Jakarta Globe, July 07, 2010
From left, Mark Leonard Winter, Thomas Wright and Gyton Grantley as Tony Stewart, Brian Peters and Gary Cunningham, portraying three of the Balibo Five. Shirley Shackleton, wife of late journalist Greg Shackleton, is in Jakarta to testify before a court that is hearing a petition against the government’s banning of the movie “Balibo” last year. (Photo courtesy of Balibo Films Pty.)
The wife of an Australian reporter allegedly killed by Indonesian forces in East Timor in 1975 said on Wednesday that she trusted the Indonesian people to make up their own minds about what happened.
Shirley Shackleton, wife of late journalist Greg Shackleton, is in Jakarta to testify before a court that is hearing a petition against the government’s banning of the movie “Balibo” last year.
“Tomorrow I’ll be cross-examined rather fiercely in the court. I’m nervous about that as I want to do well,” she told Indonesian reporters at a press conference.
Asked what she thought of Indonesia’s official claims that the reporters were accidentally killed in crossfire rather than executed in cold blood, she said: “That’s been rubbish for 35 years.”
“They were just doing their job like you are.”
“Balibo,” the first feature film ever made in East Timor, premiered in Melbourne last July before an audience including East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta, who says Indonesian forces murdered the reporters.
Starring Anthony LaPaglia, it tells the story of five journalists killed when Indonesian troops overran the East Timorese town of Balibo in October, 1975, and a sixth who died later in the full-scale assault on Dili.
Jakarta has always maintained that the so-called “Balibo Five” died in crossfire as Indonesian troops fought East Timorese Fretilin rebels.
Indonesian banned the film for national security reasons but groups including the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) have launched a legal challenge against the censors’ decision.
“A film should never be banned in a country which is a democracy. Any organization that tried to ban what the people want to see is making a mockery of democracy,” Shackleton said.
“This is about the film and the rights of the people here to watch, think, believe and say what they want, not what the government wants them to do.
“This film lets the cat out of the bag, you can’t keep it quiet any longer, the cat escapes. They have made a problem if they want to censor the film. I trust the Indonesian people to make up their own mind.”
Agence France-Presse
Speaking after at a court hearing called to lift a ban on the movie "Balibo," Shirley Shackleton, the wife of journalist Greg Shackleton, one of five journalists allegedly murdered by the Indonesian military in 1975, called on former cabinet minister Yunus Yosafiah, one of the alleged ringleaders of the massacre, to meet her to “clear his name.”
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