Dian fights for women's rights

Dian fights for women's rights

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The young Dian Kartika Sari idolized her best friend's father.
Growing up without a father of her own, she thought he was the
perfect man because he seemed to put his family ahead of
everything else in the world.

But her image of the man was shattered unexpectedly, leaving
her heartbroken and eventually pushing her to become an activist
fighting to empower women.

It happened in the 1980s, when Dian was preparing to take her
finals and graduate from high school. She had to pawn her
typewriter so she could pay for the finals, which her mother, who
ran a small business and was also a social worker, could not
afford.

A girl friend from school told Dian how lucky she was that she
had something to pawn, because she had to "pawn" herself to a
policeman to raise the money to pay her school fees.

Dian was stunned when she found out that the man who "bought"
her friend was none other than the man she idolized as the ideal
father and family man.

"I was so shocked that I didn't remember how I got home on my
bike," the 37-year-old told The Jakarta Post recently.

That incident left Dian pondering a question that has since
become her obsession: Why are women bought, sold and treated as
commodities?

However, Dian, who is a volunteer with the Indonesian Red
Cross in Yogyakarta, did not immediately take up the cause as an
activist. In fact, she was not even interested when her mother,
an admirer of Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, cut out and gave her
articles written by the women's activist.

After Dian graduated from Gadjah Mada University's School of
Law in 1992, she went to work as an insurance agent. Her last job
was as the personnel and legal manager for a private aviation
company in Jakarta.

The riots in May 1998 finally opened her eyes.

"I entered the House of Representatives with thousands of
university students, and I felt something was missing from my
life despite the fact that I was already financially secure,"
said Dian, who was born in Madiun, East Java, but grew up in
Yogyakarta.

She became determined to fight for women's rights after
hearing about the systematic rapes that took place during the
riots, targeting Chinese-Indonesian women.

When her mother died in September 1998, Dian, the eldest of
five siblings, returned to Yogyakarta, where she spent time
observing the lives of women in some of the more remote areas of
the province.

In October of that year, she went to Jakarta and while
traveling on a city bus, she saw a sticker for the Women's
Association for Legal Aid (LBH APIK), and her instincts told her
to contact the number on the sticker.

Dian, who describes herself as stubborn, joined the
association, which provides legal assistance for women and
children.

She worked as a volunteer for LBH APIK for about eight months,
before leaving to join the newly established Indonesian Women's
Coalition for Justice and Democracy (KPI) as a member of the
public policy advocacy and political education division.

And, as it so happened, Nursyahbani was Dian's supervisor.

Despite her activism, Dian refuses to be hung with the
feminist tag, saying she doesn't want "to become polarized by its
various categories".

Dian has traveled widely in the country to learn about the
exploitation of women and children.

She has spent numerous nights in cheap bars with women and
children who have been victimized by human traffickers, trying to
understand their lives and their needs. At other times, Dian has
campaigned for women's political rights in slum areas in the
capital.

Violations against women, Dian said, occur in different ways,
including domestic violence, trafficking in women and the unfair
treatment of women in politics.

Domestic violence is certainly not a new phenomenon.
Unfortunately, most of the victims here are left unprotected,
often because they are afraid to report the matter to the
authorities. But, at a certain level, victims also lack
protection because the government does nothing to help them and
there are only a few non-governmental organizations that deal
with domestic violence.

"The problem is that most of our representatives on the city
councils or in the House of Representatives are men.
Unfortunately, these policymakers, including the few women, are
not sensitive about the issue," Dian said.

She also criticized the government for its reluctance to
impose a quota system for women in politics.

Not only is the government unwilling to take action on the
quota system, some officials go so far as to accuse women who
demand affirmative action of being troublemakers.

Dian responds to all of it calmly. "They forget that they were
given birth to by women, their mothers."

She appreciates every step forward, no matter how seemingly
small.

"I was so happy when one of our 'disciples', who was a
housewife in a poor fishing village in North Jakarta, was elected
as the head of a neighborhood unit," Dian, now the coordinator
for public policy division, said.

She said her proudest moment was when, as a member of a team
drafting amendments to the Constitution in 2000, she was able to
insert an article on human rights, women's rights and children's
rights.

The constitutional amendments are still being deliberated.

Dian's next project is to put together a book tracing the
history of the women's movement in Indonesia.

"I just want to find out whether we have made any progress
compared to our predecessors such as S.K. Trimurti," she said,
referring to the renowned journalist and former minister of
labor.

The women's activists of the past had a clear plan of action
and a consistency that produced significant results, she said.

"I wonder if we only raise issues but never make any real
achievements, as someone recently criticized me. That's why I
always remind myself to focus on down-to-earth issues," Dian
said.