(SEAPA/IFEX) – SEAPA condemns the 20 December 2005 attack by a gang of thugs at the office of a local daily, “Indo Post”. “The use of violent means will further scare the media community which already have had a nasty episode with violent mob attacks,” SEAPA noted. On the night of 20 December, members of […]
(SEAPA/IFEX) – SEAPA condemns the 20 December 2005 attack by a gang of thugs at the office of a local daily, “Indo Post”. “The use of violent means will further scare the media community which already have had a nasty episode with violent mob attacks,” SEAPA noted.
On the night of 20 December, members of a notorious extortion syndicate called the Hercules gang terrorized the “Indo Post” staff in Kebayoran Lama, South Jakarta for three and a half hours and injured three reporters, the Institute for the Studies on Free Flow of Information (ISAI) reported on 28 December.
According to ISAI, the assailants, who claimed to be members of the Hercules gang, forcibly entered the newspaper office and demanded clarification on a story about the change in the situation in Tanah Abang, a sub-district of central Jakarta controlled by the Hercules gang. The gang members also claimed that the reporter did not interview or confirm the story with them. The story was published in the “Indo Post”‘s gossip column on 19 December.
Searching for Deri Ahirianto, the reporter who wrote the story, the gang members mauled reporters Suyunus Rizki, Dilianto and Berto Riyadi. Dilianto suffered a broken nose which needed to be operated on.
Running around the offices wildly and thumping on the desks, the Hercules gang members also threatened to shoot everyone in the office, ordered them to remain seated and to turn off all the computers for 30 minutes. The gang only stopped the rampage and left at 1 a.m.(local time) after a platoon of Kebayoran Lama police came to the rescue, ISAI reported.
SEAPA, in solidarity with its Indonesian counterparts, the ISAI and the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), condemned the rampage at the “Indo Post”.
“The attack on the ‘Indo Post’ raises fears that the use of violence to settle scores with journalists will resurge and that will discourage journalists from reporting on rampaging corruption and other illegal activities associated with thuggery in Indonesia’s local constituencies,” SEAPA said.
SEAPA encourages people to register their complaints over news stories with the Indonesian Press Council, instead of resorting to violence, according to a SEAPA statement.
Indonesia’s Press Law No. 40/1999 provides people who were offended by news stories with the right to reply.
On 23 December, AJI, Institute Legal Aid (LBH) Mass media, Mass Media Council, and the Indonesian Television Journalists’ Association (IJTI) staged a rally in solidarity with mass media and paid a visit to police headquarters.
