In mid December Sulawesi journalists watched a private screening of Balibo. They gathered at a Makassar hotel for a journalism seminar. The new Australian-produced film, projected from a laptop, featured in the workshop and spurred lively discussion. The film is the story of five Australian television journalists that were killed in the East Timor area of Balibo, 10 kilometers from the border with Indonesia’s West Timor, on Oct. 16, 1975.
East Timor was in factional turmoil after Portugal abandoned its colony in August 1975. The left-wing Fretilin pitted against the Indonesia-supported Apodeti and the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT). On Aug. 11, 1975 the UDT staged a “show of force” against the Fretilin.
This was tantamount to a coup. Governor Mario Pires fled to the neighboring island of Atauro and
effectively let East Timor descend into chaos.
Fretilin reacted and captured an arsenal of Portuguese arms recently delivered from Mozambique, a Portuguese colony in Africa under the throes of even more disastrous decolonization. Civil war erupted.
The five journalists in Balibo were two Australians, two British, and one New Zealander.
They got wind of possible Indonesian intervention and drove to Balibo with a Fretilin detachment. An attack seemed imminent.
The Fretilin fighters decided to withdraw and urged the journalists to join them. They refused and stayed for the story. It was a fatal mistake.
Richard Woolcott, the astute Australian ambassador in Jakarta at that time, learnt only of the journalists’ presence and death in Balibo on the night of Oct. 17.
This was when an officer of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service handed over an intercepted message to the envoy outside the front door of his residence.
Apart from the tragic deaths of these young men, I knew instinctively that if they were Australians, which seemed likely, a massive blow had been dealt to the Australia-Indonesia relationship, even if they’d been killed by East Timorese fighting with Indonesian troops,” Woolcott wrote on page 154 of his 2003 memoir The Hot Seat, Reflections on Diplomacy from Stalin’s Death to the Bali Bombings.
Balibo can be labeled a political film, a war film, a human rights film, or a journalism film. After the Makassar screening, discussion focused on the journalism.
The question asked: As journalists, what can you learn from the film? In covering a conflict, it tells you to make a choice.
Either you stay or you go, replied one participant. “I would go,” he said emphatically. Most of the 31 journalists present agreed. The majority argument was to leave the war zone, prioritizing safety and the ability to continue reporting in the future.
At least two participants, however, insisted they would stay for the story because it was “too big a story to miss”.
Another participant challenged them on how they could file a story if they met the same fate as the Balibo Five. “Do you want your story or your life,” they were asked. “You can’t have both,” they were told. “You won’t live to tell your story.”
The five journalists were, in today’s terminology, embedded journalists. They were attached to the Fretilin.
When the Fretilin moved out, the journalists stayed put although they were implored to go. The bottom line lesson of the film is that as embedded journalists, they should have remained with the fighting force they were attached to.
It was their margin of security.
To abandon that security was folly and they would be exposed to great peril.
A question that arose in the discussion was whether the news organization or the journalists’ organization the journalists belonged to could guarantee their safety in covering a conflict.
In answer to this, one participant reasoned the fighting force the journalists were embedded in would offer relative security.
Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, journalists traveling with a military force are considered to be members of that military unit.
If captured by an opposing force, the journalists are treated as prisoners of war. However in the 1977 Additional Protocols, Article 79 of Protocol I states that “journalists engaged in a professional mission in the areas of armed conflict shall be considered as civilians” if they do not compromise this status, such as wearing a military uniform. Under the rules of war, civilians cannot be deliberately targeted.
If a journalist is captured, however, he or she is not entitled to POW status and may be detained or tried for violating national law, entering a country without a visa for example.
The Film Censorship Board (LSF) banned the 90-minute film at the 11th Jakarta International Film Festival Dec. 4-12 arguing that it may “open an old wound”.
Balibo, directed by Australian film maker Robert Connolly, however, has played in numerous
private screenings in Jakarta and elsewhere for the press in particular.
Past films on journalism include the 1981 film Absence of Malice with Paul Newman portrayed as the victim of libelous reporting by an overzealous journalist played by Sally Field.
Another is the 1976 movie All the President’s Men starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman on investigating the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of US president Richard Nixon in 1974. These films have an educational content on journalism practice. Balibo is no exception.
The writer teaches journalism and has conducted workshops on development reporting at the Dr. Soetomo Press Institute (LPDS) in Jakarta.
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