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French journalists Thomas Dandois and Valentine Bourrat receive two-month sentence
Sydney Morning Herald - October 24, 2014
The sentence means Thomas Dandois and Valentine Bourrat will be out of prison and free to return to France next week.
Bourrat's mother, who had pleaded for her daughter's release, said from Paris it was "very good news". But their lawyer, Aristo M.A. Pangaribuan, said there was no room for celebration because "the sentence still criminalises journalistic work".
He said a priority for Indonesia's new president Joko Widodo should be to ease restrictions on foreign reporting in the two Papuan provinces, Indonesia's easternmost and among its poorest regions.
"If the new government really wants to start development in Papua, then it should be transparent about what they are doing in Papua by letting in foreign journalists," Mr Aristo said. "Otherwise it's just rhetoric."
Mr Joko had, during the presidential election campaign, indicated that he may ease restrictions.
Mr Aristo argued to the court that the French pair were not actually carrying out journalistic work, and were only conducting research.
Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire said the sentence was a "big relief" and that "any other outcome would have set a terrible precedent for media freedom in Indonesia".
Under international legal principles – which endorse reporting without valid visas where the legal regime is too restrictive – they had committed no offence.
Mr Deloire said Indonesia's low ranking in the 2014 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, 132nd out of 180 countries, is due in part to the lack of transparency and restrictions on reporting in Papua.
The two reporters were caught by police in the highlands capital of Wamena on August 5 while filming a documentary for Franco-German TV station Arte on the West Papuan separatist movement – a notoriously touchy subject for the Indonesian state.
For reporting from the province, authorities require a journalist visa and a special permission letter, both of which are difficult to get. Even so, most reporters caught with tourist visas are simply deported.
The prosecutor, Sukanda, had sought a four-month prison sentence after previously saying he would seek the full five years available under Indonesian immigration law. He told the court on Thursday that the call for the five-year sentence was to act as a deterrent to other foreign reporters.
He also said an aggravating factor in the case was the possibility that the reporters "may report negatively on Indonesia overseas".
The case has highlighted again the extreme sensitivity with which Indonesian authorities regard independent journalism in West Papua, which as hosted a low-level separatist movement since it was incorporated into the Indonesian state in 1969.
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