Shannon Gillies
DILI (Pacific Scoop / Pacific Media Watch): The government of Timor-Leste has held a national debate about a controversial new media law that will require journalists to be registered and which might see a freedom of expression clampdown on bloggers and social media users.
Shannon Gillies reported from Dili that at the debate Tempo Semanal editor José Antonio Belo said he had informed Timor-Leste’s political leaders to "get the paperwork ready for his arrest" over his opposition to the law.
La'o Hamutuk, an independent development watchdog, has petitioned on Timor-Leste President Taur Matan Ruak to veto the law. Many media and civil society groups have signed this public appeal.
"Belo regards the law as being designed to suppress the media and to create an environment where people do not feel they can express their opinions freely. The way the law is written is broad and there is no common interpretation of what the law means so that will make it hard to operate under, says Belo", Gillies reported:
“There will be no forum for the people to speak. I have fought this law from day one. They tell the world this country is very democratic but it’s all lies. In the meantime they’re punishing the newspapers [which] are trying to tell the truth.”
But José Luis de Oliveira of Asian Rights and Justice said the media must be regulated to protect the public and the public needed to be given a way to make complaints about their media.
Radio Liberdade director Francisco da Silva Gari criticised the law and said the government ought to look into corruption before restricting a fledgling media industry, Gillies reported:
“The press council can stop a journalist working if they might be writing a story that is against their interest. They can withdraw the licence like that. Any journalists that come to Timor-Leste to cover stories [will] have to ask permission from the government. That is going back to the past.”
Shannon Gillies is an independent New Zealand journalist based in Melbourne and a graduate of AUT University. She travelled to Timor-Leste.
Read the full story at PMC Online
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
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