‘Test of
Our History’: President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono promised to solve murder of
prominent human rights activist, but its masterminds remain at large as his
administration comes to an end
 |
Munir Said Thalib, center, his wife Suciwati, left, and an unidentified staff member of the
Indonesian Human Rights Monitor (Imparsial), moments before the human rights defender
boarded a flight on Garuda Indonesia on Sept. 6, 2004. (Photo courtesy of Imparsial) |
Jakarta.
They were the last pictures of human rights defender Munir Said Thalib alive,
taken late on Sept. 6, 2004, shortly before he took the Garuda Indonesia flight
where he would draw his last breath.
The
pictures showed Munir with his closest friends: his staff from the Indonesian
Human Rights Monitor (Imparsial) and his wife Suciwati, sharing jokes and
laughs over cups of coffee at a doughnut shop at Soekarno-Hatta International
Airport.
He looked
well. Healthy as could be. His short, curly hair was golden brown, like ripe
corn kernels glinting from the camera’s flash.
In almost
every shot, Munir is grinning from ear to ear, enthusiastic about his planned
post-graduate studies in the Netherlands — a dream he’d had to postpone so many
times before because he was too busy advocating for victims of violence, too
anxious about leaving Indonesia, whose democracy was still in its infancy.
But that
year he found very few reasons to put his dream on hold again. For the first
time, Indonesia had held a free presidential election.
Munir was
pleased with the fact that former military chief Wiranto, a candidate whom he
saw as having the worst human rights record, failed to advance to the runoff
vote. In a few weeks’ time, then-president Megawati Soekarnoputri would be
going head to head against her former security minister, Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono.
Neither was
an ideal candidate in Munir’s eyes, but at least they were committed not to let
Indonesia fall back into military rule. The outcome of the election made him
slightly less uneasy about leaving Indonesia.
It had also
been years since Indonesia saw a major human rights violation, and he saw a
growing number of people start to speak up about human rights. He was confident
he could pass on his work to his peers and juniors.
Poengky
Indarti, who eventually took over from Munir as Imparsial’s executive director,
felt the urge to take lots of pictures of him before he left that day. She felt
it would be years before she could see him again.
She also
went against Munir’s wishes and asked an old research consultant friend named
Sri Rukminingtyas, who had recently moved to Rotterdam, to pick him up at
Amsterdam’s Schiphol International Airport.
“I don’t
need anyone to pick me up,” Poengky, then Munir’s number three at Imparsial,
recounts her old boss as saying. But Poengky insisted. “I’m not sure why. Maybe
it was just my maternal instinct. I had been taking care of his scholarship
applications and getting his visa. I guess I needed to be sure he would be
taken care of when he got there.”
On Sept. 7,
2004, Munir died on board the plane as it flew over Budapest.
Sri
remembered packing four tuna sandwiches that morning before she set out to pick
up Munir. She thought that perhaps Munir might not have eaten on the plane, and
getting breakfast at the airport would be too expensive.
She doesn’t
remember now what happened to the sandwiches. All she could remember was an
announcement blaring from the airport’s speakers mentioning the name “Munir.”
She also remembered that shortly afterward she got a call from Poengky. Poengky
told her that someone from Garuda had just called to say that Munir was dead.
Sri
immediately went to the airport’s information office. A police officer
confirmed that Munir had indeed died during the flight. “I lost control of
myself and cried loudly. It was like being struck by lightning,” Sri says.
Her
seemingly simple task of picking Munir up at the airport turned into a somber
affair, but one that threw her into a crucial role in unraveling the true
nature of his death.
Sri
explained to the Dutch police that Munir was 39 and in good health. She
explained that he was a very prominent human rights defender back in Indonesia
and that the he had received multiple death threats. Based on Sri’s statements,
the Dutch police ordered an autopsy done, and subsequently found a fatal dose
of arsenic in Munir’s body.
“If Sri
hadn’t been there, maybe his death would have been attributed to natural
causes. His body would have been sent back to Indonesia without any
investigation and we wouldn’t have known the truth,” Poengky says.
 |
| A man covers his face with an image of Munir Said Thalib. (JG Photo/Nivell Rayda) |
Legacy of
impunity
Sunday
marks the 10-year anniversary of Munir’s death, a case that still holds many
questions.
