East Timor

Borrowing a page from the U.S. playbook, the Indonesian military is restricting and controlling coverage of their war in the restive province of Aceh.

The UN and the Indonesian government both think they know who killed two journalists in East Timor last year. So why aren't the suspects on trial?

Journalists in Jakarta estimate that 1,000 new publications have sprung up throughout the country since Suharto was forced from office a year ago. While some of them are supported by one or another of the 48 political parties vying in the June 7 elections, many others profess independence and seek readers rather than partisan victories. Where once a single official journalists' union, the Indonesian Journalists Association (PWI), held sway over the entire profession by official decree, some two dozen new press associations have formed in the past year. The Ministry of Information, which used to be the chief gatekeeper and stumbling block to anyone seeking to open a newspaper or magazine, now processes license applications in a matter of hours and aims to do away with official registration altogether.

On the eve of Indonesia's first free elections in more than a generation, government officials eagerly point to the country's open and virtually unfettered press as one of the major accomplishments of interim President B.J. Habibie's tenure. With the Indonesian economy still reeling from the Asian economic crisis, unrest simmering in many provinces, and the corrupt legacy of former President Suharto's "New Order" regime still virtually untouched by either official investigators or the courts, the expansion of press freedom is one of the current administration's few tangible reforms.

Dangerous Assignments

The Asian economic turmoil of the last eight months struck many international observers as a sudden calamity--trouble that seemed to drop from the sky like an alien invader. But in fact, the signs of structural weakness and the cracks in the veneer of financial robustness were in plain view for those in a position to take a hard look. In Indonesia, the family of President Suharto has had its hands in the economy for decades. Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has long pursued expensive vanity projects. In South Korea and Thailand, many companies and banks have ignored financial reporting requirements with scant legal penalty.