Activists pay tribute to Princen

JAKARTA: Human rights activists paid tribute to one of their modern day heroes, the late Johanes Cornelis Princen, for his lifetime's work, by naming the library of the Indonesian Legal Aid Institution Foundation (YLBHI) after him on Friday.

The library was built in 1969 by Princen, a former Dutch soldier who deserted and changed his nationality to Indonesian.

Many fellow activists from outside Jakarta also attended the event held at YLBHI office and agreed to establish a "Poncke Memorial Foundation", which will provide scholarships for human rights defenders. Princen was affectionately known as Poncke.

His friends remembered Princen as "a lonely man, who was dubbed a traitor, verbally attacked by his countrymen and not accepted by the Indonesian government due to their differences in political ideas".

Princen was jailed several times during the founding president Sukarno's term in office and Soeharto's New Order regime.

He suffered a fatal stroke on Feb. 22. He was 76 years old. --JP