation inquiry. Video: GMA News
PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW, the only politics and media research journal in New Zealand and the Pacific, will host an international conference late next month marking its 20th anniversary of publication.
With the overall theme of “Political journalism in the Asia-Pacific”, many editors, investigative journalists, documentary makers, human rights advocates, media freedom activists and journalism educators and researchers will be converging on Auckland for the event at AUT University on November 27-29.
One of the keynote speakers at PJR2014, television journalist Ces Oreña-Drilon of ABS-CBN and an anchor for the celebrated current affairs programme Bandila, will give an address on the killings of journalists with impunity in the Philippines.
She has been investigating the 2009 massacre of 34 journalists by private militia while they were accompanying a candidate’s entourage to register for elections and she has a grim story to tell in her “Losing the landmark Maguindanao massacre case” presentation about the legal and political fallout from the tragedy.
She is attending the conference with the support of the Asia New Zealand Foundation.
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.
DRAFTHOUSE FILMS have announced their award-winning controversial, shocking and surreal film The Act Of Killing about the Indonesian anti-communist massacres in the 1965-66 purge - screened at the New Zealand International Film Festival last year - is now available on video on demand.
Winner of more than 50 awards internationally, appearing on more than 40 official critics' top ten lists, and shortlisted for best documentary at this year's upcoming Academy Awards, Joshua Oppenheimer's groundbreaking documentary The Act Of Killing is finally available to watch everywhere.
At the time of checking, 352,000 people had seen the trailer.
In this chilling and inventive documentary, executive produced by Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, the unrepentant former members of Indonesian death squads are challenged to re-enact some of their many murders in the style of the American movies they love.
Police, military perimeter guards and the public watch
the 38th independence anniversary parade at the
"widows village" of Kraras. Mobile photo: David Robie/PMC
ON 28 November 1975, Timor-Leste made its fateful unilateral declaration of independence. A week later, a paranoid Indonesian military, fearful of an upstart "leftwing" neighbouring government,
staged its brutal invasion and 24 years of repression and massacres followed.
On 17 September 1983, the infamous massacre of at least
300 civilians (probably a far higher number) took place at the village of
Kraras and Wetuka River near Viqueque.
This heralded the end of the so-called ceasefire between
Indonesian and Falintil forces and led to the long guerrilla struggle against
Jakarta's harsh rule.
This week, the people of Kraras - the "village of widows" -
proudly hosted the 38th anniversary of Timor-Leste independence; the real date,
not the "rewritten" post-UN date. They also honoured the 30th anniversary of the
Kraras massacre.
The massacre has been graphically portrayed in
Timor-Leste's first feature film, Beatriz's War, and it was fitting that this movie should be screened to thousands of Timorese in an open-air arena at the
independence festival this week.
A clip of the tragic shooting at the Lonmin Marikana mine in north-eastern South Africa on Thursday. Video: eNCA - South Africa's leading independent news channel
Open letter to SA President Jacob Zuma – By John Minto
Kia ora President Zuma,
Many New Zealanders who demonstrated so strongly against the apartheid system in the 1970s and 1980s have watched with growing alarm at the direction the African National Congress (ANC) leadership has taken South Africa since the first democratic election in 1994.
The events of the last week culminating in the Marikana massacre of 34 striking mineworkers with dozens injured is the inevitable outcome of the ANC choice to follow free-market economic policies which, wherever and whenever they have been employed in human history, have always transferred wealth from the poor to the rich and stripped hope from the majority.
Under the ANC we have seen South Africa change seemlessly from race-based apartheid to economic apartheid.
We didn’t protest here just to see a few black faces at the top table in South Africa. We didn’t turn out in our tens of thousands to face batons and barbed wire so the likes of former anti-apartheid leaders such as Cyril Ramaphosa, Tokyo Sexwale and Julius Malema could become obscenely rich off the backs of South Africa’s workers – 34 of whom were riddled with police bullets two days ago.
The appalling scenes played out on our TV screens are reminiscent of the darkest days of apartheid such as the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 and the murder of black school children in Soweto in June 1976.
Just as we held the apartheid regime responsible for those massacres, we now hold the ANC government responsible for the massacre of striking mineworkers.
You and your government have blood on their hands.
Leadership betrayal
This year is the 100th anniversary of the formation of the ANC – it should be a time of pride and celebration for all the people of South Africa but the betrayal of the struggle by the ANC leadership leaves most of us cold.
As a spokesperson for Abahlahli baseMjondolo, which is struggling for decent housing against violence and intimidation said last month:
“All is slowly sinking as the new government is making sure that we remember the heroes of the struggle but not what the struggle was for”.
At this time of deep sadness for those and injured and their families, and anger at the ineptitude, self-service and corruption running to the core of your government, we stand once more with the poor and oppressed people of South Africa and their struggle for freedom, hope and dignity.
John Minto is a Global Justice and Peace Auckland (GPJA) spokesperson and a tireless campaigner for social justice in South Africa. He is a previous contributor to Café Pacific.
