Honest reports could avoid riots: Goenawan

Honest reports could avoid riots: Goenawan

JAKARTA (JP): Senior journalist Goenawan Mohamad told
President B.J. Habibie on Tuesday that violence and riots
throughout the country could have been avoided through openness
and reliable sources of information.

"If there is a place for an honest dialog, a source of
reliable information, a source to encounter the poisonous rumors,
then, there, the free media can play its social role and
obligations," said the chief editor of Tempo newsweekly.

Goenawan spoke before the President, who officially opened the
seminar Media and Government: In Search of Solution at the State
Palace.

The country, reeling from sectarian clashes in the Maluku
capital of Ambon, has been jolted again by renewed ethnic clashes
in West Kalimantan.

The poet described 1999 as the second year of true press
freedom after the first in 1945, when Indonesia declared its
independence.

He said the country's first president, Sukarno, curtailed
press freedom with his guided democracy policy 13 years later. An
identical policy was applied by his successor Soeharto, he added.
Tempo was banned twice during Soeharto's 32-year rule.

"No one can resist, but nothing is immortal," Goenawan said of
the darkest years of Indonesian press history.

He expressed astonishment that resurrected press freedom was
not only the fruit of the people's years of struggle, but also
the will of a Cabinet minister.

"Minister of Information (Mohamad Yunus) and his staff have
rediscovered the missing pearls. We note and appreciate it,"
Goenawan said.

Yunus, a lieutenant general whose military career included
battlefield experiences in East Timor, has emerged a stalwart
defender of press freedom since taking office in May last year.
Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson, he recently told critical
legislators that he preferred "a newspaper without a government"
to "a government without newspapers".

Habibie said freedom of the press should not disrupt moral,
ethical and religious values, or encourage public resistance to
the law.

"Instead, press freedom is supposed to bear a mission of
educating people to uphold the law, moral, cultural and religious
values," Habibie said.

"I believe no one wants to use the mass media as a tool to
stir up people's emotions, defame one another and disseminate
libelous rumors, or other practices that are against the
journalistic code of ethics."

He called on citizens to gain greater understanding of
political issues to ensure they would not be vulnerable to
provocation.

The President demanded journalists' participation in
preventing social and political disorder and strengthening
national unity.

He also reiterated the government's commitment to make the
upcoming general election a success.

"The general election will succeed if it runs in a fair,
transparent and smooth manner," he said.

The President said mass media would play a major role during
the elections.

"We are in need of mass media which does not hesitate to tell
the truth. Say it wrong or right if that is what it is," he said.
(prb/amd)