Page 141 - SCANDAL AND DEMOCRACY

126 Chapter 7

In November, Wahid attacked the international media for alleged misrepre-
sentations, accusing “a foreign television station” of reporting that “millions”
had attended a pro-independence rally in Aceh, when “[i]n fact, less than 100,000
people turned up.” In January 2001, members of Wahid’s cabinet began calling
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the media “anti-government” and “over-critical” of government policies. One said,
“freedom of the press is being ‘overused’ by most media.” Further faulting their
coverage of Aceh, the defense minister, Mahfud, said that the media “seem to enjoy
gore, revealing exactly how rebels are killed and the gruesome details of local people
killed in crossfires, ignoring mounting TNI and police dead.” The Ministry of For-
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eign Affairs then announced that foreign journalists were now required to obtain
special permission to visit Indonesia’s “hotspots”—notably, Maluku, West Papua,
and Aceh.
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That same week in the province of Riau, the paramilitary wing of Nahdlatul
Ulama, once headed by Wahid himself, and his supporters from the Cirebon City
People’s Forum in East Java forced their way into the offices of three newspapers to
demand public apologies for publishing photographs of posters caricaturing the presi-
dent. The caricature—the president’s head affixed on a baby’s body—had been on
posters captioned “No Worries” waved by demonstrators outside the parliamentary
complex in January. Nahdlatul Ulama’s paramilitary “Banser” forces occupied one
newspaper office and smashed furniture until editors agreed to print page-one apolo-
gies for several days running. Wahid did not respond directly, instead claiming that
the media had been using events, such as bombings in Jakarta on Christmas Eve, “for
their own interests.”
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A meeting in mid-February with the managing director of the government-
owned TVRI added a new dimension to the growing similarity between Suharto’s and
Wahid’s tactics for handling negative reporting. According to Tempo , Wahid “urged
TVRI to stop broadcasting any reports critical of the presidency.” His logic, reminis-
cent of Suharto’s standard justification for censorship, was that “such reporting could
potentially trigger mob violence” among his supporters, particularly in East Java,
where there was already unrest. Allegedly threatened with dismissal, the managing
director, Chaerul Zen, ordered TVRI “to immediately brief news editors . . . to comply
with [the president’s] appeal.” The editors were also instructed “to stop broadcast-
ing reports” on calls for a special session of parliament. On March 25, while twenty
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thousand “radical” Muslim students were shouting outside the palace demanding that
the president resign, Wahid announced, “The media have been making slanderous
accusations against me.”
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At this point, Wahid said that he remained “reluctant to bring newspapers to
court because it would create a depressing effect on press freedom.” In May 2001,
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however, he began threatening criminal prosecution against media outlets for “defa-
mation,” a violation still punishable under the criminal code by six years’ imprison-
ment. The same week, officials acknowledged that the government had established
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a “media monitoring team” with the aim, said Wimar Witoelar, who was by then a
presidential spokesperson, of checking misleading information and preventing offi-
cials from making “careless statements [that] will cause unrest.”
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As tensions rose, Wahid showed signs of desperation in the face of a looming
showdown between his supporters and the forces preparing to unseat him. On May
28, 2001, he cited media irresponsibility to justify issuing an executive order granting
emergency powers to his minister of security, later characterizing the directive as a