A tribute to Ersa Siregar

A tribute to Ersa Siregar

Aboeprijadi Santoso, Contributor, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Fifty-two-year-old Sory Ersa Siregar was not the first journalist
killed in Aceh. Nor was he the first on-duty journalist slain in
the country's war-torn areas. Yet, his tragic death may bear some
significance for the war in Aceh.

For, like Ersa, many -- too many -- Acehnese have lost their
lives in a conflict that has dragged on for too long. Like him,
they were non-combatant civilians, whose deaths have become, and
are perceived as, a "normal" part of the reality of war. Yet this
should not be happening if the warring parties respected the
rules set out in the Geneva Convention.

Second, his death was a great shock as the country's press
corps had often been victimized in peacetime, but rarely in war.
Just as we in the past tended to ignore the Balibo killings of
five foreign journalists in East Timor on Oct. 16, 1975, now we
are facing the public shock resulting from the death of a
journalist, whose impact may affect public opinion on the war in
Aceh.

Third, as Ersa was a victim of an ongoing war and conflict
that has not been fully understood, his death may lead many, as
apparently had led Ersa, to contemplate on the nature of this
war.

I had the privilege of having had fairly intensive contacts
with Ersa as we traveled together during two journalistic
missions in Aceh in Dec. 1999 and last June.

The first was in the area near Jim Jim, Pidie, Aceh, only a
few months after I lost a friend, Agus Mulyawan, a young
filmmaker, who was murdered in East Timor in Sept. 1999. To
recall Ersa is, partly, to remember Agus -- two professional
journalists with moral courage and honesty, who fell victim to
Indonesia's wars with its own people.

Ersa, a father of three children, tried to understand the
problem of Aceh. In an attempt to grasp the issues, he once urged
us to stay in a coffee shop, where we spent almost the whole
afternoon talking to a number of villagers and interviewing a
simple old man, who told his story of Aceh "from the Japanese
period to the Soeharto era." Thereafter, he came out with a
happier face.

He dealt easily and correctly with various people and combined
this with the ability to listen carefully to his sources. Few
journalists greet members of the security forces by personally
shaking their hands one by one, but Ersa did it consistently to
all, from the privates up to the commanders.

One day in Bireuen last June, villagers, as often happened in
Aceh, waited for the press and urged us to come, and showed the
dead body of a badly tortured young man. It was a hysterically
moment as the locals were very angry. Ersa remained calm and took
the interviews professionally in a difficult and uncontrolled
atmosphere amid many locals and media.

David O'Shea's documentary film In Bed with the TNI (The
Indonesian military) recorded how he acted. The film was supposed
to be about Indonesia's style of embedded journalism, but Ersa
and most of the journalists covered were actually not part of the
Army's project.

Ersa, like most reporters with us then, was a free journalist.
He was not the kind of journalist who looked at Aceh in a
jingoistic-nationalistic spirit as if it was simply a matter of
TNI versus the separatist rebels only, and as if our mission was
simply to support the one to crush the other.

Instead, it was very clear that Ersa was concerned about the
fate of the common people. Asked if he was hoping that the TNI
would rescue him before the ultimatum ended on July 8, at 6 p.m.
(local time), in his, perhaps, last interview, he told Radio
Netherlands on that day: "I'm concerned. (For) in any clash, the
civilians will be the ones most precarious. From the outset I
often disagreed with him," referring to the war-commander, who
issued the ultimatum, Gen. Bambang Darmono.

"There is no need (for the TNI) to rescue me," he added, as he
indicated that his and the abducted group's condition was good.

"What is more important is that the domestic and foreign media
have access to the rebels and help us," he said. He also denied
the TNI chief's allegation that he let himself be taken hostage
in order to gather more news.

In the end, neither the TNI nor the rebels seem to have done
their utmost to save him and last week, he was found shot dead in
a swamp.

When we were somewhere on the road, I remember him saying:
"How on earth could this beautiful country (Aceh), with the
beautiful names (of its villages) like Juli and Permata, have
become trapped in a war like this ..."

The message Ersa seemed to convey was that something must have
seriously gone wrong here in Aceh. That may hopefully inspire
those who strive for peace.

Earlier, in Room No. 15, which we shared in Lhoksemauwe's Vine
Vira Hotel, he often showed deep concern about what the U.S. was
doing in Iraq and asked a lot about what Europe would do. He
said, he wanted to take a holiday after this Aceh assignment, and
thought he might go to Europe and visit Amsterdam. He never made
it.

I have lost a good friend and respected colleague.