Three
people have been convicted of his death: Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, an
off-duty Garuda pilot and suspected State Intelligence Agency (BIN) operative
who spiked Munir’s drink with arsenic; and two accomplices who played minor
roles in arranging for Pollycarpus to be on the same flight as Munir.
But those
who masterminded the murder, giving Pollycarpus his orders, remain beyond the
reach of the law. And activists blame this travesty on the reluctance shown by
the administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who came into office
the same year that Munir died, to bring those responsible to justice.
“At the
beginning of his rule, SBY promised to resolve [Munir’s] case and even said
that it would be ‘the test of our history,’ ” says Choirul Anam, the executive
secretary of the Solidarity Action Committee for Munir (Kasum). “But now at the
end of his administration the case is not fully resolved.”
After two
months of intense pressure from human rights activists and international media,
Yudhoyono formed an independent fact-finding team on Nov. 23, 2004, to monitor
the police investigation into the case and conduct its own inquiry.
Witnesses
on board the flight noted that Pollycarpus was seated next to Munir on the
flight from Jakarta to Singapore, where it picked up more passengers. The
passenger manifest indicated that Pollycarpus got off in Singapore and didn’t
continue on to Amsterdam. But before he left Singapore’s Changi International
Airport, he was seen offering Munir a cup of coffee, which was spiked with
arsenic.
Munir’s
health deteriorated from that point on, and he eventually died on board, hours
before the plane landed in Amsterdam.
The fact-finding
team also found that immediately prior to and after Munir’s death, Pollycarpus
had communicated extensively with Muchdi Purwoprandjono, who at the time was a
deputy chief of the BIN.
In their
court testimonies, several intelligence officials also said that Pollycarpus
often visited the BIN headquarters and met behind closed doors with Muchdi. In
at least one of those meetings, Abdullah Mahmud Hendropriyono, the BIN chief at
the time, was also present.
Pollycarpus
is now serving a 14-year prison term after the Central Jakarta District Court,
on Dec. 1, 2005, found him guilty of murdering Munir. The South Jakarta
District Court, however, acquitted Muchdi of all charges on Dec. 31, 2008,
despite the judges in Pollycarpus’s trial ruling that Pollycarpus had acted on
Muchdi’s instructions.
Police
never questioned Hendropriyono for his alleged involvement in Munir’s killing.
Kasum
secretary Anam notes that during Yudhoyono’s two terms in office, Pollycarpus’
sentence went from 14 years to two years in 2006, to 20 years in 2008, and
finally, last year, back to 14 years. Pollycarpus also enjoyed a number of
sentence cuts, amounting to a total of 42 months during six years in prison.
Anam says
recent developments in the case should give prosecutors enough evidence to
launch a fresh investigation.
“This
government has never been serious in punishing those responsible, let alone
solving the mysteries surrounding his death,” he says. “Ever since Muchdi was
acquitted, [prosecutors] have done nothing. Even after two changes of attorney
general, they only made promises.”
Anam says
Yudhoyono has left his successor, Joko Widodo, with the very important task of
seeking justice for Munir. “They had all the evidence. All that it takes is
courage,” he says.
Uli Parulian
Sihombing, the executive director of the Indonesian Legal Resource Center, has
called on Joko to bar those with questionable rights record from serving in his
administration, following Joko’s appointment of Hendropriyono as an adviser to
the team preparing the new government for office.
Munir’s
widow, Suciwati, has also lambasted Hendropriyono’s appointment. “Human rights
is not a political commodity. If [Joko] has promised [to resolve rights abuse
cases], then he must fulfill it by forming a government that is free of human
rights violators,” she says.
Human
Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono says it is important that Joko appoint
reform-minded people as his picks to head up law enforcement agencies, to
ensure the resolution of Munir’s case as well as all past human rights abuse
cases, in which Munir so passionately sought justice during his lifetime.
A fearless
defender
Anam
describes Munir as a courageous fighter, even during the Suharto era, when free
speech was greatly curbed and those criticizing power ended up dead, missing,
or in jail. “He was never afraid of pointing at people’s noses,” Anam says.
“Even powerful generals.”
