PMC director calls for greater global outreach by NZ j-schools

Pacific Media Centre

New Zealand journalism schools need to be far more internationally minded and think outside the parochial square, says Pacific Media Centre director David Robie.

Just back from a six-week sabbatical trip to several Asian countries and Europe, Dr Robie says many New Zealand journalism graduates are doing well in countries such as China while pursuing an international career.

The PMC at AUT University has promoted a postgraduate internship programme with support from the Asia New Zealand Foundation for the past seven years and several graduates have used this as a springboard for a global career.

“New Zealand’s future lies in the Asia-Pacific region with an emphasis on Asia, especially China, our second largest trading partner,” he says. “Journalism courses here need to reflect that.

“Long gone are the days when journalism graduates saw the New Zealand media as their sole job market.”

AUT’s School of Communication Studies launched New Zealand’s first Asia-Pacific or international journalism paper in 2007 and Associate Professor Robie teaches the course.

During his sabbatical trip, Dr Robie visited the Communications University of China with AUT’s international relations director Chris Hawley; China Daily, the major state-run English newspaper and website where AUT graduates go on regular internships as foreign “experts” for copy polishing; a leading Hongkong university-based journalism school; Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) in Singapore; Airlangga University’s communications school and the Jawa Pos news media network headquarters in Surabaya, Indonesia; Reporters San Frontières media freedom group in Paris; and the International Herald Tribune’s Asian bureau in Hongkong among other media and educational centres.

Internship strategy
In Beijing, he had discussions with the China Daily management about a strategy to boost AUT’s exchange scheme and improvements for the internship scheme.

He also met current intern Michele Ong and a former intern, Guanny Liu, who now works with a Beijing-based international radio station.

“The internship changed my life,” said Liu, who had been working for Radio New Zealand and worked on a China Daily internship after graduation before landing the Beijing job.

Both Ong and Liu speak Mandarin. Ong has just returned from a Shanghai Expo assignment and a travel reporting mission in Anhui province.

In Surabaya, Dr Robie gave a lecture to Airlangga media students about Asia-Pacific press freedom and comparisons between micro-island states and the Indonesian news industry environment.

Airlangaa postgraduate students have studied at AUT and a closer relationship between the two universities is being developed.

In Paris, Dr Robie met with Reporters Sans Frontières Asia-Pacific researcher Vincent Brossel and discussed plans for stronger South Pacific collaboration with the Pacific Media Centre, which operates the regional media monitoring project Pacific Media Watch and the news website Pacific Scoop.

Pictures: Top to bottom. Airlangga students in Surabaya, Indonesia, welcome David Robie; Michele Ong at the China Daily video newsreading desk; Beijing dinner - left to right (back): Michele Ong, Guanny Liu, Del Abcede and Bridgid Hawley, front: David Robie, "chairman" Chris Hawley and Ollie Fenwick-Ross; China Daily's 29th anniversary celebrations; a news conference at the China Daily; and David Robie with Jawa Pos editor Leak Kustiya. Photos: David Robie

Quiet Papuan 'father' takes on military with his pen

By Jessica Harkins: Pacific Media Centre

At first glance, Father Neles Tebay isn’t the kind of man you would think is under military surveillance. He’s a “father” after all.

He’s not a vigilante, militant or “terrorist”. He’s a theologian and a writer – a good one. In Indonesia, this warrants being watched, constantly.

He doesn’t write about violence or retribution. Nor does he advocate these things.

Like many of his ilk, he writes about dialogue. Something people in the West often take for granted that everyone has an opportunity to share.

When did Fr Tebay first know he was “of interest” to the Indonesian government?

“In 1986, the Indonesian military went to a public market to ask about me. They asked: ‘Where is Neles?’,” he recalls.

“They already knew where I stayed - at that time I was a student.

“They did it in order to frighten me, or terrorise me.”

Did it work?

“No”. He pauses. “No I think they failed in this.”

Important role
Fr Tebay’s mission, under military scrutiny or not, is to raise awareness in his own community, and around the world, about the struggle for autonomy in West Papua.

He has no qualms about saying what he means.

Maire Leadbeater, a spokesperson for the Auckland-based Indonesia Human Rights Committee (IHRC) and a tireless activist in her own right, who met Fr Tebay just this week, says: “He certainly doesn’t mince his words.”

“Fr Tebay is taken very seriously in his country. His role is important.”

Fr Tebay’s main concern in his homeland is the apparent failure of Law 21/2001. This is supposed to have granted Papua province special autonomy from the Indonesian state to oversee its own affairs.

Despite this law, there are proposals to divide West Papua into four smaller provinces, and in recent months the military presence in Papua has been increased visibly.

Fr Tebay has said the move to further split Papua will “only serve the needs of new bureaucrats and would do nothing to address the pressing problems of poverty, an inadequate education system, environmental destruction, poor health care and the spread of HIV/AIDS.”

He adds: “Militarisation is going on. More troops are being deployed in West Papua, more military security posts are established. There are three more battalions, around 700-1000 more troops.”

He criticises the actions of the military, calling them arrogant.

“They can hit anyone, anytime, anywhere, with or without reason,” he says.

