Moving film on Munie released

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Following his death due to arsenic poisoning, human rights activist Munir won recognition as a martyr.

It was a posthumous salute that elevated him to saint-like stature, someone who was murdered allegedly by those who grew restless with his campaign to expose wrongs in society, namely state-sponsored violence.

A documentary film released to commemorate his death last week could serve to reinforce people's convictions that Munir was indeed a martyr, someone who led a modest life, yet was capable of accomplishing what was once considered the impossible.

The documentary film, titled Bunga Dibakar: Dia Yang Tidak Mau `Mati' Sebelum Mati (Burned Flower: He Who Refuses To Die Before Death), chronicles the life of the slain activist from early childhood through to his untimely death.

Bunga is an intimate, 45-minute documentary that can sap every emotion from joy and anger to despair.

Joy, from knowing about some hilarious aspects in Munir's daily life; anger, from learning that he was murdered in a cowardly way when freedom of speech had already become established in the country; despair, from the fact that there is yet to be any light shed at the end of the tunnel regarding his murder.

It was such a powerful documentary that when the credits rolled at the end, the packed GoetheHaus audience stayed in their seats, glued to the last snapshot that was beamed on a white screen.

Young director Ratrikala Bhre Aditya, 19, a graduate of SMA 82 Jakarta, deserves credit for painting a comprehensive and moving picture about Munir's life from a collection of raw materials: TV news footage, soundbites from radio broadcasts, private interviews with Munir's family and friends, as well as clippings of information from national newspapers and newsportals.

In the hand of a lesser director such materials would produce merely a dull and tedious documentary.

The films starts with a clip borrowed from a telecast from Metro TV on the death of Munir aboard a Garuda flight that was taking him to the Netherlands.

After a brief intermission, the films starts with three of Munir's siblings giving sometimes hilarious accounts about Munir's childhood and early schooling.

"Munir was so skinny that all his clothes were too big for him. He was so peculiar with his reddish hair and when he wore trousers he looked very funny because his knees dwarfed his skinny legs," younger brother Mufid Thalib said in the film.

Mufid went on to say that Munir had a tendency to fight anyone who offended him. "Despite his small physique, Munir had the guts to challenge someone twice his size," Mufid said, adding that Munir only resorted to fighting if he saw any kind of injustice being perpetrated.

Munir's sister, Annisa Thalib, said Munir rarely got good marks for his schoolwork; that was confirmed by a yellowing score card bearing D and C grades all over it.

Another, rare revelation was that Munir was once drawn into a Islamic fundamentalist movement during his university years in Malang, East Java.

Munir felt that Islamic fundamentalism was not the appropriate vehicle to right the wrongs in society; he subsequently embraced a more inclusive interpretation of Islam.

After graduating from Brawijaya University, Malang, Munir joined the Surabaya Legal Aid Institute and his early activism was to organize poor laborers who suffered greatly from probusiness regulations drawn up by the authoritarian regime of president Soeharto.

In a scene from the film, blurry footage from the late 1980s shows Munir giving a lecture in Javanese about the exploitation of laborers by their employers.

The scene also shows a young labor activist who later became Munir's wife, Suciwati.

Later in the film, Suciwati says Munir was also a family man who loved his son Alif Allende and daughter Diva.

"Every morning while still in bed, he would always spend time playing with Diva and Alif," Suciwati said, to the streaming of tears from some in the audience.

Bunga Dibakar is applying the "copyleft" principle, meaning that copies of the film may freely be made without permission from its makers. For further information contact: The Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) Jl. Borobudur No. 14, Menteng. Tel : 3926983, 3928564. On the net: www.munir.or.id