Part 1 of 2: A journalist accused

Bambang Harymurti, Jakarta

I am a journalist. I am not a lawyer who has mastered the technicalities of preparing a plea or legal defense in a court of law. (But) I would like to convey my thoughts and opinions on various issues that have arisen in the process of this trial.

I would like to begin my explanation with a question: Should a journalist who practices his profession as mandated by law, and who publishes his works according to journalistic norms enshrined in law, be seen as a criminal?

It is now within Your Honor's power to answer this question. Will Your Honors refer to Art. 4 clause (1) of Law no. 40/1999 on the Press which states that "Freedom of the Press is guaranteed as a basic human right of citizens"; also, Article 4 clause (3) i.e. "in order to guarantee freedom of the press, the national press has a right to explore, discover and disseminate ideas and information"; and then implement Art. 8, which states "In practicing his profession a journalist has protection of the law," so that Your Honors decide that the prosecutor's charges against me must be rejected, because they are a wrongful application of the law.

The alternative is to grant the prosecutor's demands. If this is the choice you make, then Your Honors will be noted in the history of this nation as the earliest executioners of press freedom in this country.

This conclusion is drawn because, if we study the charges that have been prepared by the public prosecutor, the answer to the initial question posed above is yes. It would even seem that I, as the chief editor of Tempo Magazine, am considered to be a criminal who is so dangerous to the public that the prosecutor has asked the judges to sentence me to two years imprisonment, and to detain me immediately. To the best of my knowledge, requests for immediate detention are usually made only for dangerous criminals who should not be allowed to remain at large, and who are held in detention from the time of their arrest until there is a verdict.

On Aug. 14, 2004, President Megawati bestowed the Bintang Mahaputera medal on four national figures, including Mochtar Lubis, a dedicated journalist who was jailed and whose newspaper was banned both when the Old Order and the New Order started to enter their authoritarian era. This is interesting, because it could mean that the prosecutor who made these charges against me is implementing a policy in contradiction to the President, or that President Mega only honors freedom of the press in times of other governments, not during the time of her own regime? Let history answer this.

As the prosecutor has collided with so many of the markers of the Constitution and law, it is then not surprising that his indictment does not make sense, and may even be properly considered to be contradicting the law, i.e.,: As the chief editor of a magazine that published an article that complied with Law No. 40/1999, I am charged by the prosecutor as a criminal who must be sentenced to two years imprisonment, with an order for immediate detention, while the leader of the group that attacked Tempo's offices, who then assaulted me at a police station in an attempt to force me to reveal the names of the sources in the Tempo article, is in contrast given a demand at his trial that he be released of all charges. Isn't this an extraordinarily unjust?

It appears that the effort to undermine press freedom is now going to be repeated. This contravenes the law, even going back on the constitutional mandate. All of us are obligated to oppose this and prevent it from happening.

I passed the article "Ada Tomy di Tenabang?" (Is Tomy in Tenabang?) without any correction whatsoever. I did this not through neglect, but because I considered the piece to have met journalistic norms.

I believe the content of the piece meets current journalistic norms because it is balanced, based on facts from the field and explanations from authoritative sources. The circulation of rumors insinuating Tomy Winata's involvement in the planned renovation project had itself become a fact; these rumors were so widespread as rumors that Tomy Winata himself said he had already asked about this by five other people before being interviewed by Bernarda Rurit from Tempo.

The piece also complied with the "assumption of innocence" in that at end of this piece the writer implied that Tomy Winata was "being maligned," and that there were other parties who were enjoying the fruits of the controversy.

If a reporter whose work meets the journalistic norms established under the press law is accused by the state prosecutor of committing a crime, it is clear that such an accusation is a wrongful application of the law, and may even warrant suspicion of the misuse of authority.

The article is an excerpt of Tempo news weekly chief editor Bambang Harymurti's defense note read before the Central Jakarta District Court on Aug. 16, 2004. Bambang and two other journalists from the weekly are being charged with provoking unrest and defamation against businessman Tomy Winata.