(PINA/IFEX) – The United Nations Assistance Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) has begun broadcasting news and feature reports in four languages, Australian Associated Press (AAP) reported on 14 June 1999. The news agency said the broadcasts enable the United Nations to talk directly to the East Timorese, who are scheduled to vote on 8 August […]
(PINA/IFEX) – The United Nations Assistance Mission in East Timor (UNAMET)
has begun broadcasting news and feature reports in four languages,
Australian Associated Press (AAP) reported on 14 June 1999. The news agency
said the broadcasts enable the United Nations to talk directly to the East
Timorese, who are scheduled to vote on 8 August in a referendum on possible
independence from Indonesian rule. The hour-long broadcast is repeated three
times a day under an agreement with Radio Republic Indonesia (RRI), AAP
said.
**Updates IFEX alerts of 31 May, 28 May, 25 May, 18 May, 10 May, 21 April,
20 April and 29 March 1999**
Patricia Tome, who started the project, told AAP a crucial goal is to make
people understand that their ballots will be secret. This is a way to help
overcome the intimidation, said Tome, who earlier worked on a similar United
Nations project in Cambodia. The radio programme is in English, Bahasa
Indonesia, Portuguese, and the local language Tetum. It complements a
similar United Nations daily newspaper briefing now being in the newspaper
“Suara Timor Timur”, AAP said.
Background Information
Pro-Indonesian militia have been accused of conducting a campaign of
violence and intimidation in the lead up to the referendum, which will be
conducted with United Nations help. Journalists reported being attacked,
threatened and forcibly stopped from going to areas where there were reports
of attacks and killings. Threats to kill Australian journalists and United
Nations (UN) staff in East Timor were condemned by the UN mission, the
“Sydney Morning Herald” reported on 1 June. Indonesian and Australian
journalists’ organisations would open a media safety office in the capital,
Dili, AAP reported on 25 May.
On 23 April, three Indonesian media associations called for the police to
investigate an attack by pro-Indonesian militia on “Suara Timor Timur”
(Voice of East Timor), East Timor’s sole newspaper, news agencies reported.
The three, Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), Indonesian
Photographers Association (PFI) and the Indonesian Television Journalists
Association (IJTI), said in a joint statement: “We condemn the violence on
our colleagues in the East Timor daily. The act clearly blocked the clear
and fair distribution of information, which is the right of East Timorese.”
They alleged that an Indonesian military-backed militia group was
responsible for the attack on the daily, in which computers and other
equipment were smashed. It temporarily stopped the paper being published.
Six international media workers were killed when Indonesia invaded the
former Portuguese colony in 1975. Organisations such as the International
Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and Australian colleagues have called for
investigations into continuing allegations they were deliberately killed by
Indonesian forces or forces under Indonesian control (see IFEX alerts).
