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Maria Zevonia F. Vieira and Jose Belo .
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Four journalists from East Timor are the inaugural recipients
of the Balibo Five-Roger East Fellowship, an initiative of the Media,
Entertainment and Arts Alliance and Union Aid
Abroad-APHEDA. They are:-
Maria Zevonia F. Vieira, an
independent film and radio documentary maker with a particular interest in land
ownership, gender-based violence and youth unemployment/violence.
Jose Belo, Cristovão Alexandre da Costa, and Teodorico Aleixo Fernandes da Conceição, who will work together as an team investigating corruption and governance issues. Belo, a veteran investigative journalist and editor, will mentor the two younger journalists as well as produce his own work.
The Balibo Five-Roger East Fellowship has been established to honour the memory of the six Australian journalists murdered in East Timor in 1975, and to improve the quality and skill of journalism in East Timor.
MEAA chief executive Paul Murphy said all the applications were of a high quality and representative of the diversity of journalism in East Timor.““In choosing these recipients, the selection panel was mindful of the need to encourage independent investigative journalism that would report on elements of Timorese society that may otherwise remain in the dark.“They also chose to support projects involving younger journalists who are still in the early stages of their careers.”
It was , he continued , a vehicle to not only build journalism skills in East Timor, but to promote a more robust free press there, that would help improve democracy and corporate and government accountability.
Kate Lee, executive director of Union Aid Abroad (APHEDA),
said: "Independence in journalism is essential everywhere – for a
democratic civil society to flourish. For 30 years, the Australian union
movement has supported this principle, via its own international organisation,
Union Aid Abroad.“We are proud to continue this tradition in this
important Timor initiative”."
Funding for the Balibo Five-Roger East
Fellowship has come from MEAA, the Fairfax Media More Than Words workplace
giving program, and private donations.“
“
The fellowship carries the names of six journalists who were
murdered by Indonesian forces in East Timor in 1975.Five young
journalists working for Australia'’s Seven and Nine networks – reporter Greg
Shackleton, camera operator Gary Cunningham, sound recordist Tony Stewart (all
from Seven), reporter Malcolm Rennie and camera operator Brian Peters (both from
Nine) – were murdered in the village of Balibo after witnessing the incursion by
Indonesian soldiers on October 16, 1975. Their killers have never been brought
to justice.
Freelance reporter Roger East, who worked in Darwin before going to Timor , a stringer for the ABC and AAP who provided the first confirmed accounts of the killing of the Balibo Five, was executed by Indonesian troops on Dili Wharf on December 8. His body fell into the sea and was never recovered.
