Activists says free press in peril
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Twelve prominent activists warned on Wednesday that the country's free press is in peril, as law courts have continued to use the Criminal Code to try journalists in defamation cases.
"The enemy is at the gate," law expert Nono Anwar Makarim, one of the 12 signatories of the petition, told a media conference at the Freedom Institute.
The petition came ahead of Monday's court verdict against Tempo chief editor Bambang Harymurti, who is on trial for defamation against businessman Tomy Winata.
Prosecutors had earlier sought a two-year prison term for Bambang, and two other Tempo reporters, Ahmad Taufik and Tengku Iskandar Ali, for an article in the weekly magazine which Tomy said tarnished his good name.
"Freedom of the press is a basic pillar of democracy," the petition said.
The prosecution of Bambang and the two reporters "is not only threatening Tempo, but also all the pillars of democracy," it said.
Other signatories were Andi Mallarangeng, Hamid Basyaib, Ichan Loulembah, Indra J. Piliang, J. Giovannie, M. Chatib Basri, M. Ikhsan, Rizal Mallarangeng, Saiful Mujani, Sugeng Souarwoto and Ulil Abshar-Abdhalla.
The use of the Criminal Code rather than the 1999 Press Law by the courts has become a contentious issue. At least 14 cases of defamation have reached the courts in the past year, and every single one of them is being heard using the Criminal Code, which Indonesia inherited from the Dutch colonial government.
Two of these cases involved the editors of Rakyat Merdeka daily, and they lost their cases to President Megawati Soekarnoputri and House Speaker Akbar Tandjung respectively. They remain free, however, pending their appeals to higher courts.
When reading their sentence demand, prosecutors asked that Bambang serve his prison term immediately.
If the court concedes to the prosecutor's arguments on Monday, Bambang and the two reporters would be the first journalists in the country to be sent to prison for something they wrote after the Soeharto era. Soeharto imprisoned some journalists in the early years of his presidency in the 1970s, and later in the 1990s including Ahmad Taufik himself, while Sukarno -- Indonesia's first president -- sent some prominent journalists to prison in the 1950s.
Tempo, a publicly listed publishing company, previously lost a separate lawsuit filed by Tomy Winata and had been ordered to pay damages amounting to US$1 million. The decision is being appealed.
Hinca Panjaitan of the Ombudsman of the Press Council said the Press Law had already provided a legal recourse for people who felt they had been defamed by the media. One such recourse is the right of reply, which the media is obligated to publish or disseminate in cases of defamation.
The petitioners warned that during the Soeharto era, the greatest threat to the press in Indonesia came from the regime. "Today, it is coming from a different source: The public."