Tonan Talk “Press Freedom, Law, and Politics in Post-Suharto Indonesia”

Title: Press Freedom, Law, and Politics in Post-Suharto Indonesia
Speaker: Herlambang P. Wiratraman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor at Faculty of Law, Universitas Airlangga
Visiting Research Fellow at Graduate School of International
Development, Nagoya University
Date: February 19 (Thurs.), 12:30 – 14:00, 2015
Place: Tonan tei (Room No. 201), Inamori Foundation Memorial Building, Kyoto University

Abstract:
Political transition of post Soeharto’s authoritarian regime has been deeply influenced by a decentralized model of governance, which affected to more serious attacks to the journalism works. The extra-judicial killing, physical violence, criminalising against journalism, and other attacks through formal judicial process or other forms, included impunity system, have shown uneasy situation for journalist at field or members of the press to perform journalistic works. Violence against journalists at field in decentralized Indonesia has been more influenced by the role of political-economy contestation at the local level, rather than the influence of situation and policies at national level.
In my presentation, I will discuss how this situation articulates a new configuration of political imperium which combines of free press and dominant ownership over media, plus illiberal democracy which legally allows and lets predatory system to be supreme class in the governance and other state institutions.

About the speaker: Herlambang P. Wiratraman is Associate Professor at Faculty of Law,
Universitas Airlangga. He earned his MA degree from Faculty of Graduate Studies, Mahidol University, Thailand (2005-2006), and Doctorate (Dr., Science of Law) from Faculty of Law, Leiden University, The Netherlands
(2009-2014). His publication includes:”Disciplining Post Suharto-Labour Law Reform,” in Worker Activism after Reformasi 1998: A New Phase for Indonesian Unions? edited by Jafar Suryomenggolo (Hongkong: AMRC, 2014),
pp. 67-92; “Hukum dan Kebebasan Pers” in Panduan Bantuan Hukum di Indonesia (Jakarta: YLBHI, 2014). He is currently Visiting Research Fellow at Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University (January-March 2015).

Moderator: Jafar Suryomenggolo (CSEAS)