Media-Indonesia: Revolution Underway in People's Radio

Excerpts from the article follow:

The hundreds of community-owned radio stations beaming local music and people's voices across the huge Indonesian archipelago today reflect a sea change from the Suharto years, when a handful of the former president's business cronies dominated local media.

Today, five years after Suharto's ouster from power, people like Ali Pangestu, coordinator of the Indonesian Community Radio Network, say they are enjoying the dividends that democratic change is bringing to a media landscape where all newspapers were owned by Suharto associates and all radio and television were ingovernment hands...

The new broadcasting law, for the first time, contains provisions for the establishment of community-based broadcasting. By August 2003 the government is expected to announced a multi-party national communications commission to begin the task of issuing community broadcasting licences.

But dozens of impatient community radio enthusiasts are on the air already -- some for as long as two years. Government authorities have been turning a blind eye to the broadcast proliferation as long as national security is not affected.

Among the active broadcast 'pirates' are the radio station recently started for children of a scavenger community just outside Jakarta, one for a fishing community north of Jakarta, for riverbank communities in Jogjakarta, and for villagers on the slopes of Mount Merapi in Central Java.

Some, like Radio Suara Persaudaraan Matraman (RSPM), have set themselves a challenging agenda. RSPM has been dubbed the 'peace music station' for its innovative model of using local 'dangdut' music -- local renditions of popular Indian music -- to bring peace to feuding communities in East Jakarta...

M Satiri, the radio technician who started the station, did so in an attempt to put an end to the conflict between two squatter neighbourhoods in the Matraman district...

...Satiri decided to set up a studio at home, spent 15 million rupiah (about 1,800 U.S. dollars) of his own money, drafted his wife and teenage daughter in as disc jockeys, and spent another 7 million rupiah to construct a relay tower on his roof...

Now his studio is a meeting place for people from both communities, who find they can mingle without rancour with their former enemies.

"To get the attention of people in the area, I distributed leaflets asking them to request songs on air," Satiri explained. Now he charges 1,000 rupiah (12 U.S. cents) for each request he broadcasts. This helps keep his radio station afloat, and Satiri has trained 13 local youth to be volunteer disc jockeys....

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