“It’s enough to say ‘he is a separatist’ and…”

“That’s why the Papuans are traumatised when they see the military,” he says.

Peace, justice
Fr Tebay is in New Zealand to take part in public discussion about environmental sustainability, as well as the issues close to his heart of peace and justice in West Papua.

Kevin McBride of the international Catholic peace organisation Pax Christi, which is hosting Father Tebay, is disappointed in media exposure about the issue in New Zealand.

“It’s virtually nil, but it’s hidden deliberately by the Indonesian government,” he says.

McBride says foreign journalists are banned from entering the province for “security reasons” - but that doesn’t mean they don’t try.

Four Dutch journalists travelled to the Papuan capital of Jayapura to report on an independence protest this week. They were arrested and detained at a police station for more than 12 hours.

One of the journalists has been released and has returned to Jakarta, but the other three still have not had their passports returned and are not allowed to leave Papua until police investigations into their reporting of a major Papuan demonstration calling for independence are completed.

They are also not allowed to report until the investigation is over, police say.

McBride says that on the Wellington leg of Fr Tebay’s tour of New Zealand, they will pay a brief courtesy visit to the Indonesian Embassy.

A search of the New Zealand Herald website for articles on West Papua yielded only one incorrect reference to plans for transmigration of peoples into West Papua.

Transmigration, a scheme by the Indonesian government to relocate poor people from over-populated areas of Indonesia to West Papua, was implemented in the 1960s and has now ceased - although there is still spontaneous migration into the area, according to Fr Tebay.

Suspect opinions
“When you want to raise your opinion, usually you are suspected of being a separatist,” says Fr Tebay.

He adds that the stigma of being a separatist is a risk factor for the Papuans, especially with the stepped up military presence in the region.

Over the years, Fr Tebay has written opinion pieces for the Jakarta Post, as well as news articles for some of his local newspapers.

Now he questions the impact of his writing.

“There is no guarantee. No guarantee that my articles would be read by the right people.

“I just wrote hoping that somebody would read it, or hoping that government people would read it, and that perhaps it would change their policy,” he says.

Maire Leadbeater says New Zealand should be able to play a role in independence negotiations because of our own colonial history.

“Historical grievances need to be faced,” she says.

“That’s why I get upset with our government sometimes,”

“We should be at the forefront in the push for justice in historical crime,” she says.

“They are immense crimes against humanity,” she says of West Papua’s history with Indonesia.

Sony Ambudi, also of the IHRC and the Mt Eden Islamic Information Centre, describes Father Tebay as an academic researcher and not only a priest.

“Being a researcher is fundamental in giving strong evidence on every human rights violation,” he says.

“He is a man in the field, a real campaigner.”

Fact file

The Indonesian policy on West Papua since the end of World War Two has been focused on Papua being part of its claim over former Dutch Territories.

In 1962, the Netherlands brokered a deal with the Indonesian government and handed the territory over, with the promise that in five years time the people of West Papua would be given an act of self-determination overseen by the United Nations.

In 1969, Indonesia and the UN conducted a referendum called the Act of Free Choice, now widely criticised as a sham and labelled the “Act of No Choice”.

Less than 1 percent of the population voted under severe duress and violent threats. The unanimous result? Stay within Indonesia.

The Free Papua Movement (OPM) has waged a sporadic guerrilla struggle since the 1960s for independence.

Photo of Father Neles Tebay by Jessica Harkins. Jessica Harkins is a student journalist on the Asia-Pacific Journalism course at AUT University.

A Neles Tebay article
Jakarta Post

Our local Jakarta sweatshop

I live in a rumah kos, student accommodation that resembles a motor lodge back home with rows of rooms. My neighbours are mostly Indonesian students, generally well off, because from what I'm told this is an expensive place at 1.5 million rupiah a month - about NZ$200. Amazingly cheap by Auckland standards. To get to the kos you have to negotiate the maze of alley sized streets that make up the local kampung, village.
Just down the street is a place we refer to as a sweatshop. A small metal door that leads off the alley shows a small cramped room about 5m by 5m filled with desk and sewing machines, always humming. Every morning when we wander past we get followed by friendly salamat pagis that carry on even when we are long gone, in the evening its salamat malams. A friend that works for the Jakarta Post interviewed a few of the friendly workers one day and this is what she found. First of all it is a legitimate, to a point anyway, factory and the people are, as it seemed, happy. Unfortunately it is one of the many workplaces in the informal sector, meaning it doesn't fall under labour laws, although at least the people have jobs in a nation with soaring unemployment where 70% of people work in the informal sector.
The girl she talked to, through an interpreter, is one of the millions who have moved from the country to Jakarta in a hugely centralised country. The 20-year-old moved in with her husband last year to try and make money. She now lives above the factory for free, a huge bonus, and shares a room with her husband while the others sleep five to a room.
The young Indonesian girl works a whopping 14 hours a day, 6 days a week. For this huge week she earns a meager Rp 200,000, about NZ$30, sowing beautiful rainbow coloured nightgowns for export to UAE, Malaysia and Australia.
During an average day she get breaks from 12-1, 3-4, 6-7 (for prayers and eating) and in her small amount of spare time she sleeps and rests or wanders to the local mall.
She lives on the Asian staple of nasi, rice, which costs about Rp3000 a meal. Currently her life exists of little more than the cramped factory and whatever she can reach by walking in any time off that she is not sleeping in. What I see as the biggest shame about her story is that she almost had the chance to live a better life - she studied English for three semesters at university, usually a ticket to better pay, but couldn't afford to continue.
And she is well off compared to many here. How lucky we are.
Photos: Our local sweatshop, and one of the guys working on the beautiful nightgowns.
Dylan Quinnel
Jakarta

