Tourism Minister Tengku Adnan

Tourism Minister Tengku Adnan denying the Sin Chew report last week that he had described all bloggers as liars. He said he had meant only the Indonesian blogger, Nila Tanzil, not bloggers in general and not women bloggers. He said something to the effect that he loves and respects women, that he relies on women for support in his electorate, and he wouldn't have been in this world if not for a woman (his mother).

- Rocky's Bru

Wonders never cease: This advertisement was in The Jakarta Post this morning. Another indication of the deep lack of understanding of the PR industry here is that most of the serious serious and larger PR firms here do not take affiliation to APRI/IPRA/PERHUMAS/PRSI seriously, so the insistence on affiliation smells of bureaucracy at work.

Malaysian Tourism Board in Jakarta looking for professional help!- Unspun




Press freedom in RI always curbed, say journalists

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Senior journalists said Wednesday that press freedom had never been properly nourished in Indonesia, with constant collisions occurring between the media and authorities.

"This country has never embraced press freedom. The press has always been curbed since birth," said Rosihan Anwar during a discussion forum at the Habibie Center in Jakarta.

"For short periods of time, we have enjoyed some press freedom. However, it does not exist most of the time," he added.

Another senior journalist, Atmakusumah, said, "throughout the periods of Dutch colonization and Japanese occupation, and the Old and the New Order regimes, up to the latest closures in 1994, many newspaper and magazine publishers were shut down."

According to Rosihan, during the Dutch colonial period, the newspaper Indische Vaderland, was the first to be shut down, after it published an article that "belittled the government" in 1885.

In 1954, under the Old Order rule of Indonesia's founding father Sukarno, the newspaper Tinjauan was shut down after reporting that former defense minister Iwa Kusumasumantri received bribes from the People's Republic of China.

During Suharto's administration, the weekly magazines Tempo, DeTIK and Editor were shut down on June 21, 1994, for "being critical of the government".

"The only difference between the colonial and independence eras was that no publications were permanently closed down under the colonizers, with publishers only facing suspension of their activities for eight to 30 days," said Atma.

"While under the Sukarno and Soeharto regimes, publications were permanently closed down," he added.

Rosihan also said many journalists had been "threatened or even detained for being critical of the ruling government".

"I once was called by former president Soeharto shortly after writing that his wife had shares in the company Astra. The vice president at the time, Sudharmono, advised me that I put a correction of my published article into the next edition," he said.

Atma said although no publisher had been shut down for more than a decade now, political leaders "are not yet sincere about press freedom".

"Former president Megawati Soekarnoputri once said that the Indonesian press was not nationalistic and patriotic," he said.

Megawati was responding, according to Atma, to journalists who had interviewed the leader of the Free Aceh movement, Abdullah Syafei.

"At another time, current President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said that the press was being inaccurate and unbalanced in its reportage," Atma said.

Atma also said that press freedom must be guaranteed by law.

"Journalists must not be detained on charges of false reports without due legal process. Judges should only impose proportional fines, as America does," Atma said.

The government is currently planning to tighten internet surveillance to tackle cyber crimes such as terrorism and credit card fraud. Indonesia ranks as the second highest source for such crimes after the Ukraine. The government says the plan is not aimed at preventing anyone from accessing particular websites.

"Even though the system will track anyone who accesses websites, this surveillance system will not block anyone from accessing any links," Communication and Information Ministry spokesman, Gatot Dewa Subroto, told The Jakarta Post.

"The system is not being developed to prevent people from being critical of certain parties (including the government). That only happens in Malaysia and China," he said.
(Source)