July 9, 2003
In This Issue
IN THE PHOTO caption on page 13, I used the phrase "free-press
mission" to refer to the delegation that descended July 3 on the Indonesian
consulate in San Francisco. That's what it's called when the Inter-American
Press Association (IAPA, based in Miami) or the International Press Institute
(IPI, based in Vienna, Austria) or the World Association of Newspapers (WAN,
based in Paris) sends a delegation of journalists to a country that has
jailed a journalist or is harassing the press.
My last free-press mission was to South Korea in September 2001, on behalf of the IPI, where we successfully helped get three daily publishers out of jail. Their sin: their papers had been critical of then-president Kim Dae Jung, and his government had jailed them on highly suspicious income tax-evasion charges.
The Bay Guardian is an active member of these international press groups. Associate publisher Jean Dibble and I usually go to three or four assemblies a year, ranging from the IPI assembly in 1994 in Capetown, South Africa (just before the Mandela election), to the IAPA assembly this March in El Salvador, where there are still vestiges of the violent civil war. I am on the IAPA executive committee.
The reason we do this is because it's damn dangerous out there, in much of the world, for journalists and the press, and we want to support the organizations that are on the front lines in protecting and advancing press freedom wherever and whenever it is in peril.
That is why Jean and I were delighted to be part of a hometown delegation that called on the Indonesian consulate to demand the release of Billy Nessen, our hometown journalist who languishes in an Indonesian jail for his reporting on the rebellion in the Aceh province (see Editorial, page 11). Jean and I were not only representing the Bay Guardian but also the Society of Professional Journalists, the California First Amendment Coalition, and the IAPA.
Our free-press mission was the first in my memory in San Francisco. It will not be the last. Free Billy Nessen. Free him now.
P.S. We are setting up a section on sfbg.com to display the alerts and communiqués from the IAPA, IPI, WAN, CPJ, and others. They demonstrate in 96-point Tempo Bold the unending battle for a free and independent press.