WPI Obituaries
Ghafur Fadyl, a 1969 WPI fellow from Indonesia, died April 10, 2010. Ghafur covered Indonesian dictator Suharto’s time in power and founded the Associated Press’ Jakarta bureau died. He was 65.
Ghafur joined the AP in 1966, the year after Suharto came to power in a bloody coup, and he oversaw coverage of most of the dictator’s brutal 32-year government. He covered rebellions in Papua, Aceh and East Timor that saw hundreds of thousands killed.
“At a time of great upheaval in Indonesian history, I knew I could always call Ghafur or walk into his office to soak up his institutional knowledge and broad perspective on fast-moving and often opaque events,” said Chris Torchia, AP’s former news editor in Jakarta who covered the country in the late 1990s.
Ghafur retired in 2007 after 41 years with AP. He is survived by his wife, two sons, a daughter and a grandson.
Nilo de Souza Martins, a 1968 WPI fellow from Brazil died April 3, 2009, in Victoria, Brazil, at the age of 64. Until 2008, he had been the state superintendent of Social Communication of the State Government. In the 70s, Nilo was a reporter and managing editor of the magazines Veja and Four Wheels. He then became editor in chief of TV Victoria and in recent years held various political positions. He is survived by his wife, three children and a stepson.