STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT. Jakarta. Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) Chair Sasmito Madrim on Wednesday said that press freedom in Indonesia had declined again this year, citing the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Press Freedom Index that ranked Indonesia 117 out of 180 countries surveyed in 2022, down from 113 in the previous year. He said the AJI recorded 43 cases of violence against journalists in 2021. “These cases range from terror and intimidation to digital attacks against journalists. And if we look at the cases based on the perpetrators, the police are often the dominant offenders,”
Sasmito said during a webinar discussion hosted by the United States cultural center @america in Jakarta on Wednesday. Muhammadiyah University of Papua journalism lecturer Nahria said that although freedom of the press should be guaranteed to ensure people’s right to expression, in practice, and especially in Papua, it was not the reality. She explained that while violence against journalists by law enforcement remained a major problem, there were also issues with freedom of the press within local newsrooms as sometimes information gathered by journalists in the field was self-censored within the newsroom.
The US’ 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices in Indonesia stated that “there were numerous reports of the law being used to limit political criticism of the government.” The report noted that while independent Indonesian media was active with a wide variety of views, the government sometimes used laws such as those on blasphemy, hate speech, defamation, false information and separatism to restrict media.
The situation in Papua is getting bleaker with increasing intensity of violence and conflicts that are increasingly difficult to resolve. There is no longer a policy that can ‘win’ the Papuans, making instability and social unrest a real threat. The complexity of the situation in Papua makes the government need to carry out a reflective process of policies that have been implemented so far.
President Jokowi on Friday received the Papuan People’s Assembly and the West Papuan People’s Assembly’s visit at the Bogor Presidential Palace to discuss the new autonomous regions in the region. Jayapura Regent Mathius Awoitauw who represented the group appreciated President Jokowi who accepted them for dialogue. Mathius said the plan to form new autonomous regions was a genuine aspiration of Papuans who had been fighting for a long time (Red/many sources).
