East Timor / Asia

Borrowing a page from the U.S. playbook, the Indonesian military is restricting and controlling coverage of their war in the restive province of Aceh.

The vicious murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan focused international attention on the dangers faced by journalists covering the U.S. “war on terror,” yet most attacks on journalists in Asia happened far from the eyes of the international press. In countries such as Bangladesh and the Philippines, reporters covering crime and…

A decades-long struggle for independence ended on May 20, when the U.N. Transitional Authority for East Timor (UNTAET) formally handed power to East Timor’s first elected government, making the tiny half-island state the first new nation of the millennium. A fledgling press has emerged from the destruction that followed the territory’s vote for independence from…

Shortly after U.S. president George W. Bush arrived in South Korea’s capital, Seoul, in February 2002 for a state visit, the North Korean state news agency, KCNA, reported a miracle: that a cloud in the shape of a Kimjongilia, the flower named after the country’s leader, Kim Jong Il, had appeared over North Korea. “Even…

New York, November 7, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes yesterday’s indictment in East Timor of two suspected murderers of Dutch journalist Sander Thoenes, who was killed in Dili on September 21, 1999, while he was reporting for The Financial Times and The Christian Science Monitor. Arrest warrants for both men, who are Indonesian…

East Timor’s media faced their first real test under a democratic environment when they covered September’s United Nations-supervised poll electing a constituent assembly and a transitional government. The press performed admirably, with few cases of political harassment and most Timorese journalists attempting to be fair and balanced in their reporting.

New York, December 12, 2001—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes yesterday’s announcement that the killers of journalist Agus Muliawan were among those convicted of “crimes against humanity” in connection with the violence that surrounded East Timor’s August 1999 vote for independence from Indonesia. The Special Panel for Serious Crimes of the District Court in…

DESPITE PRESS FREEDOM ADVANCES ACROSS ASIA IN RECENT YEARS, totalitarian regimes in Burma, China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos maintained their stranglehold on the media. Even democratic Asian governments sometimes used authoritarian tactics to control the press, particularly when faced with internal conflict. Sri Lanka, for instance, imposed harsh censorship regulations during the year in…

The UN and the Indonesian government both think they know who killed two journalists in East Timor last year. So why aren’t the suspects on trial?

New York, September 15, 2000–The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes today’s announcement that the United Nations is investigating the October, 1975 murders of five Australia-based journalists in East Timor. [Go to map of region] CPJ urges UN authorities to expand the investigation to include the murder of Australian free-lance journalist Roger East, said to…