Dylan's YouTube video post Suharto's death

The contradiction that is Indonesia

Indonesia is considered to be a developing country and looking at the statistics and lives of a majority of the population, this seems bang on. A huge percentage are uneducated, a striking 50%, over 100 million people, live under the poverty line of US$2 per day and 70% of those employed work in the informal sector where they are not protected by labour laws.

Many in this 70% earn strikingly little and work very hard (more about that later in another post about a sweatshop near our Kos, student boarding house).

The contradiction is that a tiny minority are wealthy beyond anything we in New Zealand can fathom. Our richest man, Stephen Tindall would barely feature in their company. One rich son I have been told of owns two of the newest Bugatti cars each worth more than US$1 million. Neither of which he drives because they are one seaters and everyone here has a driver to negotiated the crazy traffic. One of these cars he has never actually sat in but says his friends think it looks good in the garage.

There are shopping malls here which beat the best NZ has to offer hands down. There you can buy the latest Gucci or Prada and a Starbucks Coffee costs exactly what it does in NZ. And I'm ot talking one or two either. What makes it even stranger is that the shacks and mansions, Bugattis and hand drawn carts are right next to each other and use the same pot-holed roads. But then that is the legacy of the developing world when capitalism, and in Indonesia's case, corruption, gets hold.

And yet they are all, except the super rich, some of the friendliest people you will ever meet.

Go figure.

Dylan Quinnell

Jakarta

Dylan's Jakarta diary - volcanoes and explosive soccer !

Hi guys, The journo gang all went away for the weekend to a beachside town. Offshore is a volcano, Krakatoa, which erupted in 1874, creating a tidal wave that killed people as far as 200km in land and sent ash 2000km away. We created a huge stir when a bus load of bule foreigners turned up and after some hard bargaining and a 2v2 soccer game against some local guys (which me and an Aussie mate from Tassie lost 3-0), we bumped out the volcano on a fleet of 4 speedboats, took a 1.5 hours but was good fun.

Anak Krakatau, son of Krakatoa, is still active and kept sending up huge plumes of ash on our way there.

Next thing I know, we're standing on the beach with the volcano exploding over the top of us and it is raining ash (Aroha Treacher in the pic).
The beach and volcano was ash covered and when you swam the top meter of the water was ash they below that a beautiful blue. Everyone here is a 'tour guide' and that night our guide, whom I became friends with, took us to a friend's restaurant then a friend of his organized accommodation and put on a party for us.
The next day we went snorkeling, which was good but not the best I've done, and managed to get back to Jakarta to catch the second half of the national soccer final - for free as it turned out. A few of us watched the semifinal between a Jakarta team and team from Papua which got violent partly, I think, for political reasons, partly because Jakarta lost.

I have never seen so many riot police in my life and got some good pics. luckily no one was seriously hurt. Don't worry we were safe.

Dylan

Jakarta diary from Dylan

Salamat Natal dan Tahun Baru
Three NZ graduating young journos are in Jakarta for an international reporting practicum scholarships sponsored by the Asia: NZ Foundation and Pacific Media Centre at AUT. They are Aroha Treacher and Dylan Quinnell (pictured) from AUT's School of Communication Studies and Will Robertson from Massey University. A brief email update from Dylan:
This is an amazing place reminds me a lot of new SA, just chaos everywhere. On the road there appear to be almost no rules, apart form a few traffic lights, you turn when you want or cross main roads and people just slow down to let you do so. motor bikes are buzzing in and out of traffic all over the place, and everyone hoots a lot but not to express anger rather say "hey, buddy just swerving past up you right side".
A lot of stuff is amazingly cheap with taxis costing a few dollars and meals the same. Gotta watch the chilli tho, damn hot and burns going in and out. The people are really friendly when you greet them and the language learning is coming on well. I played some soccer with little kids down one of the tiny alley streets, and got some good pics near where I'm staying with a classmate from NZ in his cousin's house.
They have six full time staff including three maids on at any one time, a driver on call and a security guard. Back yard looks a bit like Africa with barbed wire on the top of a massive concrete wall. They also have a pool, very comfortable but strange getting used to having people doing everything for you, friendly tho.
Today I move into the hotel with my two new room mates and stay for a while till I can find a kos or little apartment where you rent a room off someone for about $150 a month often with breakfast and washing thrown in. Learning the language is going well as the maids are very willing teachers who find my attempts so funny; they thought it was hilarious when I asked one to teach me how she folds the washing so well.

Jakarta scholarships