Media
Helping hands across the Arafura Sea
News media connections underscore growing East Timor-Pacific links
The Arafura Sea lies on the border of Asia and the Pacific. And Pacific Islands experience is reaching out across the Arafura to help the rebuilding of East Timor as it emerges from the brutal end to Indonesian occupation.
The first Pacific Islands help came in the INTERFET and United Nations forces, with experienced Fiji peacekeeping soldiers joined by Samoan and Vanuatu police officers. They were followed by Pacific Islands civil servants working with the United Nations administration.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
Despite the language differences the East Timorese relate easily to the Pacific Islanders. Many East Timorese have similar looks to their fellow islanders of Melanesia, to the east.
They share Christianity and island lifestyles. East Timorese students are already studying at Papua New Guinea's Divine Word University in Madang. Now these links across the Arafura have extended to the news media. Last year the first journalist from East Timor took part in a training programme in Papua New Guinea. This year Pacific Islands expertise is helping the new journalists association being formed for an independent East Timor.
Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) administrator Nina Ratulele was invited to East Timor's capital, Dili, to speak on how PINA is set up, how it operates, and its successful work promoting media training, media freedom and professional cooperation.
She was appointed adviser to the new Timor Lorosa'e Journalists Association's strategy and programme committee. International development agencies are looking at funding more East Timorese journalists to take part in PINA programmes.
"Being in East Timor was just like being in some parts of Papua New Guinea," Ratulele says. "The people, the countryside, the way people lived ... if they had been speaking Tok Pisin instead of Bahasa you could imagine you were in Papua New Guinea. Parts of Dili are just like some parts of Port Moresby."
Ratulele was one of the speakers in the inaugural congress of the Timor Lorosa'e Journalists Association. Her travel from Suva was sponsored by UNESCO's Regional Communications Adviser for the Pacific States, Tarja Virtanen. Virtanen has been helping media development in East Timor, especially the launching of community radio stations.
The Timor Lorosa'e Journalists Association declared its desire to build an independent and free press for its new nation out of the ashes of destruction left behind by the Indonesian occupation.
More than 150 delegates attended the congress, representing 14 new media organisations formed in the United Nations-administered territory since a 1999 referendum voted overwhelmingly for independence from Indonesia. Delegates declared their intention to speak on behalf of journalists in East Timor and to campaign for free press provisions during the constitutional assembly to draft a charter for East Timor.
Fears were expressed that investigative reports on local issues could cause tension in a community not used to the give and take of a free press. The association, it is hoped, will offer protection for the local media.
"This is an opportunity for all of us to build a strong, professional base," said Virgilio da Silva Guterres, one of the organisers and an editor with Lalenok, a local magazine. "The free press will be one of the foundations of our nation."
The congress was broadcast live on Radio Ramkabian, a new Dili community radio station which timed its debut to coincide with the congress. The pro-Indonesia militia violence following the referendum destroyed almost all media infrastructure in East Timor.
Now there are four radio stations in the territory, two daily newspapers and eight other publications, all of which have begun operating since late 1999. The territory is slated for full independence late this year or in early 2002.
Congress participants also dedicated a new road in Dili, Press Freedom Avenue (Avenida da Liberdade de Imprensa), along the highway where Dutch journalist Sander Thoenes was killed by Indonesian soldiers in 1999. They also travelled to the rural town of Balibo to inaugurate a memorial to five Australian, British and New Zealand journalists killed by Indonesian troops in October 1975. The journalists were in TV crews trying to report Indonesia's invasion of East Timor. The country had been a Portuguese colony.
Hamish McDonald, author of the book, "Death in Balibo, Lies in Canberra," which chronicles the assassination of the journalists, reminded delegates of the sacrifices that journalists have made to cover the territory since 1975.
McDonald urged Timorese journalists not to wait passively for outside agencies to investigate atrocities during the Indonesian occupation but to carry out investigations themselves. "There are many thousands of witnesses out in your villages waiting to be interviewed."
* The Timor Lorosa'e Journalists Association congress was organised locally and supported by UNESCO, the United Nations Transitional Authority for East Timor, the World Press Freedom Committee, The Freedom Forum, the Alliance of Independent Journalists (Jakarta) and the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance of Australia.
