Filling the desperate need for information in East Timor

Filling the desperate need for information in East Timor

By Ati Nurbaiti

JAKARTA (JP): On a typical work day in Lalenok newsroom in
Dili, reporters line up waiting their turn on the one computer in
the office. "Hey, aren't you done yet," shouts one of them.

His colleague is a "two-finger" typist, plodding across the
keyboard with two fingers, as the rest of the staff give up and
doze off in the heat.

Some of the staff at Lalenok practically live at the office,
receiving donations entitled to them as refugees in this coastal
city. Lalenok (Mirror) hits the streets three times a week at a
price of Rp 5,000 per copy.

The few hundred copies printed each edition are quickly
grabbed up, with some readers grumbling they had to purchase the
12-page magazine for Rp 6,000 from cheeky vendors.

Then distributors ask for more copies, which reach readers in
photocopy form. "We just can't deliver" said chief editor
Virgilio da Silva Guterres during a recent visit here. "When the
toner for the copier runs out we can't do anything, it can only
be bought in Darwin."

The publication is one of a few which have started in Dili,
including Talit@kum. There is a daily, Timor Pos, run by editors
and staff of the former Suara Timor Timur (STT) which in the
months leading up to the referendum in the territory was the only
newspaper in the former Indonesian province.

"We have six pages but only four for stories because two pages
are taken up by advertisements," says Alderito Hugo da Costa, who
managed STT until he and his staff were forced into hiding.
Advertisements on ongoing construction projects and new
restaurants reflect the few signs of life returning to the city.

Following the massive destruction after last August's historic
self-determination referendum leading to the birth of the new
nation of Timor Lorosa'e, most people were virtually cut off from
all information, which earlier had been obtained from the
television and radio.

With transmitters being part of the general destruction of the
territory, word of mouth is now the main source of information.

Dili residents are faring somewhat better, having access to a
few newsletters from the United Nations and several private
groups. Now student activists, former students and the Timorese
press have begun the first independent publications for the
information-thirsty public.

They are working with donations and their raw skills to put
out their photocopy publications, sold far below the cost of
production.

While continuing to meet deadlines, chief editors are seeking
cooperation with Indonesia's established press organizations to
have staff members get a month or so of training in reporting,
advertising and media management.

Also needed is training in setting up computer networks. The
lobbying of international organizations continues to obtain
donations for printing equipment, more computers and other needs,
while the editors rack their brains trying to find ways to meet
other costs, such as paying their staffs.

"I wouldn't be as reckless as you guys," Hugo da Costa said of
the start-up publications, as quoted by Virgilio. With
photocopying costs at Rp 1,000 per page, the 40-page Talit@kum,
for instance, should be sold at Rp 40,000, but is sold at Rp
10,000 -- the same as the price of color newsmagazines in
neighboring Indonesia.

Even at this price readers still complain, understandable
given their struggle to restore their lives, homes and families.

The ex-students in the media face the challenge of proving
themselves able to be independent -- "the professionals look down
on us, assuming students can't be impartial," Virigilio told The
Jakarta Post.

Many working at the new publications were supporters of the
proindependence movement, many others just wanted to finish their
studies and like most Timorese, many were divided between
"prointegration" and "proindependence" within their families and
neighborhoods.

Virgilio himself was among those arrested and jailed following
the 1991 Santa Cruz shooting. Last year he was an engineering
student at a university in Jakarta and was active in the Timorese
student movement.

Trying to become an independent publication was always a
difficult task in the former East Timor. The one publication,
STT, faced many protests from both those in the proindependence
and prointegration camps.

Their office was attacked at least twice -- in the destruction
following the ballot everything went up in flames, including the
new iron door installed after an assault in April last year.

The official Indonesian news agency, Antara, was not spared
either, although its reporters were relatively "safe" when others
were intimidated.

"Antara is likely to be attacked soon," read one of its last
Dili-based reports. "Antara has been attacked," read its last
report before it went up in flames and its staff joined the
evacuation to East Nusa Tenggara.