Among those
he named as human rights abusers was Hendropriyono. The latter, at the time an
Army colonel, led a bloody military crackdown on civilian protesters in
Talangsari, Lampung, in 1989 that led to 45 people being killed and 88 others
missing. The military also burned the protesters’ village to the ground.
Munir’s
criticism of Hendropriyono intensified when the retired general joined
Megawati’s campaign. Aside from highlighting his past cases, Munir also raised
concerns that he might abuse his authorities as the BIN chief for the
campaign’s benefit. Munir even lodged a lawsuit with the State Administrative
Court demanding Hendropriyono’s removal from his BIN post.
“But does
that have a direct correlation with Munir’s death? We don’t know yet. What we
know is that [Hendropriyono] is not the only human rights violator with a
military background who had a grudge against Munir,” Anam says, adding that
Munir’s many enemies could have conspired to have the rights defender killed.
Then
there’s Prabowo Subianto, a close friend of Muchdi’s and the losing candidate
in this year’s presidential election. Munir repeatedly accused Prabowo, who was
then chief of the Army’s Special Forces unit Kopassus, of kidnapping
pro-democracy activists toward the end of Suharto’s 32-year rule.
Several of
those activists remain missing to this day.
Munir’s
constant pressure to have Prabowo tried forced the government to form a
fact-finding team and the military to set up an ethics tribunal, which
eventually led to Prabowo’s dismissal from the Army.
Prabowo has
repeatedly denied responsibility for the abductions, saying he was simply
carrying out orders from his superiors and that all the kidnapped activists
were released after being interrogated.
“He would
have got onto the first flight back to Indonesia,” Poengky says when asked what
she thinks Munir would do if he were alive to see Prabowo running for
president.
 |
An activist lays out 10, to commemorate the death of Munir Said Thalib,
who died on Sept. 7, 2004. (JG Photo/Nivell Rayda) |
Inspiring
generations
Munir’s
killers might have been trying to send a message by having the prominent
activist killed in an elaborate assassination plot on board an international
flight.
“If this
can happen to Munir then imagine what could happen to lesser-known activists in
remote areas like Papua or Aceh, so far away from the media spotlight,” Poengky
says.
But Munir’s
death only emboldened the next generation of activists to continue his
struggle, advocating for the victims of human rights abuses.
Novia Seni
Astriani is 25 and for three years she has been advocating for Munir’s killers
to face trial, as a member of Kasum’s campaign and networking division.
“While in
college, like so many of my peers, we learned that what we were taught as kids
were lies. We never knew that our history was so tainted by so many human
rights violations. We were never taught about Munir’s assassination,” says
Astri, as she is better known.
“In college
I got to know Munir. I got to know the cases he was fighting for … his
thinking. And I was saddened. How could anyone murder someone like Munir? How
could his case remained unsolved to this day? I felt I needed to do something.”
On
Thursday, Astri organized Kamisan, a weekly rally in front of the State Palace
in Central Jakarta to demand the resolution of past human rights abuses. This
week’s Kamisan is dedicated to Munir with some protesters wearing a mask
bearing the likeness of the slain activist.
After some
20 minutes of silent protest, Astri grabbed a microphone and began talking to
the crowd to fire them up.
“Let’s all
gather around facing the so-called ‘palace of the people.’ For 10 years Munir’s
case has been in limbo. For 10 years the person at that palace has done so
little,” Astri tells some 40 protesters.
Aside from
a handful of ageing victims of human rights abuses and violence, most of the
rally’s participants are youths, not much older than herself.
Munir has
also inspired many to follow in his footsteps of advocating for victims of
injustice.
“Munir as a
human rights defender has given us a legacy that is simple yet very profound in
its meaning,” says 23-year-old Ichsan, who works for the Jakarta Legal Aid
Foundation (LBH).
“In his
time, he wasn’t afraid to reveal injustice. All youths should learn from his
courage.”
Veronica
Koman, 26, another LBH Jakarta lawyer, says she always bows whenever she goes
to her office, which proudly displays Munir’s pictures.
“Much of
Munir’s legacy inspires me. Munir … has become a symbol of human rights in
Indonesia,” she says.
Those
behind the assassination might have succeeded in killing Munir, but in doing
so, they unwittingly created a martyr, an inspiration and a legend.
Further
Coverage
