AUSTRALIAN JOURNALIST REVISITS SAIGON MEDIA SLAUGHTER
October 31st 2009 09:40
Western Australian author, poet, lecturer, journalist, editor, and lawyer Hal G.P Colebatch wrote a stirring article headlined The Saigon Media Slaughter in The Australian newspaper on Friday.
Colebach said, “It is a graphic demonstration of the political skew in Australian culture that the killing of a group of journalists, probably but not quite certainly, by anti-communist Indonesian troops at Balibo in Timor in 1975 has been the subject of ongoing agitation, including two books, a recent film and countless articles, ever since as well as demands for reparation and the punishment of the guilty.’
He adds, “Meanwhile, the killing of a group of Australian journalists by communist Viet Cong in the Cholon district of Saigon during the 1968 Tet Offensive has been almost completely forgotten.
“In contrast to Balibo, there has been a complete absence of any indignation by the Australian Left over the Cholon massacre. No chance of a movie there.
Ａ“This is despite the fact that, unlike Balibo, the circumstances of the Cholon killings are known in detail.
There was one survivor, journalist Frank Palmos, who has written a detailed account, Ridding the Devils, published in 1990, including an account of how he came to meet one of the killer-squad members after the war.
“…In the Australian section of the London Spectator of September 26, Eric Ellis fulminated over the Timor killings: ‘It would be correct and just, if the word were so, for Jakarta to offer up the military officers who murdered the defenseless Balibo Five, the biggest single-incident killing of media personnel in any war anywhere, killed simply because they were journalists in the right place at the wrong time. But Balibo agitators will be disappointed if they expect Indonesia to offer up the killers.’"
Colebach said the voluminous writings on the Balibo killings “have a hole at their centre: the lack of witnesses and of facts. We do not know if the journalists at Balibo were murdered.”
Later he wrote, “On the other hand it seems plain that the killing of the Australian journalists in Cholon by communist forces was the killing of obviously unarmed non-combatants.”
He gives a detailed account of the killings, drawing on the insights of survivor, journalist Frank Palmos “who had played dead while the Viet Cong officer was reloading, ran and hid among the fleeing Vietnamese civilians, who sheltered him at risk to themselves.”
It is interesting to note that outrage over this incident is virtually nonexistent in the recent annals of Australian journalism, while the Balibo incident is the cause of much breast-beating
Colebach said, “It is a graphic demonstration of the political skew in Australian culture that the killing of a group of journalists, probably but not quite certainly, by anti-communist Indonesian troops at Balibo in Timor in 1975 has been the subject of ongoing agitation, including two books, a recent film and countless articles, ever since as well as demands for reparation and the punishment of the guilty.’
“In contrast to Balibo, there has been a complete absence of any indignation by the Australian Left over the Cholon massacre. No chance of a movie there.
Ａ“This is despite the fact that, unlike Balibo, the circumstances of the Cholon killings are known in detail.
There was one survivor, journalist Frank Palmos, who has written a detailed account, Ridding the Devils, published in 1990, including an account of how he came to meet one of the killer-squad members after the war.
“…In the Australian section of the London Spectator of September 26, Eric Ellis fulminated over the Timor killings: ‘It would be correct and just, if the word were so, for Jakarta to offer up the military officers who murdered the defenseless Balibo Five, the biggest single-incident killing of media personnel in any war anywhere, killed simply because they were journalists in the right place at the wrong time. But Balibo agitators will be disappointed if they expect Indonesia to offer up the killers.’"
Later he wrote, “On the other hand it seems plain that the killing of the Australian journalists in Cholon by communist forces was the killing of obviously unarmed non-combatants.”
He gives a detailed account of the killings, drawing on the insights of survivor, journalist Frank Palmos “who had played dead while the Viet Cong officer was reloading, ran and hid among the fleeing Vietnamese civilians, who sheltered him at risk to themselves.”
It is interesting to note that outrage over this incident is virtually nonexistent in the recent annals of Australian journalism, while the Balibo incident is the cause of much breast-beating
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