Intimidating journalists is standard procedure when you visit our near neighbour, says Morgan Mellish.

In September, Today Tonight presenter Naomi Robson created headlines when she and her crew were booted out of West Papua
without getting beyond Jayapura. Robson’s attempted journey inside the restive Indonesian province highlighted the difficulties of reporting from this tightly controlled police state.

Within days of the Seven Network crew being ejected, three other Australian journalists travelled inside West Papua and all encountered official interference and intimidation.

The three – myself, the ABC’s Jakarta correspondent Geoff Thompson and The Australian’s Jakarta correspondent Stephen Fitzpatrick – came away with exactly the same conclusion: If this is how the Indonesian security forces treat the Western press then pity the poor Papuans.

Unlike Robson and her crew, who entered the desperately poor province on tourist visas, the three of us had surat jalans. These are the official government travel permits needed to legally enter West Papua, which is one of the most militarised areas in Indonesia.

But this didn’t stop the overzealous and at-times thuggish secret police from trying to stop us reporting at almost every turn. There may be some goodwill in Jakarta towards solving West Papua’s problems, but the security forces on the ground remain a law unto themselves.

The difficulties for Western journalists start well before you arrive in Papua. To get a surat jalan requires the approval of Indonesia’s Department of Foreign Affairs (DEPLU), the state intelligence body (BIN) and the Indonesian police.

"The treatment of local journalists is a lot worse. On top of intimidation and threats, they are often physically assaulted."

Our permits were among only a handful approved this year and took about six months to get. Most applicants are knocked back by DEPLU on the trumped-up grounds that the province is too dangerous for journalists.

Each surat jalan specifies where you can travel and what you can report on. Mine said Jayapura, Timika and Wamena and that I could only report on the investment climate. The Australian’s and the ABC’s said they could only report on an Asmat tribe arts festival.

On arriving in Jayapura, the provincial capital, all Westerners must register with the police. I, along with my assistant, went to police headquarters to register with deputy director of police intelligence, Yan Pieter.

After grilling us on our intentions, he casually took a picture of us with his late-model Nokia flip phone. He then showed us a picture on the phone of Fitzpatrick, who’d been in the office a few days earlier.

“Stephen was very bad and was deported [from the province] for covering politics,” he said, maintaining a friendly demeanour. “Now, you won’t do anything like that will you?”

While in West Papua, all three of us were tailed by plain-clothes secret police, known as intels, and threatened for attempting to interview human rights activists and Papuan community leaders. Thompson’s ABC crew got the worst treatment.

They filmed a pro-independence ceremony just outside Jayapura and were later detained and shouted at during a one-hour interrogation. In Timika – location of the massive Freeport McMoran mine – the crew were harassed and detained for five hours. The intels demanded to see and then copied all their footage. A local ABC employee was interrogated separately behind closed doors and asked to sign a written statement cataloguing the ABC’s activities in Papua.

In the end, the ABC sought help from Australian consular staff who spoke by phone to the intels. This, according to Thompson, relaxed the level of scrutiny.

However, the intels said because the Asmat tribe arts festival was not in Timika and was not on for another week, there was nothing for the ABC to do in Papua.

In Jayapura, Fitzpatrick was told to go to police intelligence headquarters or officers would come and get him. Yan Pieter demanded to see his notebook which Fitzpatrick showed, knowing his hurried longhand would be illegible.

After this, Fitzpatrick started receiving strange phone calls. This included an attempted sting by an intel, who sent a text message to Fitzpatrick pretending to be an independence activist and offering to meet him.

When I arrived in Timika, I received similar treatment. I was having lunch with two Freeport employees when an intel marched in and aggressively demanded to know who we’d talked to and to see our notes.

To resolve the tension, my assistant offered to photocopy several pages of notes from a press conference with the Papuan governor. We then explained I didn’t take notes because I simply remembered everything. A Freeport employee later apologised and said the company had little control over the intels. We then returned to Jayapura and, by keeping a low profile, managed to interview two jailed activists inside Jayapura prison who’d been tortured.

The treatment of local journalists is a lot worse. On top of intimidation and threats, they are often physically assaulted. Cunding Levi, a Jayapura-based stringer for Indonesian national magazine Tempo, says he’s often harassed.

“I was taking pictures of police hitting a demonstrator during the Abepura incident,” he says, referring to the March riot in which five security personnel were killed. “Police hit me on the back with a rattan cane and told me not to take that picture but take a picture of the demonstrator killing their colleague.”

Journalist Tjahjono from Timika’s Radio KBR 68H says, “We don’t have access to information from public institutions. No journalist has ever got the official data on the local budget. It makes it difficult to reveal corruption or abuse of power… Freeport also closes all access to information. If there is an incident in the Freeport concession area, we can’t enter. A Freeport communication officer will usually give us information but we don’t believe them.”

The debate about whether Papua should be independent is for another time and place. But given the way journalists are treated, it’s easy to conclude many Papuans still live in a climate of fear.

Morgan Mellish is the Jakarta correspondent for The Australian Financial Review and a nominee for the 2006 Walkley Award for business journalism.