Indonesia's supreme court has ordered Time Asia to pay former President Suharto 1 billion rupees (106 million dollars) in damages for a 1999 cover story accusing him of corruption. A spokesman for the court said it concluded that the story in Time’s Asia edition had damaged the former dictator’s "reputation and honour."
Time Asia’s Indonesian lawyer, Todung Mulya Lubis, Tuesday said he would try to get the ruling overturned. A spokesman for the supreme court meanwhile confirmed to foreign journalists that Monday's verdict overturned decisions by lower courts in 2000 and 2001 in Time Asia’s favour. The supreme court, which is Indonesia’s highest court, also ordered six Time Asia employees to issue apologies for publication in Indonesian magazines and Time’s international editions.
Under Indonesian law, the only legal avenue open to Time now would be to file a request for a judicial review, for which new evidence or a procedural dispute needs to be claimed.
Suharto brought his libel suit against the magazine in 1999, demanding the equivalent of $27 billion in damages (at the 1999 exchange rate) because of an article published after the fall of his regime claiming that he and has family had embezzled some $73 billion during his 32 years in power. The allegations included the claim that part of the embezzled funds had recently been moved from Switzerland to Austria.
The supreme court’s judges include a retired general who was in active service under Suharto. The former dictator has never been convicted of embezzlement although the attorney-general began an investigation into the disappearance of 1.5 billion dollars.
"This is a blow to freedom of the press, and it means it is not safe for the press to work," Time lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis said. "So Time will take any legal measures available to defend freedom of the press, because this is important to uphold justice and the truth."
The decision was ironic, Lubis told Agence France-Presse (AFP), given that the same court is set to hear a civil case against Suharto seeking to retrieve $1.5 billion in state assets and damages over corrupt actions. "We have to read the verdict before planning what legal measures to take... Time will not give in or accept the decision and will take appropriate legal measures," he vowed.
"You would think we were back in the Suharto era when the press was gagged as soon as it alluded to corruption and nepotism in the dictator’s family," Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. "The Indonesian judicial system must think again, and overturn this ridiculous ruling. Instead of convicting a foreign magazine, the country’s supreme court judges should step efforts to get the Suharto family to return the billions it wrongfully took."
Suharto, now 86, seized power in a 1965 coup that left up to half a million people dead. He ruled the country for the next three decades, killing or imprisoning hundreds of thousands of political opponents. He has evaded prosecution on charges of embezzling state funds, with lawyers successfully arguing he is too ill to stand trial, and he has never been tried for human rights abuses, the Associated Press (AP) recollected.
