Ian Timberlake, Jakarta – Four years after restrictions on free speech ended with the fall of strongman Suharto, Indonesian reporters fear a recent government crackdown could signal a return to this nation's repressive past.

The latest sign, they say, is the decision not to renew a journalist visa for Australian Lindsay Murdoch, who is the first foreign resident reporter to be barred from reporting since Suharto.

The 48-year-old Murdoch reportedly angered the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri by writing about a military plan to separate East Timorese children from their parents and bring them to orphanages in Java after Timor voted overwhelmingly to separate from Indonesia in 1999. They were also said to be irate after he wrote that Indonesian troops had poured boiling water over a baby who later died in Aceh, a province that also is trying to gain independence. "I was called in and told those stories were upsetting important people," Murdoch told The Chronicle.

There is a 1999 law that prohibits censorship, including a clause calling for two years in prison for "standing in the way" of a free press.

But the Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York, said Indonesian reporters have suffered an increasing number of attacks and threats in recent months while covering provincial conflicts and political upheaval.

Not true, said Marty Natalegawa, a Foreign Ministry spokesman who rejected the idea that there is a grand design for a Suharto-like clampdown. "We wish only the greatest freedom of the press," he said. "There is no question whatsoever of us ever going back to the past."

Such statements hardly comfort Ati Nurbaiti, who heads the Alliance of Independent Journalists. "There have been more and more signs of efforts toward press control," said Nurbaiti, who fears a series of recent measures could be used to curb the press. She points to the following:

• Megawati's revival of the Ministry of Information and Communications, a Suharto-era tool used to control the media.
• Talk among legislators that press laws should include a criminal code for articles deemed subversive or propagating hate.
• A draft of a law that would give low-level bureaucrats the power to declare information "confidential" at their own discretion.

Under Suharto, newspapers could not exist without a government permit, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and sharply limited the number of publications.

At that time, there was only one government-sanctioned national journalists' association, and many subjects – especially ethnic and religious strife – were off-limits.

"For decades you had to report as if everything was OK," said Nurbaiti, who sat in her office beneath a photo of the late US civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Defying government attempts to control them, Nurbaiti and other journalists founded the Alliance of Independent Journalists in 1994 after the Suharto regime set off widespread public debate by banning three respected publications.

When Suharto fell four years later, his successor, B.J. Habibie, ushered in an era of political freedom and free speech. No longer requiring expensive permits, hundreds of new publications hit the streets.

In fact, there have been so many tabloids – newspapers that hype crime stories and pass off a politician's sex life as investigative reporting – that Nurbaiti fears they may have colored Megawati's perception of the press.

Munir, a prominent Indonesian human rights activist, suspects that the government move against Murdoch came from the National Intelligence Body, headed by a retired general named A.M. Hendropriyono. He said the decision may be part of a general resurgence of military influence within the government.

A recent report in the Sydney Morning Herald said secret Australian communications show Hendropriyono helped arrange the forced deportation of more than 200,000 East Timorese after the independence vote.