APSN | Prabowo campaign sues US journalist Allan Nairn for defamation

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Prabowo campaign sues US journalist Allan Nairn for defamation

Jakarta Globe - July 15, 2014

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Jakarta – A senior member of Prabowo Subianto's election team has said that the award-winning US journalist Allan Nairn will be reported to police for publishing a series of articles detailing an off-the-record interview Nairn held with Prabowo in 2001.

"Prabowo never said the things alleged by Allan Nairn," Great Indonesia Movement (Gerindra) Party chairman Fadli Zon said. "This Allan Nairn has made so many statements, including those that we are quoting here in our report to the police."

Nairn has been a thorn in the side of Prabowo's campaign since he began releasing excerpts from his 2001 off-the-record interview with the former general who is now a presidential candidate, some 10 years after Nairn had his skull fractured by Indonesian troops while he witnessed the 1991 massacre of more than 250 demonstrators in Santa Cruz, in present-day Timor-Leste.

Prabowo has claimed to have won the July 9 presidential election, just like his rival Joko Widodo, based on a selection of quick count results. Officials results will be announced by the General Election Commission (KPU) on July 22.

Nairn's articles, which he released on his blog in the run-up to the election, painted a man who believed Indonesia was "not ready" for democracy and thought the Santa Cruz massacre was injudicious because it was conducted in full view of the press, rather than that it was a crime against humanity.

"Santa Cruz killed us politically," Prabowo said, according to Nairn. "You don't massacre civilians in front of the world press."

Another spokesman for Gerindra and Prabowo's campaign team, Maj. Gen. Sudrajat, previously told the Jakarta Globe that "Allan Nairn is a foreign journalist, a foreign correspondent who, from the time of the New Order, has always attempted to corner the Indonesian government."

Sudrajat added that for "a foreign correspondent, it is really inappropriate, really not credible... to interfere in the domestic affairs of Indonesia."

According to Fadli, "The essence is that we want the election process not to be disturbed by the intervention of someone claiming to be an investigative journalist who was actually arrested by the government back in 1998."

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/prabowo-campaign-sues-us-journalist-allan-nairn-defamation/.