Aceh newspaper survives war, threats and tsunami

Aceh newspaper survives war, threats and tsunami

Chris Brummitt, Associated Press/Banda Aceh

The tsunami ripped through the offices of Aceh's only newspaper
with awesome force, picking up its two huge printing presses like
toys and hurling them into the carpark. The human toll was more
terrible: 100 staff are feared dead.

But just six days later, Serambi Indonesia -- which has
survived threats from both the government and separatist rebels
for its hard-hitting coverage of this war-torn corner of
Indonesia -- was back in circulation.

"Cholera is threatening our refugees," read the banner
headline of the first edition, a slimmed down version printed in
Aceh province's second city, Lhokseumawe, and handed out free.

Also on the front page: a telephone number and message urging
employees to call in and let the editors know they are still
alive.

"We were badly hit, but the spirit of our journalists got this
edition out," said Ismail Syah, the paper's Lhokseumawe bureau
chief. "We need to give information to the people and allow our
employees to get in touch with us."

Industry officials say it will be a blow to free speech in one
of Indonesia's most tightly-controlled and trouble-prone regions
if Serambi cannot get up and running again in its previous
tenacious form.

"Serambi has played an extraordinary role in Aceh, not only in
providing information and education on the conflict but also in
brightening the minds of Acehnese people," said Eddy Suprapto of
the Alliance of Independent Journalists.

"It is a big loss. We may able find qualified and skilled
journalists, but it is not easy to find those with idealism like
those at Serambi," he said.

The earthquake that triggered the Dec. 26 tsunami across parts
of Asia and Africa was centered off the west coast of Aceh, a
province on the northern tip of Sumatra island. Coastal towns
staggered by the quake were among the first to be hit by the
waves. Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, was badly damaged.
Villages along the west coast were utterly destroyed.

A staggering 100,000 are feared dead among the island's 4.3
million people.

More than a week after the tsunami hit, it is still not clear
exactly how many Serambi employees and journalists were killed.
Tens of thousands of people are missing across the island, and
officials have been filling mass graves with unidentified bodies
to clear the streets of the dead.

Syah said some 60 percent of the paper's 270 staff remain
unaccounted for. Editors are hopeful that many of them are still
alive, and just haven't been able to check in with the paper.
Phone lines are still down in many parts of the province.

But Syah estimated the final death toll at the paper would be
around 100.

Along with the paper's two-story offices, a housing estate
where many of its employees lived was leveled. With tens of
thousands of bodies washed away to sea and destined never to be
found, a final tally could take weeks.

Mohammed Rokan, a 53-year-old political and security reporter
for the paper, is among the missing. His son, Iqbal, still holds
out hope he is alive.

"My father may have lost his memory," he said, offering a
possible explanation why he hasn't contacted his family. "We will
check at the hospital, and then refugee camps. If we cannot find
him, then we will accept it as God's will."

The Associated Press' longtime stringer in Aceh, Muharram N.
Nur, was also a Serambi journalist. He is listed as missing and
repeated efforts by the AP to contact his family have been
unsuccessful. His house in the compound was among hundreds
reduced to rubble.

Serambi started publishing underground in the late 1980s, but
came to prominence after 1998 when longtime dictator Gen.
Soeharto was deposed amid pro-democracy protests. Soeharto closed
down papers that were critical of his rule, or that reported the
brutality of his security forces in suppressing separatist
movements in outlying regions.

Aceh's separatist movement, which has fought a low-level war
for an independent state in the oil- and gas-rich province, was
energized by the successful bid for statehood in 1999 by East
Timor, at the other end of Indonesia's vast archipelago.

With Soeharto gone, Serambi was able to report more freely on
the rebels, and quote their commanders for the first time.

But last year, the military -- the province's most powerful
institution -- summoned the paper's editors and threatened to
shut them down unless they stopped asking the rebels for comment
for their stories. Faced with closure, the editors reluctantly
agreed and stopped contacting the insurgents.

The paper, which has a circulation of some 40,000, has also
come under fire from rebels, which have accused it of siding with
the government and threatened its reporters.

In recent years, its sister publication, the weekly Kontras
magazine, has exposed crooked politicians in the province, which
is renowned for corruption and bad governance. Reporters for both
publications are regularly threatened by both sides in the war.