(RSF/IFEX) – The testimony of former members of the Australian intelligence services, including George Brownbill and Ian Cunliffe, brought a major new development on the 11th and 12th days of a coroner’s enquiry into the deaths of five foreign journalists on 16 October 1975 in the East Timor border village of Balibo. Their testimony showed […]
(RSF/IFEX) – The testimony of former members of the Australian intelligence services, including George Brownbill and Ian Cunliffe, brought a major new development on the 11th and 12th days of a coroner’s enquiry into the deaths of five foreign journalists on 16 October 1975 in the East Timor border village of Balibo.
Their testimony showed that, at that time, Australian cabinet ministers were in possession of reports proving that the murder of the five journalists had been premeditated by the Indonesian army, and that the government lied by denying that Jakarta had any direct responsibility.
Reporters Without Borders hails the exceptional work of the enquiry, being conducted by a coroner’s court in the Sydney suburb of Glebe. “Under no circumstances should this investigation be obstructed,” the press freedom organisation said. “It is now essential that the most senior Australian and Indonesian officials of that time be called to the witness box to respond to the accusations that have been made against them.”
22 February 2007 hearing
Brownbill and Cunliffe, who until now have been forbidden to discuss the case, recounted that when they inspected a Defence Signal Directorate base in Shoal Bay in March 1977, an employee whose name was not made public showed them the transcript of a radio conversation between an Indonesian officer and his superior after the events in Balibo. The Shoal Bay base was used at that time by Australia for intercepting Indonesian military communications.
According to Brownbill and Cunliffe, the Indonesian officer said: “We have located and killed the five journalists on your instructions. We are now awaiting your instructions in order to know what we should do with the bodies and the personal effects of the journalists.”
Cunliffe said the transcript proved that the murders were premeditated and that the Australian government of the day lied when it publicly denied that the Indonesian army was involved. However, this piece of evidence and four other files mysteriously disappeared when the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) moved its offices from Melbourne to Canberra in 1984.
23 February hearing
On the 12th day, former intelligence analyst Gary Lintworth accused the former deputy chief of the Office of Current Intelligence (OCI), John Bennets, of ordering the destruction of documents proving that Australia was aware of the premeditated nature of these murders as early as the day after they had taken place.
Lintworth said he wrote a memo confirming, on the basis of radio intercepts, that the journalists had been killed in Balibo. But Bennets immediately ordered that his memo be destroyed. He told the court that he had never seen such a decision and that it was necessary to maintain good relations with Indonesia at all costs.
The testimony is damning for then Labour Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and the two other cabinet ministers who were told about Indonesia’s involvement in the murders. The Whitlam government denied any such involvement and did not oppose Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor.
“I participated in the drafting of three reports on the death of the journalists and they were sent to the offices of the prime minister, foreign affairs minister and defence minister,” Rowen Osborn, a former OCI official, said, adding that he assumed they were shown to the ministers themselves as their content was so sensitive.
The “Balibo Five” were a group of journalists working for two Australian TV stations who were killed by Timorese paramilitaries and Indonesian soldiers as an Indonesian force prepared to invade East Timor. The group consisted of Australian reporter Greg Shackleton, Australian soundman Tony Stewart, New Zealand cameraman Gary Cunningham, British cameraman Brian Peters and British reporter Malcolm Rennie.
