In Memoriam: 'Ibu' Sulami, advocate of women's rights

In Memoriam: 'Ibu' Sulami, advocate of women's rights

Saskia E. Wieringa, Author, The Politization of Gender Relations
in Indonesia, Women's Movement and Gerwani, Until the New Order State

Ibu Sulami passed away on Oct. 9. Born in Sragen, Central Java on
Aug. 15, 1926, she was one of the most prominent leaders of the
controversial Indonesian women's movement (Gerwani) and founder
of the Foundation to Support the Victims of 1965/1966. The
following letter is dedicated to her.

Dear Ibu Sulami,

This morning I heard you had passed away in Sragen. Last
Saturday, when I was about to visit your home, you had left for
your birthplace because you were feeling ill. Indonesia has lost
one of its most dedicated and skilled advocates of women's
issues. All your life you were involved in the struggle for
women's political rights.

In those early days after national independence, you denounced
violence against women, helped victims of rape and other forms of
sexual assault and fought for the rights of women workers.

These days the lack of human rights in Indonesia has led not
only to women's vulnerability to direct forms of violence, but
also to HIV/AIDS, which threatens the lives of thousands of women
whose only risk is unprotected sex with their lifelong partners.

The first time we met you, you were detained at Tangerang
prison. You were no longer a permanent inmate, but had received
the right to work in the canteen. I had heard a lot about you,
and was very moved to finally meet you in person: a frail woman,
with gray hair in a thin bun, threadbare clothes and a shy but
friendly smile. I soon found out that your smile hid a brilliant
mind and steely determination.

This combination carried you through the dark and incredibly
cruel period of your detention, from the time you were captured
in 1967 until your release during the early 1980s. Your crimes?
You supported then president Sukarno when that was no longer
possible due to the vicious coup by Gen. Soeharto, and you were a
member of Gerwani when this organization was legal.

In a perverse way these two facts were linked, as Soeharto
executed his coup on the basis of the most successful campaign of
sexual propaganda since World War II, a campaign directed against
the organization you had led so skillfully since independence.

The results of this campaign are only partly known today;
Soeharto replaced then president Sukarno on the pretext that he
had supported your organization, and communism in particular.
Between one million and three million people were murdered, with
most having been tortured first. That first estimate was provided
by Amnesty International, while the second was given by Col.
Sarwo Edhie, one of the alleged butchers. Who was behind this
campaign is not yet known in full, although Soeharto was,
according to studies, among the alleged masterminds.

A year after Sept. 30, 1965, younger officers involved in a
putsch, with the very limited support of a few members of the
communist party, stated that a change of mentality was needed in
the country. This mentality change was carried out on young
volunteers for then president Sukarno's dubious Malaysia
campaign. Through the Army newspaper, propaganda was spread that
these volunteers had seduced the generals who had been kidnapped
on the fatal night of Sept. 30, 1965 through the "Dance of the
Fragrant Flowers".

After that the Army paper reported that the generals' genitals
had been cut off and their eyes had been gouged out -- despite an
autopsy report signed by Soeharto mentioning bullet wounds and
deep trauma caused by beatings and falls down a well. At a museum
built on the site, the photographs and uniforms on display show
no sign of castration.

At the time we met you, you also did not know precisely how
this campaign had been organized. You only knew the stories of
the girls who had survived the terrible torture by police and
military, and that Gerwani members like yourself, were suddenly
no longer treated with respect, but with fear and disgust. The
public believed you were all whores, bringing eternal disgrace to
Indonesian women. School children were fed these lies, and all of
society echoed these awful accusations.

Many more meetings followed during my research, while I tried
to figure out what had happened, how the campaign had been
organized and also how the women's movement and all other
progressive democratic organizations had become suspect. Gen.
Soeharto maintained a cruel and firm grip on the country against
the background of these monstrous lies of sexual perversities.

Our friendship gradually grew. We discovered we had been
strong-willed girls from a young age, resisting the pressure of
our patriarchal families. You told me of your days as a forced
laborer during the Japanese occupation, and later fighting the
Dutch as a member of the women's guerrilla group. You had worked
with women, giving them literacy classes.

As a member of the Communist Party, you were among the first
to talk of women's rights, and you later joined the progressive
women's organization, Gerwani. You soon chaired the East Java
branch and later joined the national leadership as its secretary.
You were among the most intellectual members of Gerwani's
leadership, having prepared many of the documents I have
collected over the years.

We met a few times at your house in Tangerang, where you and
your family had a small stall. You were not strong, as the
tortures you were subjected to still saddled you with heavy pain.
Our friendship did not stop after 1986, when I was blacklisted
and could not enter the country for a short period of time. We
had long discussions on the draft of the book on feminism, and
you were very keen to hear about the women all over the world
struggling for their rights.

After these meetings, I got from you the most beautiful letter
I had ever received. You wrote that after all your sufferings,
you at least could die in peace knowing the lies told about you
and your friends in Gerwani would be exposed sometime in the
future. Well, dear Ibu Sulami, you held out for another eight
years. You saw the collapse of the new order and the downfall of
Soeharto. You were one of the most courageous ex-prisoners after
1998, and you set up an organization to help the victims of the
genocide and to try to find out the truth behind this horrible
period in Indonesian history.

It is sad that in the new democratic Indonesia this truth
cannot be revealed completely. Your home in Tangerang was burned
down by groups of those not wanting to see the truth revealed. It
is also incredible that no perpetrators of these crimes against
humanity have ever been brought to trial in Indonesia.

For other mass murders, such as the killing fields in
Cambodia, the mass slaughters in Rwanda and Burundi, the ethnic
cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, trials have been held and the
murderers prosecuted. South Africa tried to deal with the crimes
perpetrated during its ugly period of apartheid through a truth
and reconciliation committee. When will Indonesia finally be able
to look at its past squarely in the eye?

Dear Ibu Sulami, I will always remember you and honor you as
one of the most sincere and tireless defenders of women's rights
in the world. Thank you for all the wisdom you shared with me.
May you rest in peace.