Comments:`Balibo' screening canceled

The Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club (JFCC) decided to "err on the side of caution" in canceling a private screening Tuesday of Balibo, a movie about the death of five Australian journalists in the then East Timor in 1975, said president Jason Tedjasukmana JFCC.

Your comments:

I am afraid the Army did "irreparable damage" to its own citizens and our people a long time ago and is still attempting to cover it up ... their standard practice.

Terry Watson
Perth

TNI spokesman Rear Marshal Sagom Tamboen says that the screening of Balibo "will only hurt many Indonesians.

"The movie will only do irreparable damage to the *diplomatic* ties between Indonesia, Timor Leste *formerly East Timor* and Australia." The fact is that Indonesian soldiers deliberately killed five British, Australian and New Zealand journalists to prevent them exposing the 1975 invasion of East Timor.

I believe that Sagom is not being honest about the actual reasons behind his position. The movie actually is a pebble in the shoe for those TNI officers who participated in the criminal invasion of East Timor and for those who later committed abuses there.

The killing of the five foreign journalists in East Timor is a testimony to the brutality of the TNI, and the fact that TNI officers now do not want to hear about it just illustrate their cowardice. TNI officers like Sagom do not have the courage to face the truth about their own deeds.

The irreparable damage was committed by the TNI in 1975, not by a movie that makes the murderers feel uneasy about the truth.

There is, however, a way to mitigate the damage done to the victims of the TNI brutality in Timor Leste and elsewhere: to bring the most prominent TNI officers before a human rights tribunal and to severely punish those convicted of the worst crimes.

Yosfius Yunah
Jakarta