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The Voice of East Timor: Journalism, Ideology, and the Struggle for Independence

2007; Routledge; Volume: 31; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10357820701559071

1467-8403

Janet Steele,

International Relations and Foreign Policy

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Quoted in ‘East Timor Journalists Vow to Promote Democracy’, AFP, 22 December 1999. 2. Suara Timor Lorosae no longer owns a complete set of newspapers from before independence; the papers were destroyed along with everything else at the office in September 1999. Suzana Cardoso, a former STT journalist who now works for the Timor Post, gave Salvador her private collection of newspapers, which is now in the STL library. Most of the papers date from 1996–99, with a few from 1995. 3. Email correspondence, Salvador Soares, 29 December 2005. 4. Email correspondence, Salvador Soares, 11 January 2006. 5. Email correspondence, Salvador Soares, 29 December 2005. 6. Interview, Aderito Hugo da Costa, 3 March 2006. 7. For a fascinating discussion of the enduring power of liurai in Timorese political structures, see Hohe (2002 Hohe, Tanja. 2002. The clash of paradigms: International administration and local political legitimacy in East Timor. Contemporary Southeast Asia, 24 (December): 569–90. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], pp. 569–90). As Hohe concludes, “the character of a political leader is … less important than his origin”. Hicks (2004 Hicks, David. 2004. Tetum ghosts and kin: Fertility and gender in East Timor, second, Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press. [Google Scholar], p. 46, fn. 4) likewise quotes a politically active elder as attributing “the failure of the Indonesian administration to govern sukus successfully to the fact that they would select as leaders of the suku men who did not command popular respect. Although they occupied, in effect, the office of liurai they were not of liurai descent, because liurais cannot be ‘made’”. 8. Email correspondence, Salvador Soares, 29 December 2005. 9. Private correspondence, Sidney Jones, 18 February 2005. 10. Prior to the monetary crisis or krismon of 1997, the exchange rate was approximately Rp. 1,500 to the dollar. After 1998, when the exchange rate bottomed out at about Rp. 16,000 to the dollar, STT's price went up to Rp. 1,000, and the number of pages fell back to eight. Email correspondence, Salvador Soares, 23 February 2007. 11. Interview, Metha Guterres, 7 March 2006. 12. Interview, Alexandre Asis, 6 March 2006. 13. Interview, Salvador Soares, 6 May 2006. 14. Examples include STT's 5 June 1995 coverage of the theft of a statue of the Virgin Mary in the subdistrict of Laulara, and the 13 June 1996 stories of rioting in Baucau. 15. Interview, Isabel Ferreira, 13 March 2006. 16. Private correspondence, Sidney Jones, 18 February 2005. 17. Interview, Aderito Hugo da Costa, 3 March 2006. 18. Interview, Metha Guterres, 7 March 2006. 19. ‘Menlu Alatas: Ada Logika Uskup Belo Peroleh Nobel’, STT, 14 October 1996. 20. ‘Gubernor Abilio: Proficiat Mgr. Belo’, STT, 14 October 1996. 21. ‘Uskup Belo: “Saya Tak Akan Kembalikan”’, STT, 14 October 1996. 22. ‘Tabel Rekapitulasi Sikap/komentar Terhadap Penghargaan Nobel Perdamaian MRG Belo’, STT, 18 October 1996. For stories suggesting the feelings of most Timorese, see the edition of 24 December 1996, the day after Bishop Belo returned to Dili to celebrate Christmas. 23. Although it is difficult to quantify, there was a vigour about the style of writing in STT that is quite different from what I have seen in other Indonesian newspapers from the same period. One possible explanation for this active feeling is the structure of Tetum. In Indonesian, good writing is passive, which meant that journalists were often able to construct sentences in which there was no subject, and incidents just “happened” without anyone being responsible (Steele, 2005 Steele, Janet. 2005. Wars within: The story of Tempo, an independent magazine in Soeharto's Indonesia, Jakarta: Equinox Publishing and ISEAS. [Google Scholar]). It is possible that because there is no passive voice in Tetum, Timorese journalists who were using the Indonesian language tended to use active sentence construction – just as native speakers of English often do. Email correspondence, João da Silva Sarmento, 20 May 2006. 24. Interview, Isabel Ferreira, 13 March 2006. 25. ‘STT Lebih Baik Dari STL’, STL, 3 February 2003. 26. ‘Xanana Tidak Dibebaskan Reformasi Belum Lengkap’, STT, 29 May 1998. 27. ‘Kita Punya Hak Untuk Hidup Bebas dan Merdeka’, STT, 15 September 1998. 28. The interview, which has become legendary among journalists in Timor Leste, appeared on 2 September 1998. When I interviewed Commander Taur on 7 March 2006, he immediately mentioned the interview, and said that STT had always been very good to him. 29. Salvador Soares, ‘Newspaper Suara Timor Lorosae, profile 2005’, p. 13. See also ‘Salvador di-Recall dari DPR’, STT, 9 February 1999, and ‘Pimpinan DPR-RI Sedang Proses Recall’, STT, 12 February 1999. 30. I examined eighteen papers from February, two from March, one from April, nine from May, seven from June, and twenty from July – all of which can be found in the STL library. Thanks to the kindness of Father José António da Costa, I was also able to examine the 23 editions of the paper that were published in August prior to the referendum. 