Two Timorese journalists must be set free to protect the country’s fledgling media

Press freedom is a fragile thing. Those of us who live in established democracies have tended to take it for granted, as if it is always going to be there without thought or defense. It appears deep-rooted, with long-standing traditions and norms.

And although an untrammeled media can look pretty messy and undignified (witness the recent coverage of Schapelle Corby’s return to Australia), those who live with it generally recognize that a media free to investigate the powerful, host open debates and arguments and keep public conversations going is essential to a healthy democracy.

It is hard to imagine life without it.

But it turns out that free press is a rarity. Earlier this year, the pro-democracy group Freedom House found that globally, press freedom is the worst it has been in the past 13 years, and it is continuing to slide in the wrong direction.

It is one reason we need to nurture it wherever it appears to be blossoming, and protect it when it is in danger or being threatened.

On Thursday in Timor Leste, two journalists Oki Raymundos and his former boss Lourenco Vicente Martins will appear in court to learn the outcome of their long-running trial for “slanderous denunciation” of the Prime Minister Rui Aria de Araujo. A more accurate though less literal translation would be “criminal defamation”, and it carries a sentence of up to three years in jail.

The case relates to an article that Raymundos wrote and Martins published in the Timor Post in 2015, about a government tender for IT services when the Prime Minister was working in his previous capacity as an advisor to the Ministry of Finance. De Araújo recommended an Indonesian company for the work, but the Council of Ministers awarded it to a different company. De Araujo says the Post wrongly reported the company that he was supporting.

The error might have been sloppy journalism, but it was hardly defamatory. A few days later, the newspaper published the Prime Minister’s reply on the front page and then published a clarification, in line with both professional ethics and Timor Leste’s own media law. Martins then resigned as editor.

Most public officials would have left it at that and moved on. But De Araujo said he presented the facts to the prosecutor “as a Timorese citizen” and the prosecutor then independently chose to proceed with the criminal case.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, Freedom House and the International Federation of Journalists have all written to the Prime Minister and urged him to use his authority to stop the case and protect the country’s journalists from judicial and political intimidation.

De Araujo replied, saying that as an offended person, he has no control over the way the prosecutor chooses to proceed. On Tuesday, he wrote a last-minute letter to the judges, calling for them to refrain from issuing prison sentences.

That is a positive step forward, but if the judges are as independent as the Prime Minister says, the letter changes nothing other than giving him an excuse to say he did his best.

Simply by writing though, De Araujo has recognized that neither justice nor press freedom is served by continuing the case. The only way he can guarantee both is by withdrawing the charges all together.

Nobody is disputing the fact that the paper made a mistake in the first place, but by treating it as a criminal offence, the government appears to be using the law as a cudgel to bludgeon Timor Leste’s fledgling media and avoid the kind of criticism and oversight that a healthy democracy demands.

A free press is a flawed machine, and it will inevitably stumble, but the law is there to keep it in check, rather than intimidate and suppress it.

Timor-Leste has had a proud and relatively trouble-free birth as a new state, but these kinds of attacks run the risk of unraveling one of the most important institutions in a functioning democracy before it’s even had a chance to get working.