Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) wishes to congratulate you on your appointment as the new president of Indonesia. As an organization of journalists dedicated to the defense of press freedom around the world, we hope that you will use your authority to preserve and strengthen recent gains in press freedom.
New York, June 27, 2001 — CPJ is gravely concerned about the apparent abduction of two Belgian documentary filmmakers in the Indonesian province of Papua. Philippe Simon and Johan van Den Eynde were reported missing on June 7, when they left for the jungle east of Nabire, a coastal city about 500 kilometers (310 miles)…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the recent attack on six journalists by some of your political supporters in Tegal, Central Java. We urge your government to undertake a prompt and full investigation into the incident.
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…
EMERGING FROM DARKNESS AND DEVASTATION, East Timor’s journalists took their first steps toward building an independent press for the fledgling nation. The leaders of the new country have pledged to promote press freedom after they achieve formal independence (expected by the end of 2001). “We have no intention to interfere in any way with the…
A YEAR AND A HALF AFTER THE END OF PRESIDENT SUHARTO’S authoritarian rule, the most significant reform in Indonesia remains the emergence of a largely unshackled press. With hundreds of islands and a large, fragmented population, the press plays a crucial role in allowing Indonesians to debate their future and in calming tensions that arise…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is alarmed by a proposal announced last week by Indonesian Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab that could severely restrict foreign journalists from traveling to a number of crisis-prone regions in Indonesia.
Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in INDONESIA Click here to read CPJ’s Protest Letter New York, December 14, 2000 — CPJ welcomes the release of Swiss journalist Oswald Iten, who had been imprisoned in Jayapura, Irian Jaya, since December 2 on suspicion that he violated Indonesian immigration laws by reporting without…
Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in INDONESIA Click here to read CPJ’s Protest Letter New York, December 6, 2000 — CPJ is deeply concerned by the prolonged detention of Swiss journalist Oswald Iten in Jayapura, Irian Jaya, on suspicion that he violated Indonesia’s immigration laws by reporting without a press visa.