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The wife of an Australian reporter allegedly killed by Indonesian forces in East Timor in 1975 told a Jakarta court on Thursday that she believed her husband was shot after surrendering to the Army.

At a hearing called to lift a ban on a controversial movie of the events, Shirley Shackleton said she was convinced by evidence given to an Australian inquest into the death of her husband and four other foreign journalists.

“It found that their hands were in the air giving themselves up, they were not armed and were wearing civilian clothes and the perpetrators of this atrocity were members of [the Indonesian military],” she said.

“Balibo”, the first feature film ever made in East Timor, premiered in Melbourne last July before an audience including East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta, who says Indonesian forces murdered the reporters.

Starring Anthony LaPaglia, it tells the story of the five journalists killed when Indonesian troops overran the East Timorese town of Balibo in October, 1975, and a sixth who died later in the full-scale assault on Dili.

Jakarta has always maintained that the so-called “Balibo Five” died in crossfire as Indonesian troops fought East Timorese Fretilin rebels.

Indonesia banned the film but groups including the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) launched the legal challenge against the censors’ decision.

Shackleton, 78, said she returned to Jakarta to support the filmmakers’ bid to lift the ban “because they reached their objective to clarify the lies and the cover-up. In good Aussie slang... the cat is out of the bag.”

During the hearing, she held up a hand and counted off the nationalities of the five dead journalists; two Britons, Two Australians and a New Zealander.

The ban has stirred debate over the nature of free speech and democracy in Indonesia, where the military remains sensitive to the subject of the reporters’ deaths.

It has also threatened to overshadow relations between Canberra and Jakarta after Australian police last year launched a war crimes investigation into the deaths.

An official from the film censorship board told the court that Balibo was “one-sided” as it failed to include the official Indonesian version of events.

Speaking before the court convened, Shackleton said the case was “important to establish whether democracy is alive and well in Indonesia.”

“I hope the ban will be lifted,” she said, adding: “Isn’t that what democracy is based on?

“Justice is not about vengeance it’s about accountability, that’s the justice I want,” Shackleton added.

On Wednesday, AJI Jakarta head Wahyu Dhyatmika called Shackleton a “very brave woman”.

“It’s very inspiring to see a 78-year-old person who is still energetic and still wants to seek justice,” he said.

The 2007 inquest in New South Wales was told that Yunus Yosafiah — who later became a cabinet minister — was one of the ringleaders of the alleged massacre.

Outside court Shackleton challenged him to meet her and “clear his name.”

Last year a retired Indonesian Army colonel told Tempo, an Indonesian weekly magazine, that the reporters were shot by Indonesian troops.

Gatot Purwanto, a former special forces commando and veteran of the Timor invasion, said the reporters were killed when troops heard gunfire coming from the house where the foreigners were hiding.

At least 100,000 East Timorese lost their lives through fighting, disease and starvation during the brutal Indonesian occupation, which ended with a bloody vote for independence in 1999.


Agence France-Presse