Jakarta – Journalists reporting on sensitive issues face imprisonment or the death penalty if the government and the House of Representatives pass the current draft of the state secrecy bill into law.

"Journalists could be in danger because the bill's definition on state secrets is vast and vague," Abdullah Alamudi, a member of the Press Board said during a discussion at Hotel Nikko in Central Jakarta, on Thursday.

Abdullah said the vast scope of the bill would allow any bureaucrat to use any interpretation they wanted to classify sensitive information as confidential.

"The result is, that if a journalist obtains sensitive information, which the bureaucrats consider to be confidential, then he or she could serve between seven and 20 years in prison or even be subject to the death penalty if the country is at war," he said.

Abdullah then said that most of the clauses in the bill contradicted the spirit of good governance, which President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had been preaching.

"For example, Article 6A stipulates that information on the state budget and its allocation is confidential. For me, that is outrageous. How can the public be prohibited from monitoring the government in the way their tax money is being utilized?" he asked.

The article that Abdullah was referring to, says that state secrecy includes "any information related to budgeting and spending allocation and government assets for the purpose of national security".

"Ultimately, the bill contains too many controversial articles. Article 6 needs to be removed immediately, along with Articles 18 to 35. Most of these articles threaten press freedom and limit the public's access to information," he said.

Aristides Katoppo, a senior journalist at Sinar Harapan, said the bill would regress the country's journalism to the New Order era should it be passed into law.

"It is going to be like in the old days. I remember I once wrote a news story about corruption in the state budget. The next day, the government banned my newspaper," he said.

Abdullah said that there was no doubt the bill was also vital to protecting the nation's interests. "However, it should remain consistent with the spirit of accountability and public control," he said.

Abdullah and Aristides further echoed the resistance voiced by a number of civil society groups, including the Independent Journalists' Association (AJI).

Legislators recently said they had finished discussing 70 percent of the bill and planned to pass it by October. Legislator Djoko Susilo, however, said the House needed to re-examine controversial issues in the draft bill before passing it.

Denny Indrayana, an expert staff member for the President, said that he would inform the President about the controversial bill. (hdt)