August 12, 1999
His Excellency Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie
President, Republic of Indonesia
Office of the President
Bina Graha, Jalan Veteran No. 17
Jakarta Pusat, Indonesia
Your Excellency,
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned over the recent firebomb attack against Sjamsul Kahar, chief editor of the Aceh-based, Indonesian-language daily newspaper Serambi Indonesia and chairman of the Aceh chapter of the Indonesian Journalists Association (PWI).
On August 10, at around 2:00 a.m., unidentified assailants threw two Molotov cocktails at Kahar’s home in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, setting his car ablaze and causing some external damage to the house. No one was injured. Kahar’s son was home at the time of the attack, and telephoned his father at his Serambi Indonesia office to warn him not to return home that night. Kahar left Aceh the next day.
Kahar told CPJ that he had been receiving death threats almost weekly since May, when violence in Aceh between Indonesian soldiers and separatist rebels escalated sharply. According to news reports, more than 200 people have been killed in the last several months, and about 140,000 Acehnese have fled their homes. Both Indonesian military officers and rebel leaders regularly threaten the newspaper, whenever they believe that its coverage of the conflict favors one side over the other.
Journalists in Indonesia suspect that it is either the Indonesian special forces or members of the separatist movement who are behind the attack on Kahar. Though a senior commander of the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM), Tunku Abdullah Syafi’i, condemned the firebombing, another GAM leader, Tunku Maulida, said that he and his followers were very angry about a report that had appeared in the August 4 edition of the Jakarta-based daily Kompas and said he believed all Kompas reporters should be killed. Kahar no longer works for Kompas, but his family members have told CPJ they believe he may have been targeted because he is still listed in the newspaper as a staff reporter from Banda Aceh, and because Serambi Indonesia is part of the Kompas newspaper group.
Kahar’s brother Basri Daham, who works as a reporter for Kompas from Lhokseumawe, the district capital of North Aceh, has also left the province fearing his life is in danger there.
The daily Waspada, a newspaper published in Medan, the capital of neighboring North Sumatra Province, reported that one of its journalists received a threatening telephone call just before midnight on August 10. The anonymous caller reportedly warned, “We have bombed the PWI chairman’s house. Yours will be the next target.”
As a nonpartisan organization of journalists dedicated to the defense of our colleagues around the world, CPJ is extremely troubled by these recent events. Particularly during times of unrest, it is crucial that government authorities guarantee that journalists are able to report freely and without fear of physical violence.
CPJ respectfully urges Your Excellency to order a special inquiry into the attack against Sjamsul Kahar, to investigate all reports of death threats issued against journalists working in Aceh, and to reassure journalists that the perpetrators of such violent crimes will be brought to justice. We further request that the results of these investigations are made public.
We thank you for your attention to these urgent matters, and await your response.
Sincerely,
Ann K. Cooper
Executive Director
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His Excellency Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie
President, Republic of Indonesia
Office of the President
Bina Graha, Jalan Veteran No. 17
Jakarta Pusat, Indonesia