Local media vows to keep fighting graft

Oyos Saroso H.N., The Jakarta Post/Bandarlampung

Local journalists say the nine-month imprisonment of two of their colleagues over a report on alleged corruption will not discourage them from unveiling more graft cases.

The chief editor of the Lampung Pos newspaper Djadjat Sudradjat said on Friday that the press would not surrender its freedom to report on corruption as many state institutions remained unable to eradicate the crime.

"We always try to disseminate the truth, although many parties are unhappy about our efforts and therefore seek every avenue to obstruct us through criminalization of journalistic reports," Djadjat said.

He said he feared the resistance against press reports on graft cases would weaken the nation's drive to stamp out corruption, which has been declared a priority by the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

"The sentence not only endangers press freedom, but the government's anticorruption campaign too, which is moving into high gear," according to Djadjat.

The chief editor and managing editor of Lampung's Koridor weekly Darwin Ruslinur and Budiono Syahputra, were tossed in the slammer for a report, which argued that the Golkar Party's Alzier Dianis Thabrani -- the head of the provincial branch -- had misused Rp 1.25 billion (US$131,500) of party funds.

Judges ordered the immediate imprisonment of the two.

Whistle blowers in corruption cases have often become the victims, and many now sit in this country's prisons, while many corruptions suspects are still free.

Djadjat said his paper would not back down from its commitment to the fight against corruption, "but through professional coverage."

Bambang Eka Wijaya, a member of the Disciplinary Council of Lampung's Journalist Association Council (PWI), said the sentence was unfair and served as a reminder of the power of the nation's corrupt tyrants to influence legal processes.

"Corruption convicts here manage to evade imprisonment until a legally binding verdict from the Supreme Court. Now journalists who fight corruption have to serve their sentence immediately," Bambang said.

The sentence, he added, should instead serve as a rallying cry for the press to encourage people to free themselves from a corruption-infested tyrannical system.

Law expert Wahyu Sasongko questioned the judges' decision to try the case using the Criminal Code rather than the Press Law in the first place.

"The courts are supposed to be the last bastion of justice. I don't see that the judges were courageous enough to stand on principle. They've all used the dispute between Tempo and businessman Tomy Winata as a precedent," Wahyu said.

Tempo magazine's chief editor Bambang Harimurty was sentenced to one year in prison last year for a report on a market fire that it linked to Tomy.

The People's Movement against Corruption, a coalition of antigraft groups, said the sentence was a setback for the nation- wide drive against rot, which has been energized by the President.

"The verdict contradicts the government's own commitment to eradicating corruption. If journalists are jailed for reporting graft, who will then inform the public about the practice?" the group's director Ahmad Yulden Erwin said.

He said Lampung was among the provinces vulnerable to corruption. The Supreme Audit Agency reported Rp 60.7 billion of state losses due to corruption in the first semester of 2004.

The lawyers for Darwin and Budiono filed an appeal early on Friday.