Few survivors feared among messengers

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A lot of people count on them to bring the news, especially now as traumatized survivors search frantically for lost family members, but almost all of 80 journalists from the only daily newspaper based in Aceh -- Serambi Indonesia -- are missing and feared dead.

The latest stories published on the Serambi website are from Saturday's edition.

As the main paper covering Aceh, the journalists have become accustomed to threats, intimidation and violence amid the conflict in the province that began in earnest in 1989 when the military started operations to root out the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). Despite those risks, nothing could have prepared them for what is becoming known as the Boxing Day debacle.

Along with the newspaper's other staff members, the missing journalists are among 230 employees based in Banda Aceh and other areas, who work for the Jakarta-based publishing group Gramedia. Gramedia also publishes the country's largest newspaper, Kompas.

"We fear for the worse," said Gramedia public relations chief Agus Parengkuan, also refering to employees of the group's bookstore. The Kompas bureau chief in Aceh checked the homes of many of the missing employees, including that of Najmuddin Umar, who also reports for Kompas. Like the others, "His house was no longer there" an executive at Kompas said.

The Serambi office and printing house were among the buildings in downtown Banda Aceh that were totally destroyed, either by the massive 9.0-earthquake or the resulting tidal waves on Sunday.

Serambi was established in the early 1990s by several senior Kompas journalists, including its editor-in-chief Syamsul Kahar, who survived the tragedy.

Since Sunday, media companies outside Aceh were also trying frantically to locate their reporters and staff based in the province. As of Tuesday, some were found to be safe including The Jakarta Post's Nani Afrida and Nur Raihan of detik.com. Nani sounded traumatized, while Raihan cited "God's miracle" that she and her family escaped "a four-meter wave just behind our car." Behind them other cars vanished into the wall of water, which swallowed up most of Banda Aceh, she said.

Raihan's colleague explained that reporting was still quite difficult in Banda Aceh. "With a lack of gasoline, everyone's just walking from place to place," he said.