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Julia Suryakusuma, Jakarta | Opinion | Wed, October 01 2014, 11:26 AM
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/10/01/live-papua-indonesia-s-free-press-black-hole.html
When you are a journalist, you know that following your journalistic instincts sometimes means big trouble.
That’s why a slew of films have been made on this topic, including: The Killing Fields (1984) a drama about the civil war in Cambodia; The China Syndrome (1979), an American thriller about the dangers of nuclear power and Veronica Guerin, a 2003 biographical Irish film about the drug trade in Dublin. These three films were all based on true stories.
The characters of Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor), Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterson), Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda), Richard Adams (Michael Douglas) and the eponymous character of Veronica Guerin (Cate Blanchett), all risked their lives in their pursuit of the truth — the ultimate aim of investigative journalism. For that Guerin also paid the ultimate price: She was murdered in 1996.
I reckon a film entitled Live from Papua could also be made about the two French journalists, Valentine Bourrat and Thomas Dandois, who have been detained in Papua since Aug. 6 this year. They were arrested while filming the conditions in which the local population lives. The trouble was, they were there on tourist visas.
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