31. Kammen himself uses the word “collaborator” in the article cited above. Another use of the term can be found in Samuel Moore's characterisation of Suara Timor Timur as representing “the opinion of loyal civilian collaborators” (Moore, 2001 Moore, Samuel. 2001. The Indonesian military's last years in East Timor: An analysis of its secret documents. Indonesia, 72(October): 9–44. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 30). 32. No Timorese has ever called Salvador an “opportunist” within my earshot – in fact, just the opposite. As Aderito Hugo da Costa said, “Salvador is no opportunist. He has always been pro-Jakarta”. I am indebted to Joel Kuipers for sharing with me his thoughts on this topic. 33. Salvador says that Xanana first invited him to return to East Timor and re-establish his paper at a meeting in Jakarta in late November 1999. “In an informal conversation Xanana invited me to come home and make another newspaper. I asked if this was genuine or just small talk. Xanana answered that he was serious.” Email correspondence, 7 February 2006. 34. I am using the spelling Tetum, rather than Tetun, although the latter is the term used by my Timorese and Indonesian sources. As anthropologist David Hicks explained: “The ‘m’ rendering derives from the Portuguese orthography, which disfavors ending a word with the letter ‘n’. But however it is spelt ‘Tetum’ is actually pronounced ‘Tetun’ or ‘Tetu’. Since East Timor was originally a Portuguese colony ‘Tetum’ became the accepted way of writing the word. The spelling ‘Tetum’ thus became incorporated in the official usage of the government of Timor-Leste for documents written in Portuguese and so is officially the correct transcription of the word. Bahasa Indonesia (and Dutch, for that matter) have no trouble ending the word with an ‘n’ so they spell it as the word is usually pronounced, i.e., with ‘n’. To be strictly correct: if one is writing in Portuguese one should spell the word ‘Tetum’. If one is writing in ‘Tetum’ itself one writes ‘Tetun’ since in Tetum/n orthography there is not the Portuguese problem of the terminal ending. If you write in English, it's up to you”. Email correspondence, 17 February 2007. 35. Interview, Aderito Hugo da Costa, 3 March 2006. In terms of ownership, Hugo points out that whereas STL is owned by one family – Salvador's family – the Timor Post is owned by a foundation of the employees. 36. Interview, Taur Matan Ruak, 7 March 2006. 37. Interview, Mari Alkatiri, 16 March 2006. 38. For similar statements by other Timorese journalists, see Hamish McDonald, ‘Tongue-tied in East Timor’, Age, 27 October 2000. 39. Interview, Carlos de Jesus, 15 May 2006. The language policy of Timor Leste is a sensitive topic. When I wrote a short opinion piece for Tempo magazine (‘Di-Tetun-kan’, Tempo, 27 March–2 April 2006) it provoked a scathing response on the website of the government-sponsored National Institute for Linguistics at the National University of East Timor. See http://www.shlrc.mq.edu.au/∼leccles/. 40. Interview, Aderito Santa, 17 May 2006. 41. Diário uses Portuguese stories from Lusa wire service. They also have translators, who reportedly earn higher salaries than the journalists. 42. Sonny Inbaraj, ‘East Timor: A Daily Becomes the Prime Minister's Punching Bag’, IPS, 6 April 2006. 43. ‘53 Warga Hatubuiliko Mati Kelaparan’, STL, 7 February 2005. 44. Quoted in Inbaraj, ‘East Timor: A Daily Becomes the Prime Minister's Punching Bag’. For STL's view of the episode, see ‘Newspaper Suara Timor Lorosae evicted from the building’, http://www.etan.org/et2005/april/24/20suara.htm. Several journalists told me that although Mari Alkatiri speaks Malay/Indonesian, he is far more comfortable with Portuguese. 45. In December 2005, Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri signed an executive decree approving a new Penal Code that contains severe penalties for defamation of public figures. President Xanana Gusmão neither signed nor vetoed the bill, and in February 2006 sent it back to the Ministry of Justice for reconsideration, where it remains. A 2004 Court of Appeals ruling suggested that until a new Timorese Penal Code is passed, the Indonesian law (which contains criminal penalties for defamation) still applies. 46. Interview, Metha Guterres, 15 May 2006. 47. Interview, Virgilio Guterres, 16 May 2006. 48. For an analysis of the tensions among these three cultures in the realm of politics, see Hohe (2002) Hohe, Tanja. 2002. The clash of paradigms: International administration and local political legitimacy in East Timor. Contemporary Southeast Asia, 24 (December): 569–90. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]. 49. Salvador believes that immediately after independence there was a “campaign” to exclude him from receiving funding for his paper, while the Timor Post received the lion's share of international support. Salvador's recollections are partly supported by Mary Zurbuchen, the Ford Foundation's Indonesia Country Representative from1992–2000, who found funding for him to attend an international donors' meeting in Bangkok to which he had previously not been invited. International newspaper accounts from the period also tended to emphasise the idealism of the Timor Post, while stamping STT “pro-autonomy”. See, for example, ‘Autonomy Supporter Joins Independence Leaders on East Timor Council’, AFP, 11 December 1999, or Wilson Da Silva, ‘Timorese Journalists Still Strive for Independence’, The Age, 22 April 2000. My own observations while doing research for ICFJ in May 2006 confirmed that such prejudices are still firmly rooted in the NGO community.