New Order victim struggles for justice
Indra Harsaputra, The Jakarta Post, Malang
Tied to an iron pole, the red-and-white flag waves in front of a house on Jl. Piranha Atas Selatan II/5, Malang, East Java.
The house belongs to Tjahjono, one of the victims of the New Order's drive to crush the September 30 Movement, a 1965 coup attempt allegedly masterminded by the now defunct Indonesian Communist Party, and also chief of the local chapter of the Institute of Struggle for the Rehabilitation of Victims of the New Order Regime.
In his neighborhood, Tjahjono's flag is the cleanest and brightest, a symbol that the owner has kept his fighting spirit aflame.
"My wife and I always cry upon seeing the red-and-white flag being unfurled in front of our house close to Independence Day," said Tjahjono on Monday afternoon, his eyes slightly red as he tries hard not to shed tears.
In his old age, he can still vividly recollect the incident on November 10, 1945, in which a number of young Indonesian freedom fighters tore off the blue part of the red, white and blue flag of the Dutch, which was then being unfurled at Hotel Yamato, now Majapahit hotel, Surabaya.
Tjahyono, a militia member of the Indonesian Students Association, was inside the hotel building and witnessed the incident.
Shortly afterward, as testament to the valor of the young Indonesian freedom fighters, a fierce battle, better known as the Battle of Surabaya, broke out between Indonesian militiamen and the Dutch and Allied forces in Surabaya.
A lot of bloodshed ensued. Although many freedom fighters laid down their lives, those who survived were not deterred. They withdrew from Surabaya and set up defenses outside the city in Sidoarjo, Malang and Mojokerto.
The Battle of Surabaya inflicted great losses on the Allied forces. The battle has gone down in history as claiming more lives than the battle between British and Japanese forces in Burma in 1942.
Thanks to his involvement in this battle, Tjahjono later received from Sukarno, Indonesia's first president, the title of a veteran freedom fighter of the Republic of Indonesia. The title was conferred on him by Brig. Gen. Sambas Atmadinata, then Indonesia's minister of veteran affairs.
Tjahjono studied civil engineering in 1952 at Kediri government technical school for four years. He then joined the Engineering School in Yogyakarta and after graduation became a teacher at state technical school No. 1 in Malang. In addition, he also taught at the teacher training institute in Malang.
On November 8, 1965, four days before he was to be installed as principal of school No. 1, he was arrested and thrown into Lowokwaru penitentiary without due process, as he was alleged to have been an activist of the Indonesian Communist Party.
He was arrested in front of the principal's room, just after he had finished teaching. Handcuffed, someone stamped on his back, an act of violence that has left him with back problems even today.
Tjahjono was accused of being a sympathizer of the Indonesian Communist Party. Because of this arbitrary arrest, his idealism as a teacher was lost. Worse still for him, his wife was fired from her teaching position at a school in Malang in June 1966.
His two children, Yuningtyas Hartanti and Sasmoko Hercahyo, both who knew nothing of the activities of the Indonesian Communist Party, were also sent to a juvenile penitentiary for 16 months.
Besides that, 12 of Tjahjono's relatives in Tulungagung, most of whom were teachers, were kidnaped and never reappeared. One of them was Partodiwiryo, the principal of an elementary school in Tulung Agung.
A survey conducted by the Malang chapter of the Institute of Struggle for the Rehabilitation of Victims of the New Order Regime showed that as many as 14,583 people in Malang were kidnaped and disappeared following Sept. 30, 1965, and some 4,500 others were incarcerated.
They included teachers, lecturers, Indonesians of Chinese descent, businessmen, members of regional legislative assemblies, secretaries to village heads and reporters.
"I have lost all documents relating to my veteran freedom fighter status and my university diploma. I was imprisoned for 13 years and after my release I could not get a regular job," said Tjahjono, who was born in Madiun on July 5, 1928.
He said that the New Order regime committed a lot of heinous crimes. They accused people of being members of the Indonesian Communist Party without evidence and sent them to prison without due process.
Several middle-ranking military officers even took the wives of Indonesian Communist Party detainees and forced them to remarry. The rector of a university in Malang, Tan Hwi Lion, was killed and his wife was forced to marry a military officer.
Even after he was released from prison, Tjahjono found it difficult to get a steady job because he was labeled a political detainee.
To support his family, Tjahjono decided to work as a supervisor in a house construction project, earning less then Rp 600,000 a month. In his old age, he has still kept his job. He was involved in the construction of a house of a Kompas daily newspaper reporter in Malang in 2002, for example.
Tjahjono's eldest child, Yuningtyas Hartanti, 45, who was imprisoned when she was just six years old, was unable to get a teaching job at a junior high school in Pontianak, Kalimantan, in 1980 because her identity card had the code number 001, an indication that she is from a communist family. That is why she earns a living as a dressmaker.
Tjahjono's second child, Sasmoko Hercahyo, 43, who was detained when he was just four years old, could not join the civil service. A graduate of an Australian theology college, he is now a church minister at the Salvation Army Church in Malang.
As for his youngest child, Nawangsih Respitorini, 40, she opted for a job at a private real estate consulting company in Malang.
"This Independence Day, I'm grateful to God for the good health He has bestowed upon me and the fortune He has blessed upon my children. We harbor no revenge toward anybody. We know that what has befallen us is God's wish, for which we must be thankful," said Tjahjono, while looking at photos of his three children as youngsters.
Although he has neither a computer nor a typewriter, Tjahjono has never stopped writing his testimony of the alleged crimes of the New Order regime.
He will send his handwritten testimony to the National Commission on Human Rights as part of the material in the lawsuit filed in Jakarta by victims of the New Order that linked them to the Indonesian Communist Party.
Tjahjono is also actively organizing a number of New Order victims like him in Malang and has continued to seek information on the whereabouts of the missing victims.
"We won't feel free unless we are rehabilitated and the historical record is corrected. In Surabaya in 1945, we took up arms but now our struggle is confined only to writing our testimony of history," he said.