At least now, says Virgilio, people are no longer hostile to
the press. This is not only because of the need for information,
"but because it's like there's a common enemy" -- those people in
the humanitarian organizations and the authorities who are
considered arrogant, he said.

There is also a common obsession -- soccer -- which is among
the most important international news items.

The press is helping make sense of the daily need to come to
grips with reality in a new life of extensive damage and
unfulfilled expectations. The old enemy is gone -- Indonesian
security forces in particular -- and now people are free, their
own masters after having survived major trauma and losing family
members -- or, at least, they feel they should be their own
masters.

The world community, represented by the United Nations
Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) and Indonesian
and foreign humanitarian agencies, now pose a new but familiar
problem. Rightly or wrongly, locals feel the arrogance of those
supposed to help them, an attitude earlier felt coming from
Indonesians, and Virgilio adds that even those Timorese who have
lived abroad for years resent the outsiders, or now have doubts
about their own self-worth -- or both.

Recently a poem titled Mr. and Mrs. by Talit@kum chief editor
Hugo Fernandes was distributed among the public, leading to phone
calls to the office. "We're not that bad," an international
staffer said, as quoted by Virgilio. The poem, dated Dec. 12, was
the most widely read item in the April edition in which it
appeared.

International organizations say they are doing their best to
help Timor stand on its own feet after a two-year transition
period. Residents, though, have an impression of a colonial-like
hierarchy of whites at the top, international staff from Asian
and African countries next and locals at the bottom.

Press idealists have an agenda other than striving for
impartial reporting: helping to revive local cultures after
attempts at "Indonesianisasi". They are in a strategic position
to enhance efforts at making the local language of Tetum the
common written language -- earlier efforts were started by a few
media such as STT, which had a mixture of reports in Indonesian
and Tetum.

Lalenok is printed in Tetum while Talit@kum is printed
predominantly Indonesian. STT's Hugo Da Costa told the Post the
language to be used in the media would pose a dilemma.

The young generation had been brought up speaking Bahasa
Indonesia, the language of the occupiers; Tetum was used mostly
in conversation among Timorese, and Portuguese was the language
of the elite.

The result is that new words are cropping up. "Even editors
get confused" given the absence of spelling standards, says
Virgilio. An upcoming language congress this year aims to address
this problem.

The desire to make Tetum the language of the media has been
voiced by many readers, who offer suggestions to help out the
confused editors.

An edition of Lalenok last month had the new taxes imposed by
UNTAET as its main focus. "We were going to use the familiar
Portuguese word impostu for taxes," Virgilio said. But then
editors decided to take an elderly man's suggestion and use the
old Tetum word, osan finta.

The report on the taxes included an interview with an elderly
trader, Oscar Lima, who said he was having trouble selling things
because he had to raise the price of his merchandise because of
the taxes. Tetum business terms in the report were explained in
brackets by the more familiar Indonesian terms.

Beneath the story was an interview with UNTAET chief Sergio de
Mello explaining the tax policy. News now largely reaches locals
through a press corps of almost 100 Timorese reporters, as most
foreign reporters have left.

The second page of Lalenok has a small column of Tetum
vocabulary, listing new words and words considered unfamiliar to
the general public, including the younger generations from which
most of those in the press come.

"I am proud yet sad to represent my new country," Virgilio
told dozens of reporters from various countries on World Press
Freedom Day on May 3, during a gathering held in Jakarta by the
Southeast Asia Press Alliance.

"We do not know the uncertainties that we face," he said.

What is the mission of the press now that the Timorese have
become independent, now that proindependence fighters are the new
rulers and while hardships continue amid the need to bring
families back together? Society is still fragile, say the
Timorese reporters, with violence triggered by trivialities such
as fighting over food.

But what the journalists and would-be journalists do know is
that the urgent need for information must be met, to enable the
public to monitor issues such as reconciliation efforts, the
amount of aid coming into the territory and whether it reaches
them -- and whether new officials keep their pledge to remain
free of the corruption, collusion and nepotism "influenced by
Indonesia's New Order".

So, ready or not, the young reporters are plunging into their
new role as the press of a new nation with everything they have,
known in Dili as a "journalism of ruins".

The writer is a journalist based in Jakarta.