State coming back with vengeance, the media warned

Endy M. Bayuni, Jakarta

Anyone who thinks that the press in Indonesia is enjoying unlimited freedom, without state control, could not be more mistaken. Fourteen defamation suits against the press over the past year attest to the return of a new, more subtle form of state censorship, noted lawyer Nono Anwar Makarim says.

"The state is coming back with a vengeance, and it is punishing left, right and center" Makarim told a discussion on defamation and its impact on press freedom.

Instead of licensing -- the way in which the press was controlled for three decades, until the demise of the Soeharto regime in 1998 -- the state employs a more "surreptitious" method: The use of the rule of law, and more specifically, the use of the Criminal Code to get at "offending" publications.

President BJ Habibie abolished the press licensing system only weeks after he took over from Soeharto in May 1998. The following year, the House of Representatives enacted a new press law that guarantees rather than controls press publications.

Press freedom was short lived, however. Successive defamation lawsuits have had a chilling effect on the entire industry, according to observers.

"We're very, very free indeed," Makarim said, when asked to compare Indonesia with other countries in the region. "But this freedom can be taken away, slowly, and surreptitiously."

The two-day Law Colloquium 2004 -- From Insult to Slander at Dharmawangsa Hotel is jointly organized by the Aksara Foundation, which Makarim chairs, and the Indonesian Press Council.

Press publications facing defamation suits failed to convince the court to resort to the 1999 Press Law. Instead, defamation articles in the Criminal Code, with harsher penalties, have been used, with a devastating effect on the press.

Three journalists of Tempo magazine are currently on trial for defamation against businessman Tomy Winata. They each face prison terms of between two and three years. Tempo lost a civil lawsuit related to the defamation case, and had been ordered to pay US$1 million. The magazine is appealing the verdict.

Rakyat Merdeka, a newspaper known for its sensational headlines, lost defamation cases against President Megawati Soekarnoputri and House Speaker Akbar Tandjung. Its two editors are appealing their six-to-eight-month prison terms.

Makarim said the press faced "legal hazards" in the Criminal Code that include articles on insulting the government, on sowing hate, and on inciting civil disobedience.

The court, in defamation cases, did not consider truth relevant, while the clause on public interest, often used as a defense by the press, had been too strictly interpreted, he said.

He noted that the defamation articles were enacted during the Dutch colonial period to restrict freedom of speech.

"It should be an embarrassment for leaders in Indonesia that successive governments since the revolution, either by negligence or design, have maintained these colonial laws by the book.

"The 1999 Press Law does not give privileges to journalists that put them above the criminal law," he said.

"The press, on occasion, has let its hair down," he said.

"At such moments, it tends to confuse style with smear, punditry with chance, and public attention with a thirst for sensation.

"In the process, it hurts people," he said.