Next Wednesday, May 3, is World Press Freedom Day, which was initiated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to celebrate “the fundamental principles of press freedom; to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.”
This year, UNESCO chose Jakarta as the location for their World Press Freedom Day event, which is taking place from May 1-4. The event will no doubt be used as an opportunity to examine Indonesia’s own record on protecting press freedoms, which international NGO Human Rights Watch notes remains problematic under President Joko Widodo.
“World Press Freedom Day should be a time to celebrate the role journalists play in society, but in Indonesia the focus too often is on reporters’ fears,” said Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, in a report released on HRW’s website yesterday.
“The Indonesian government should reverse the dangerous deterioration of press freedom in the country and prosecute security force personnel who physically assault journalists.”
According to the 2017 World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders, Indonesia ranked #124 out of the 180 countries on the list, with the summary noting that President Joko Widodo had failed to keep several of his campaign promises in regards to press freedom, including opening up West Papua to foreign journalists, while self-censorship due to ambiguous defamations is widely practiced and violence against journalists continues to rise.
The Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), a nongovernmental union, reported that there were 78 incidents in 2016 of violent attacks on journalists, including by security forces, compared with 42 in 2015, and 40 in 2014. AJI found that the attackers have been brought to justice in only a few of those 78 incidents. This despite Indonesia’s 1999 Press Law providing explicit protection for journalists, including up to two years in prison and fines of Rp 500 million (US$44,000) for anyone who physically attacks a journalist.
HRW says that is has: “interviewed 18 journalists and six human rights advocates in Balikpapan, Banten, Jakarta, Jayapura, Makassar, Medan, Padang, Pekanbaru, and Surabaya. They described an atmosphere of fear and self-censorship in many newsrooms due to abuses and threats by security forces and local authorities that go unpunished and that, most of the time, are not even rigorously investigated.”
Although HRW admits Indonesia has made great strides in press freedom since the fall of Suharto’s authoritarian New Order regime, it also notes that there has been a disturbing uptick in violence towards journalists recently and that UNESCO should use the World Press Freedom Day event in Jakarta to push the government to enact and ensure stronger protections for reporters.
“The Indonesian government has an obligation to address the security threats to journalists so that they don’t risk physical violence for doing their jobs,” Kine said.
“World Press Freedom Day observances in Jakarta will be a cynical public relations exercise unless the Indonesian government, with UNESCO’s help, puts media freedom at the top of the agenda.”
Read – Indonesia: Journalists Under Assault (Human Rights Watch)
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