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