ABC AUSTRALIA, Monday, 25 September , 2006 12:35:00
Journalists face difficulties in Papua, even with work permits
Reporter: Geoff Thompson
ELEANOR HALL: Two weeks ago Australia was bemused by the story of a Channel
Seven crew's misadventure in the Indonesian province of Papua in search of a story
about supposed cannibalism.
The Today Tonight crew was deported for travelling to Papua without permits.
Since then the ABC's Indonesia Correspondent, Geoff Thompson, has travelled to
Papua with one of the rarely issued permits.
But he says that even with official permission to work there as a journalist, it's almost
impossible to do so without being treated like a criminal by the local police.
Geoff Thompson joins me now from Jakarta.
So, Geoff, how closely does Indonesia monitor journalists in Papua, and what was
your experience on the road there?
GEOFF THOMPSON: Well, we got the official permission. We were sort of awkwardly
given permission to cover a festival that does not actually take place until October, but
we were given permission to go in the last week. So we go there, we register at the
police station, as requested, we even requested interviews with the police chief and
the governor, et cetera.
But the weird thing is that you're told you can go, you can be in Jayapura, for
instance, the capital, or Timika, but we travelled for sort of little more than an hour
outside of the city, and on the way back we were pulled off the road by police
intelligence. We were quite angrily interrogated until, for about an hour, before being
let go, and then that went on.
And then when we arrived in Timika, this had flowed on to a message to the police
there, and we barely got off at the airport, we were tailed to our hotel, we were pulled
into a police station, interrogated and basically detained for about four hours, and our
Indonesian translator was particularly harshly questioned during that time.
And we were told that seeing we weren't covering this festival, that wasn't even taking
place, we had nothing really to report.
ELEANOR HALL: So were you able to do your job at all?
GEOFF THOMPSON: Ah, well, we got around, we spoke to people, we attended
something which would best be described as a Papuan identity sort of ceremony. But
really, official human rights people, official NGOs, people like that. But this footage
was filmed by the police, off a television screen, and sent to the headquarters to be
investigated and treated as if it was something that was completely not allowed in
Papua today.
I mean, working as a journalist there, you can only get the feeling that it is a police
state.
ELEANOR HALL: Geoff, there has been recent debate about the extent of Indonesia's
human rights abuses in Papua. The International Crisis Group says that they occur,
but they fall short of accusations of genocide.
From your experience, how easy is it to pin down that down?
GEOFF THOMPSON: Well, all, you know, we were basically not allowed, it seems,
as far as the police in Papua were concerned, to speak to human rights groups even,
let alone actually travel around the province for any extended period of time, or any
time at all in fact, to actually try and verify these things.
So the simple fact is that no matter what Jakarta may say, no matter what permission
Jakarta may grant you, the police on the ground in Papua don't want you there and
don't want you asking any real questions.
ELEANOR HALL: Geoff Thompson, our Indonesia Correspondent, thank you.
© 2006 Australian Broadcasting Corporation |
