Freedom of the press

Freedom of the press

Endy M. Bayuni's compelling article on the March 8 mob attack on the premises of the news magazine Tempo titled, An attack on Tempo is an assault on our freedom, March 12, 2003) asserts: "We must not let the mobs, and whoever are behind them, take away that freedom from us."

The statement echoes what Terry Anderson exclaimed in 1995: "An attack on any journalist must never produce silence. It must never produce self-censorship. The attackers fear the light that journalists carry. They fear the truth."

Anderson, former Middle East correspondent of the Associated Press, was kidnapped in Beirut in March 1985 by a militant faction in the then civil war in the Lebanon. He was held captive for six-and-a-half years and freed in December 1991.

WARIEF DJAJANTO BASORIE, Depok, West Java