'Koran Tempo' loses battle against Tomy

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Freedom of the press has once again been put in peril following the ruling of the South Jakarta District Court on Tuesday finding the Koran Tempo daily guilty of libeling well-connected businessman Tomy Winata.

The judicial panel ordered the daily to pay US$1 million in damages to the plaintiff.

Koran Tempo's lawyers said they would appeal the verdict.

The court's decision, the first ruling to be handed down in a series of legal disputes between the Tempo media group and Tomy, was quickly condemned by the international and national media community, as well as by legal experts.

Press Council chairman Ichlasul Amal said he deplored the verdict, adding that it would lead to further efforts to gag journalists by legal means.

"This sort of verdict will in the long run deter the media from attempting to get to the bottom of sensitive issues of major public concern," he told The Jakarta Post by telephone.

Ichlasul also urged the use of the Press Law instead of the Criminal Code or Civil Code in dealing with media-related cases.

He also called on the public to use the right to reply if they thought that a news report was flawed.

"This right should be availed of first before resorting to the courts."

Legal expert Luhut M.P. Pangaribuan said the verdict showed that the country's judiciary was completely unaware of the indispensable role played by the media as a social control mechanism and in safeguarding the public interest.

Although the judges cited the Press Law in their verdict, Luhut stressed that "they construed it very narrowly. The decision would have gone the other way if they had taken the public interest into account."

The Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) condemned the verdict in a press release, and urged the Supreme Court to carefully scrutinize the judges assigned to hear media-related cases.

Meanwhile, the president of the Australia-based International Federation of Journalists, Christopher Warren, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying: "This is part of a trend that uses laws that are holdovers from the dictatorship, which are at odds with the constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press."

The subject of Tomy's action against Koran Tempo was an article titled (Southeast Sulawesi) Governor Ali Mazi denies Tomy Winata is to open casino, which it ran in its Feb. 6, 2003, edition.

The court ordered the daily to pay damages and make a public apology in national and foreign media for three consecutive days. Should the daily fail to comply with the court's order, it will be fined Rp 10 million (US$1,190) per day.

However, the judges granted leave to appeal and stayed the application of the order until the appellate court had handed down a ruling.

"The article is libelous and constitutes an affront to the plaintiff, who is well-known as an upstanding and respected member of the community," presiding judge Zoeber Djajadi said.

The court found that the daily had violated the Press Law and the press code of ethics, and said that the article had been based only on rumor and hearsay.

Speaking after the trial, Koran Tempo's chief editor, Bambang Harymurti, expressed the hope that the ruling would be overturned by the appellate court, saying that he believed the judges there would be more willing to defend press freedom.

Tomy Winata had sued Bambang, reporter Dedy Kurniawan and publishing company PT Tempo Inti Media Harian for $2.47 million.

In December, the same court ordered Koran Tempo to publicly apologize to the owner of the ailing Texmaco group, Marimutu Sinivasan, who filed a libel suit over a series of articles on his business affairs.

In a seemingly relentless campaign to castrate the press by legal means, courts in Jakarta recently handed down a six-month suspended sentence on the executive editor of the Rakyat Merdeka daily, Supratman, and a five-month suspended sentence on its chief editor, Karim Paputungan, for publishing articles deemed "insulting" to President Megawati Soekarnoputri and House of Representatives Speaker Akbar Tandjung respectively.