Balibo Movie & Gatot Purwanto

indonesiamatters.com, 9 December 2009

The banning of "Balibo" the movie, screenings of it in Jakarta, and talkative Colonel Gatot Purwanto.

Last week the Film Censorship Board/Lembaga Sensor Film (LSF) banned the release in Indonesia of the Australian made movie Balibo, which purports to recount the story of the killings of five western journalists (Gary Cunningham, Malcolm Rennie, Greg Shackleton, Tony Stewart, and Brian Peters) in East Timor in October 1975, during the early stages of the Indonesian invasion.

While the organisers of the Jakarta International Film Festival (JIFFest) agreed at the last moment not to show the film, in accordance with the ban, the liberals and rebels at Utan Kayu in Jakarta on 3rd December screened 'Balibo' in two packed to the house sessions, the screening being put on by the Independent Journalists' Alliance/Aliansi Jurnalis Independen (AJI).

Ezki Suyanto of the AJI said the showing of Balibo was intended for journalists only, and that they accounted for 80% of the audience. The AJI could not forbid non-journalists from viewing the film however.

Of the Utan Kayu screening Tourism and Culture minister Jero Wacik responded:
Jero said the film insulted the Indonesian nation and the military, because it claimed that the TNI deliberately murdered the five journalists. Indonesia and the government of now independent East Timor had agreed to put the past behind them, he said.

Meanwhile, not helping Jero's cause, eyewitness to the killings 62 year old retired Colonel Gatot Purwanto, a former Kopassus officer and intelligence commander in East Timor, told Tempo magazine in a rambling and self-contradictory interview recently that the journalists were intentionally killed, and their bodies later burnt, to hide from the international community the evidence and nature of the Indonesian infiltration of the abandoned Portugese colony.

In his own words:

If they were not executed, they could be witnesses to the fact that the Indonesian army had invaded Timor.

The bodies were covered with rice husks and then burnt … they needed to be totally disintegrated. That took two days.

We were in a bind … We had to make sure that the involvement of Indonesian troops was not known.

Of the film Balibo the Colonel is not impressed

From the start until the middle, it's quite balanced. But the main incidents surrounding the shooting of the five journalists were over-dramatised. No one was tortured.

Colonel Gatot Purwanto has a history of being talkative, and supposedly once told US journalist Allan Nairn that by 1990 roughly a third of the East Timorese population had died since the "integration".

Source: indonesiamatters.com

'Balibo Five' Film Tests Free Speech in Indonesia

YAHOO!News, 7 December 2009

A movie that depicts Indonesian war crimes in East Timor has become a lightning rod for free-speech activists in Indonesia, who have defied a government ban on its screening.

Last Tuesday, censors ordered the organizers of an annual film festival in Jakarta to yank "Balibo," an Australian movie set in East Timor in 1975 that dramatizes the plight of five slain journalists. Government and military officials have said the film is propaganda and could inflame the public and upset bilateral relations.

But, in a move that underscores Indonesia's still halting democratic transition a decade after it pulled out of East Timor, an independent journalists' association screened the movie last Thursday to a packed audience in Jakarta. And film festival officials say they are trying to overturn the ban and screen it this week.

By defying last Tuesday's ban, officials of the Alliance of Indonesia Journalists could, in theory, face a jail term and/or a large fine. The group has vowed to show "Balibo" in other cities in Indonesia.

Officials say this isn't the first time that the Jakarta International Film Festival (Jiffest) has run into trouble with Indonesia's censor board, a legacy of the country's authoritarian past under US-backed President Suharto. In 2006, five festival films were denied permission to screen. Censors have also ordered cuts to films, mostly for sexual content. Under Suharto, bans on foreign books, films, and periodicals were common.

Three decades later, deaths still disputed
Indonesia's 24-year occupation of East Timor, and the conduct of its military, remain sensitive. Adding to the discomfort, Australian police recently began investigating a coroner's verdict that the so-called Balibo Five – the journalists sent by Australian media to East Timor to cover Indonesia's invasion – were murdered by Indonesian troops. Indonesia insists that they died during crossfire in the remote territory.

This row, and Indonesia's refusal to cooperate with the Australian police inquiry, is the backdrop to the ban on "Balibo." Indonesia has angrily disputed the findings of the Australian coroner that the Balibo Five were killed on the orders of senior government officials who wanted the invasion kept quiet.

Indonesia's Minister of Culture and Tourism said Friday that the film isn't fit to be screened as it could "create conflicts," the Jakarta Globe reported. "Maybe there are people who feel victimized or unsatisfied (with the ban). But it is for the country's interest, the security and welfare of the people in the future," Minister of Culture and Tourism Jero Wacik told reporters.

Ban may draw more attention than film
Nauval Yazid, a Jiffest official, disputes this argument and says that the festival audience is mature enough to make up its own mind about a fictional film based on real events. "I don't see how screening it in a theater to 100 or 200 people can cause a huge uproar…. We want to open up a discussion," he says.

Mr. Yazid says he is waiting to hear if censors will relent and allow a screening this week, before the festival ends. "We want to discuss this again with the censorship board," he says.

The Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club had intended to screen the film separately last Tuesday but opted to pull it after the ban was announced. The screening was a fundraising event in the name of Sander Thoenes, a Monitor correspondent killed in East Timor in 1999 by retreating Indonesian troops. The club runs an educational foundation named after Mr. Thoenes, a Dutch national. Thoenes, whose killers were never brought to justice, was the first foreign reporter killed in East Timor since the Balibo deaths.

Jason Tedjasukmana, the club president, argues that the ban and the controversy it generated had only added to the interest in "Balibo" among Indonesians. "You can't buy publicity like this," he says.

