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.