We Have Tired of Violence: A True Story of Murder, Memory, and the Fight for Justice in Indonesia

by Matt Easton

Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

Arson consumed a thousand homes and forty shopping malls, where many of the more than 1,200 victims died, trapped in the flames.

As in other times of economic and political unrest, ethnic Chinese Indonesians were targeted. In his desperation to shift blame for the economic crisis, Suharto had been encouraging propaganda targeting Christians and Chinese Indonesians for months. The widespread arson and looting of Chinese businesses, as well as reports of Chinese women being targeted for sexual assault, sparked an exodus of that community.

Prabowo had been Kopassus commander for many of the abductions. His faction within the army was also suspected of playing a role in the May riots, presumably to discredit protestors or to force his father-in-law to put him in charge of restoring order.

The final straw came on Habibie’s first full day in office, when Prabowo ordered his Kostrad troops to take up positions around the presidential palace and the new president’s residence, without informing the armed forces chief, Wiranto. Habibie ordered Prabowo removed from his command “before sundown.”9 Much- di was transferred from Kopassus to a noncombat post. As the army tried to reposition itself in a new Indonesia, Prabowo and his ally Muchdi were left out in the cold.

Prabowo left for a comfortable self-exile in Jordan, where his friend King Abdullah, a special forces commander himself, had recently ascended to the throne.

The prosecution and judges, as well as the public, seemed to agree with defense arguments that the violence arose spontaneously from armed Timorese groups, with no role played by the Indonesian army. This view had been disproven by the international inquiry, UN prosecutors in East Timor, and the Indonesian inquiry Munir took part in, which concluded that the violence was financed, orchestrated, and encouraged by the military at the highest levels.12

She took his hand, and she remembered him. She remembered them both together. Something shifted within her, a sense that she must somehow accept that he was gone. Suci offered up a prayer: Ya Allah, give my husband a place of honor by Your side. Amen.2

Suci cut him off. “Don’t speak to me of God. Your business isn’t with God. It’s with me.”

she was greeted by an editorial by the New York Times that called for justice for Munir as the only antidote for “Indonesia’s poisoned justice system.”

On January 18, 2007, the first kamisan protest took place under black umbrellas.

He believed the motive might have sprung from major cases Munir worked on that implicated the two generals at BIN personally: the abductions in 1998, and the massacre in Talangsari by soldiers reporting to Hendropriyono in 1989.

Often, the poison is intended to be discovered in order to sow fear, as in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. According to this theory, the murder of Munir was intended to be a public act, either to frighten critics or to sway voters away from the military candidate and toward the civilian, Megawati.10

“In fact,” she said, “he once told me about how you were abducted by mistake, and he also conducted advocacy on your behalf.” The lawyer started to answer, but had to pause as Suci’s words sank in and laughter and shouts of surprise rang from the gallery. The lawyer nodded a few times and offered a sheepish smile. His name was Desmond Mahesa.

On the same day as the Trisakti shootings, Desmond had stood a few feet from Munir, risking his life to tell the story of his abduction into a handheld mike, like the one he was holding now to defend the former commander of the soldiers who abducted him.

Pius Lustrilanang, a political activist kidnapped at a bus stop and tortured for two months, also accepted a senior position at Gerindra. He later explained, “In politics there are no eternal friends or foes.”2

And Munir was “just average,” not especially brave, and no different from many other activists who “exploited Indonesia’s ugliness abroad to make a living.”

A prosecutor made similar comments to Usman. According to Marsudhi, former head of both the TPF and the police investigation, the murder of Munir was never a strictly criminal matter. “This is a political case,” he explained, “about the abuse of power.”29