East Timor, which gained independence in 2002, remains a sore point for Indonesian nationalists and there is virtually no public pressure to bring the military or politicians to heel for abuses there. Free-speech activists argue that this is no reason to ban a film that presents an alternative viewpoint.

Three of the five festival films banned in 2006 were documentaries on East Timor. But, in a sign of inconsistency, the censors didn't block "Hero's Journey," a laudatory documentary narrated by Timorese resistance leader turned president Xanana Gusmao, who attended the screening, says Yazid.

A Monitor series on the Indonesian infantry battalion accused of murdering Sander Thoenes.

Source: Source: YAHOO!News

Indonesian Colonel Says Reporters Killed

NBC26.com, 8 December 2009

A former Indonesian army colonel has told a magazine that soldiers deliberately killed five Western journalists in East Timor in 1975 - contradicting the government's longstanding assertion that the deaths were accidental.

The explosive claim in the weekly Tempo magazine, published Monday, further fueled tensions between Indonesia and Australia created in September when Australian federal police launched a war crimes investigation into the deaths in the East Timorese border town of Balibo in the weeks before Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony.

It comes amid renewed public interest in the case spurred by the release this year of the Australian movie "Balibo," which depicts the events that lead to the journalists' deaths. The film was banned in Indonesia.

Gatot Purwanto told Tempo he was a lieutenant in the special forces team that overran Balibo on Oct. 16, 1975. The journalists, who have become known as the Balibo Five, were shot to keep secret the Indonesian military's presence in East Timor two months before a full-blown invasion, he said.

Tempo quoted Purwanto as saying that soldiers decided to kill the reporters - two Australians, two Britons and a New Zealander - to prevent them from reporting that Indonesia was preparing to invade the breakaway territory.

"If they had been left alive, they would say it was an Indonesian invasion," Purwanto said.

Purwanto, who now runs a security firm, said the bodies were burned to hidethe evidence.

Yunus Yosfiah, who was then an army captain and later a government minister, had been waiting for instructions from Jakarta on what to do with the reporters when they were killed, Purwanto said. In 2007, an Australian coroner found that the journalists were killed on Yosfiah's orders. He has denied it and could not be contacted for comment on Purwanto's claims.

Late Monday, after a private screening of the movie, Purwanto gave Indonesian reporters a slightly different version of events - that the journalists may have been shot by plainclothes, pro-Jakarta militia who accompanied the soldiers during an attack on Balibo's Fretilin party independence fighters.

"I am not defending myself, but I can say that the shooting of the reporters was not entirely done by Indonesian soldiers," he said.

Shirley Shackleton, the widow of Greg Shackleton, one of the Australians killed, welcomed Purwanto's interview - the first senior Indonesian soldier to contradict the official version that the reporters were caught in the middle of a gunbattle and accidentally shot.

"It is a milestone. It's another nail in the coffin of lies," she told Australia's Fairfax Radio Network on Tuesday.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully said Tuesday that he recently told his Indonesian counterpart, Marty Natalegawa, that his government was "deeply interested" in the case and that the Australian police investigation should be allowed to take its course.

The "Balibo" movie depicts Indonesian soldiers shooting and stabbing the unarmed journalists. Indonesia's censorship board said the script was based on testimony of witnesses of "questionable nature." Purwanto himself said the movie was sensationalized and that only half the events depicted in Balibo were accurate.

Source: NBC26.com

Balibo Screenings Continue Despite Warning

tempointeractive, 7 December 2009

Screenings of the banned Balibo in Indonesia continue on Monday as the Alliance of Independent Journalists defied warnings from the authority and going to hold its second and bigger screening of the movie at the Taman Ismail Marzuki center of culture and art on Monday night.

The screening on Monday includes a discussion involving speakers from the military, historian, and the censorship body, and spokeswoman for the group Ezki Suyanto said “The Alliance of Independent Journalist is prepared to be summoned by the police because this is part of the freedom of expression and journalism education.”

In the first screening last week, organised in cooperation with the KBR 68H news radio and Utan Kayu Community cultural club, there were more audiences than the capacity of the venue could contain, forcing the organiser to set up another screen for half of the audiences.

The first screening sparked a warning by the Culture and Tourism Minister, Jero Wacik, calling the police to take measure against screenings.

Ezki said the movie had been screened in East Timor last month and she claimed that “there was no reaction from the people there, its not even in the paper, this is just a small matter, the government was just being scared without clear reason.”

Another non-govermental organisation the Institute for Global Justice also played the film last week, and the group's chapters in other cities in the country have been asking for copies of the film.

Source: tempointeractive

Indonesia Bans Australian Film on East Timor Killings

showbizandstyle, 2 December 2009

Indonesia has banned an Australian-made film on the alleged murder of six Australian-based journalists by Indonesian troops during the 1975 invasion of East Timor, an official said Wednesday. No reason was given for the decision and officials from the censorship board said they were unable to explain on what grounds "Balibo" had been banned.

Australian police earlier this year launched a war crimes investigation into the deaths of five journalists killed when Indonesian troops entered the town of Balibo and a sixth who died weeks later in the assault on Dili.

Jakarta has always maintained that the "Balibo Five" died in crossfire as Indonesian troops fought East Timorese Fretilin rebels.

But the film portrays the journalists, who were working for Australian television networks, being brutally executed on the orders of Indonesian military chiefs to prevent news of the invasion reaching the outside world.

An Australian coroner's investigation two years ago concluded that the Balibo Five were shot and stabbed repeatedly by Indonesian Special Forces as they tried to surrender.

The coroner called for war crimes charges against a number of Indonesian military officers, including Captain Yunus Yosfiah who rose to become Indonesia's information minister in the late 1990s.

A private screening of the film for members of the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club on Tuesday night was cancelled at the last minute after authorities told organizers they would be risking prosecution.

Source: showbizandstyle