Two British journalists held for more than five months in an Indonesian prison have described their relief at being back on UK soil but criticised the Foreign Office for a dismissive attitude they said had left them feeling alone.
Documentary film-makers Rebecca Prosser, 31, and Neil Bonner, 32, said they had been treated like petty criminals by the British government.
“The FCO need to figure out how they protect journalists,” said Bonner, speaking to the Guardian after the pair touched down at Heathrow. “We were treated like common criminals, as far as they were concerned. It was a complex, political case and they chose to use the same line as if we had been caught taking five kilos of cocaine into the country.”
Bonner and Prosser were detained by the Indonesian navy on the island of Batam in May while filming a documentary about piracy and corruption in the military in the strait of Malacca on behalf of production company Wall to Wall.
They were threatened with charges including being a threat to national security, which carries up to 12 years in prison, but after months in detention were convicted of not having correct visas and sentenced to two-and-a-half months, meaning they could leave prison immediately because of time served.
“I’ve worked in many different countries where I thought the UK government would help me if things went wrong,” Bonner said. “Now I realise I am on my own. We were well supported by friends, families and our company Wall to Wall, but if we didn’t have that, if we’d been working for a small company that couldn’t afford support, we would have been in serious trouble.”
An FCO statement expressing concern was “literally a cut-and-paste job”, Bonner said. “We were disappointed with big mistakes that were made that could have jeopardised our safety.”
Prosser said the FCO initially failed to send a diplomatic notice to Indonesia about their case. “There is a specific document which governments can send expressing interest in a case, noting the British government is watching it at the highest levels and due process must be followed,” she said. “We were told it had been sent, and a month later our families followed up and it was never sent. That could have really compromised us. We don’t know how that affected the case.”
Throughout their detention, the pair said they suspected their case was being closely monitored by the Indonesian military and was about far more than irregular visas. A senior Indonesian navy commander, Rear Admiral Taufiqurrahman, told the Jakarta Post that the film-makers “could tarnish the image of the Malacca strait as a crime-prone area”.
“The navy monitored our whole case,” Bonner said. “They would turn up to see us in prison, illegally, they would visit the prosecutor, according to our lawyer. They were adamant they wanted the case to go to court.”
Bonner said: “We were very concerned we were being used as political pawns between hardliners and liberals over press freedom, which is a big issue right now.”
Prosser said: “The national security charge eventually evaporated, they bandied about another charge from the 1950s about foreigners inciting unrest. They were looking for anything they could get us with.”
Both said they had not been expecting the conditions in prison to be as bad as they were, though being foreigners afforded them some privileges. “It was massively overcrowded,” Bonner said. “The conditions were shocking and much, much worse for other prisoners, who were in cells for nine people with 22 crammed in, for 23 hours a day.
“Money buys you everything, and we got some privileges because eyes were on us. Fresh air is expensive, money buys you fresh air in prison, you don’t get to leave your cell unless you pay.”
Prosser said: “We washed from troughs with plastic buckets, we ate dirty food, I got infections and the clinic there didn’t have the medicine to treat it properly. We have visitors who could bring us things so we were lucky. Leaving prison, I actually felt a sense of hopelessness for the people I met, who have no hope of justice at all. I feel a responsibility to them.”
At Heathrow the pair were greeted by dozens of whooping friends and colleagues from as far afield as Glasgow, many of whom pushed through the barriers to embrace them.
The welcoming committee wore striped shirts – a favourite design of Prosser’s – and blond moustaches like the one Bonner had sported before his detention. Prosser’s six-year-old nephew had been given special permission by teachers to be there, his aunt’s homecoming considered “exceptional circumstances”.
“I feel like my strength is coming back, now they’re home,” said Bonner’s mother, Barbara Shaw. “I had days where I would just burst into tears at anything, just cry at adverts, filling in forms at work. It’s been so hard and we’ve had to keep it all bottled up.”
Prosser’s father, Bernard, who had travelled from Birmingham with her mother, Carmel, said he felt a weight had been lifted but also criticised the governments of the UK and Indonesia for their attitude towards journalists. “It’s plain intimidation, we know that. If it had been just an immigration offence, why were they there for five months?” he said.
Foreign journalists are required to obtain special visas for reporting in Indonesia, but recent violations have led to reporters being deported immediately rather than after months of detention.(Jessica Elgot)
Link: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/11/british-journalists-rebecca-prosser-neil-bonner-indonesia-say-uk-treated-them-like-criminals
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