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Wife of Balibo Reporter Blames His Death on Army
Stephen Coates | July 08, 2010

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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 over a ban on a controversial movie about the events, Shirley Shackleton said she was convinced by evidence given to an Australian inquest into the deaths 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 shot in East Timor, premiered in Melbourne last July before an audience that included 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 a cross-fire as Indonesian troops fought East Timorese Fretilin rebels.

Indonesia banned the film but groups including the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) have launched a legal challenge to 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.”

The ban has stirred debate over the nature of free speech and democracy in Indonesia.

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,” Shackleton said, adding: “Isn’t that what democracy is based on?

At least 100,000 East Timorese lost their lives during the brutal Indonesian occupation.


 Agence France-Presse