ASIA FOUNDATION AND AJTL PROVIDE TRAINING FOR 23 JOURNALISTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Dili, Desember 2, 2024 (Média Democracia) – A total of 23 journalists consisting of 10 men and 13 women from Online Media, Newspapers and Television attended training on Human Rights facilitated by AJTL and the Asia Foundation for two days starting on the 29th-30th at the Fokupers Hall, Farol, Dili.

In the interview with AJTL President, Zevonia Vieira said that AJTL collaborates with the Asia Foundation related to human rights. AJTL’s vision and mission are very clear, which is how to advance press freedom and freedom of expression because both are fundamental parts of AJTL’s views in the perspective of human rights, therefore AJTL assumes that all journalists have the intellectuality that needs to have knowledge with a human rights perspective in their work, because journalists also fight for their own press and expression freedom through coverage and opinions conveyed through civil and digital spaces.

“This training as a principle that AJTL wants to share with its members to improve their knowledge and understanding of human rights and also be able to understand when taking some social issues related to women, girls and people with disabilities related to rights, so our coverage is not far from these subjects that are currently being studied by journalists from this training and helping journalists to have critical thinking and understand laws that violate citizens’ rights, how to make protection for these kinds of issues especially in coverage of sexual harassment issues. From these subjects that journalists learn from this two-day training is that they can understand well about the human rights of all people.” Said the President of AJTL

She continued, the principle of AJTL is clear, which is to help its members improve their capabilities or critical insights in the field of reporting, so that human rights can run well in this country, from this training it can also help the state of Timor-Leste to respect the human rights of every person in life, because the RDTL constitution guarantees how human rights become a fundamental principle.

“AJTL collaborates with the ASIA Foundation to organize this training, because we all know that in many countries that are under tight control by the state, many people lose their rights as citizens, especially for journalists, because many journalists are caught and killed, when conducting investigations they receive threats, therefore through this training it has helped our journalists to understand when there is intimidation or concerns about coverage, and how we will report, protect and prevent the situations we face and not become victims of human rights violations that occur.” She added.

She added, the training attended by these journalists is the second training, the first training was mostly attended by journalists from the Radio Community, and the second training was attended by journalists from Online Media and Television, and also the third training is specifically for female journalists because it wants to provide space for female journalists to raise sensitive issues if they face them when covering in the field. This last training will provide training for editors-in-chief in each media and editors because they also have important responsibilities in editing or reviewing news covered by journalists, this is the training held by AJTL this year.

“AJTL also has a plan for 2025 together with the Asia Foundation will produce a human rights guideline for journalists to read, how this guideline can help you as a journalist in reporting where you will be in the field especially on important issues such as women, religion, LGBT, people with disabilities and also about the law that can help us to understand when making coverage asking for confirmation to the government how we can get a response from them, this is the last guideline of this project, and also the end of this program we will have a roundtable with many institutions such as academic journalists, civil society, government to give their perspectives on the importance of human rights and digital rights in Timor-Leste, how journalists are struggling to promote the human rights of citizens.” She said.

As a journalist for Timor Online Media, Lurdes Soares Fernandes added that this training is very important for journalists on how to find out about coverage of human rights issues in the field from this training because AJTL provides an opportunity for journalists to learn in order to increase critical insight regarding issues that violate the rights of everyone including the rights of journalists in this country.

“As a female journalist, I feel that this is an opportunity for me to increase my capacity and knowledge to focus more on issues related to human rights, because sometimes journalists always experience violence in the field, especially female journalists, therefore from the two-day training as a journalist I learned a lot of things related to human rights law and also sensitive issues, so I would like to thank AJTL and the Asia Foundation for facilitating this training for journalists.” She said.

She continued, he hopes that the subjects he has studied can be applied in the future in the respective agencies where he works, and also in terms of coverage, from this subject he can understand how to cover human rights in Timor-Leste.

Reported by    : Domingas

Picture by        : Domingas

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