In an 18 February 2000 letter to Indonesian Home Affairs Minister Surjadi Soedirdja, RSF protested the detention of a journalist and an attack on a photographer. RSF asked Soedirdja to enforce the law and to control the behaviour of the police, reminding him that “it is the duty of your ministry to protect journalists who […]
In an 18 February 2000 letter to Indonesian Home Affairs Minister Surjadi Soedirdja, RSF protested the detention of a journalist and an attack on a photographer. RSF asked Soedirdja to enforce the law and to control the behaviour of the police, reminding him that “it is the duty of your ministry to protect journalists who are only trying to do their work, and to identify and punish those responsible for police abuses”. The organisation for the defence of press freedom asked the minister to intervene so that the journalist, accused of “blackening the police”, would not come to trial.
According to information collected by RSF, on 13 February 2000, Doni Prasetyo, a journalist with “Kediri Pos”, was arrested by policemen at his office. Detained for ten hours at the Polres police station in Tulungagung (east Java), he was questioned about an article published in the 27 January edition of his newspaper in which he implicated the police in a corruption case. The following day, he was summoned to the police station. Though he agreed to publish a reply, the police still arrested him without a warrant.
Two days later, Yayus Yuswoprihanto, a photographer with the online daily Detik.com, was severely beaten by policemen while covering a demonstration outside the United Nations (UN) representative’s office in Jakarta. The demonstrators, who were protesting against a visit by Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, were also assaulted by policemen.
