Legal News

Time to Appeal Defamation Award to Indonesia High Court

By Dan Slater

What’s the penalty in Indonesia for writing negative things about its dictator? If you’re Time magazine, it’s $106 million.

That was the damage award levied against Time back in August of last year for a 1999 cover story entitled “The Family Firm,” which alleged that Suharto, the former dictator of Indonesia, amassed a fortune of more than $15 billion in assets stolen from the country during his 32-year rule. But now, according to this NYT story, Time is appealing.

Last year, Suharto, who died four weeks ago, filed a lawsuit with the Central District Jakarta Court and later the Jakarta High Court, both of which ruled in Time’s favor. (Try as we might, we’ve been unable to figure out Indonesia’s statute-of-limitations regime for defamation actions.) Then a panel of three Supreme Court judges, including a retired general who rose in the military during Suharto’s administration and reportedly said he owes his career to Suharto, overturned the decisions.

The ruling ordered Time Inc. Asia and six employees to apologize to Suharto in leading Indonesian magazines and newspapers as well as Time’s Asian, European and American editions. And the kicker: “Time magazine has to pay $106 million for defaming Suharto,” said a Supreme Court spokesman. “The article and photographs hurt the image and pride of the plaintiff as a great retired army general and the former Indonesian president.”

According to September reports, Time said its article was based on four months of reporting in 11 countries that uncovered a complex network of Suharto’s corporate investments, bank transfers and property holdings in Switzerland, Uzbekistan and Nigeria.

Under local law, even though the Supreme Court is Indonesia’s highest, one final appeal is possible.

“If it stands, the decision will threaten press freedom and will erode the strength of democratic institutions in Indonesia,” the magazine, which is published by TimeWarner, said yesterday.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 22, 2008 (boomark / email).