The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has joined calls by international press freedom groups for a thorough inquiry into the recent murder of an Indonesian journalist who was investigating corruption allegations against officials in East Java province.
Freelance reporter Herliyanto (40) was found dead on April 29 with numerous stab wounds to his head, neck, stomach and back in a teak plantation near Tarokan village outside Banyuanyar town in Probolinggo district. He had written articles about corruption for regional newspaper Radar Surabaya and two local tabloids, Delta Pos and the now defunct Jember News Visioner.
"We condemn the murder of our colleague Herliyanto and urge the national authorities to quickly and fully investigate the circumstances surrounding his brutal murder," CPJ executive director Ann Cooper said in a statement Monday (15/5/06).
The Jakarta-based Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) has said Herliyanto was investigating corruption allegations involving school construction funds in Tulupari village, part of Tiris town.
AJI's advocacy division earlier this month sent a fact-finding team to the area to clarify definitively whether Herliyanto's murder was connected to his reporting or was an ordinary crime. The team has found "strong indications" he was murdered because of his reporting on corruption.
A preliminary police investigation revealed that just before the murder, Herliyanto was followed by five or six people on four motorbikes. His own motorbike was found not far from his corpse, but his camera and notebook were missing. Police have ruled out robbery as a motive but are unwilling to publicly say whether the killing was linked was to his reports.
Local media reports said police have questioned 10 witnesses who saw the reporter in the hours before he was killed. A May 5 report by tempointeraktif.com quoted Probolinggo Police Detective chief Commissioner Samsul Arifin as saying robbery was obviously not the motive because the killers had not taken the reporter's motorbike. The report said the victim was found with his intestines spilled out about 30 meters away from his motorbike, which had been left on a road in the plantation.
The Jawa Pos daily on May 12 quoted an unnamed source from Banyuanyar Police as saying investigators believed five people took part in the killing. The report said a witness told police that Herliyanto had met with Tarokan village head Sugiyadi shortly before he was killed. The witness said that after the meeting, Herliyanto drove his motorbike past Klenang market in the direction toward Tulupari. He said two motorbikes then drove in front of the reporter, while another two drove behind him.
Arifin said police were using witnesses' descriptions in an effort to identify and track down the people on the motorbikes. He also said police had asked the victim's cellular phone operator to provide a list of numbers for all calls the reporter had made and received in the days leading up to his death.
Police received the reporter's phone from Sugiyadi, who is being treated as a witness. On May 11, he told the Radar Bromo daily he was not able to help police much with their inquiries when questioned for four hours. He said he was with his wife when Herliyanto spoke to him briefly at a food stall in Sebaung village, Gending subdistrict. "At that time he only said he was in a hurry because of an agenda. He did not say what that agenda was." Sugiyadi said he received the reporter's phone from some Tulupari villagers and then handed it over to Banyuanyar Police. He said the SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card was missing when the villagers found the phone. He claimed he could not remember the identities of the villagers who gave him the phone.
He said Herliyanto was well known as a reporter and had recently been seeking data on the villages of Pedagangan, Tulupari, Tegalwatu and Rejing, all in Tiris town. He claimed he did not understand what sort of data the reporter had been looking for.
Herliyanto leaves behind his wife Sami Murdiyana and their two children. Sami said that in the days before the murder, officials had often visited her husband to ask him questions. She told freelance reporter Iman D. Nugroho that the perpetrators of the crime should be sentenced to death, adding she was prepared to visit the East Java Police chief to demand a thorough investigation.
AJI expressed its appreciation to the local police for their work and asked East Java Police chief Brigadier Herman Suryadi to lend his support to the investigation to ensure the perpetrators are caught as soon as possible.
Herliyanto's death occurred three days before the commemoration of World Press Freedom Day on May 3. Villagers had initially assumed he was the victim of an ordinary crime when they found his body at about 8pm on April 29.
An investigation by TV7 television network confirmed that before the murder, Herliyanto was reporting on the local administration's alleged misuse of subsidies for the poor and school funding in Tulupari. The report said funds intended for the construction of a school in Tulupari were allegedly stolen by the village head and his aides.
Some of the victim's colleagues testified that Herliyanto had sent them a brief text message stating that funds were being misused in Tulupari. According to AJI, he had been gathering evidence of the school funding swindle, including a document with the forged signature of the school's principal. He was also said to be investigating the village head's alleged theft of funds for the rebuilding of a collapsed bridge and river wall.
Iman Nugroho reports on his blog that Herliyanto's colleague Ricard De Mas Nre believes his friend was slain because of his reports. "He was a reporter who often wrote news about criminal cases. I am convinced Herliyanto was killed because of the news that he wrote," he was quoted as saying.
"Furthermore, before he died, he sent me an SMS to write news about the corruption of the BOSS [School Operational Assistance]," said Ricard.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders has strongly condemned the murder, saying Herliyanto died while "trying to inform the public about corrupt local officials" and called on the authorities to arrest and prosecute those responsible.
A local journalist who wished to remain anonymous said Herliyanto's articles in Radar Surabaya were not accompanied by a byline or his initials.
Probolinggo administration spokesman Tutug Hariyadi said he knew Herliyanto because he had been writing about local government issues.
About 30 reporters in Probolinggo on Monday staged a rally to demand that Herliyanto's killers be unmasked. They said his last article appeared in the May 1-7 edition of Delta Pos and was about the alleged embezzlement of clean water funds by an official in Pedagangan village.
"Some people felt offended by the articles he wrote... Police must catch the perpetrators as soon as possible and bring them to justice," said rally organizer Samsul Choiri.
The protesters marched from the local police office to the local government building, carrying banners with slogans such as 'We Mourn Herliyanto', 'Stop Violence Against Reporters' and 'Reveal the Case of the Murder of Herliyanto'.
A statement issued by AJI on Monday condemned the killing as a threat to press freedom and urged police to bring the killers to court.
It said an autopsy by Probolinggo Public Hospital revealed the victim had sustained stab wounds measuring 12.5 centimeters to his neck and 8 centimeters to his head, while his intestines had spilled out about 25 centimeters.
The statement said one of Herliyanto's articles in Jember News Visioner in 2000 had described a protest by Tulupari residents against their village head for allegedly stealing from a program to provide subsidized rice to the poor. The report prompted local police to carry out an investigation, with the only result being further demands for the village head to step down.
AJI has recorded 53 cases of threats or physical attacks on journalists over the past year up to 3 May, 11 of them in East Java.
One of the most prominent murders of an Indonesian journalist was that of Fuad Muhammad Syafruddin, better known as Udin, a reporter for the Bernas daily in Bantul, Yogyakarta. He was severely beaten outside his house in August 1996 and died three days later.
He had written numerous reports exposing local government corruption and was particularly critical of Bantul regent Colonel Sri Roso Sudarmo, revealing how he paid a bribe of Rp1 billion to a relative of then president Suharto to gain re-election. The reports enraged Sudarmo and efforts were made to silence Udin through intimidation. But the journalist persisted with his reports and was killed. Police refused to investigate Sudarmo and instead blamed the murder on a man they falsely accused of having an affair with Udin's wife. The case was eventually thrown out of court but no officials were ever jailed for the state-sponsored cover up. Sudarmo was eventually tried by a military court for corruption in 1999 but never accused of masterminding Udin's murder. Edy Wuryanto, a policeman who assisted in the cover-up, was in August 2001 sentenced to 10 months in jail for withholding Udin's notebook. The investigation into the murder has never gone any further.
Hopefully police will have more courage in revealing the mastermind behind Herliyanto's murder. If not, nothing has changed.