(PINA/IFEX) – A 60 Minutes television crew from Australia’s Nine Network was deported from East Timor on 31 August 1999, Fiji”s “Daily Post” newspaper reported on 1 September (local time). The newspaper said that Indonesian police detained the crew on 30 August after they were found to have entered East Timor on tourist visas and […]
(PINA/IFEX) – A 60 Minutes television crew from Australia’s Nine Network was
deported from East Timor on 31 August 1999, Fiji”s “Daily Post” newspaper
reported on 1 September (local time). The newspaper said that Indonesian
police detained the crew on 30 August after they were found to have entered
East Timor on tourist visas and not journalists’ visas.
The “Daily Post”, using a news agency report, said the police detained
reporter Richard Carleton, producer Mark Llewellyn, a sound technician, a
cameraman and an Indonesian journalist who was working with them. The “Daily
Post” said that, according to unconfirmed reports, the team angered
pro-Indonesian militiamen by questioning people who were waiting to vote in
a polling station in Liquica, a town about thirty kilometres from the
capital Dili.
Another Nine Network reporter, Adrian Brown, was quoted as saying: “Once
they were arrested they were taken to a police station where it was
discovered they had entered the country – this is according to the police –
on tourist visas as opposed to journalists’ visas. So they are being kicked
out of the country on an immigration irregularity.”
“The Fiji Times” newspaper, quoting Australian Associated Press, reported
that Carleton accused the pro-Indonesian militia of punching a woman working
with his crew.
An Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesman in Canberra,
Australia, was reported as saying that the news team were later allowed to
leave the police station and stay at a hotel after agreeing to not leave the
hotel until their deportation. The spokesman said an Australian consular
official was with the news team when they were told they would be deported
for “undertaking employment on a tourist visa.”
Background Information
East Timorese voted in a referendum on possible independence from Indonesian
rule for the former Portuguese colony of 800,000 people. Six international
media workers were killed when Indonesia invaded East Timor 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).
On 25 May 1999, Indonesian and Australian journalists’ organisations
announced they were opening a media safety office in Dili. This followed
increasing attacks on journalists and threats by pro-Indonesian militia
trying to stop journalists covering violence and intimidation before and
during the referendum.
