Respecting the dead

Ten days after Martadinata's maimed body was found lifeless by her shocked parents in their modest home in Central Jakarta, there are few signs that the controversy over the fate of the murdered 18-year-old Volunteer for Humanity activist Ita, as her friends and family knew her, is about to end. Indeed, there is every indication that her memory will, for some time to come, remain at the center of heated arguments among various parties in the community who hold different views about both the young girl's death and life.

Ironically, it is the police's lightning swift "solution" of this disturbing drama, combined with the quick judgment pronounced by presumably qualified authorities on aspects of Ita's life that they apparently believed were relevant to the murder, which has been among the most effective factors that have sustained the controversy so far, not to say expanded it.

As was reported by the press, Ita's body was found on the morning of Friday, Oct. 9, with her neck slashed and stab wounds in her hands, abdomen and chest. The following day, Saturday, Central Jakarta police officers arrested a 22-year-old jobless young man whom they identified as Suryadi, alias Otong, alias Bram, a close neighbor of the family, on charges of suspected robbery.

Officers said the murder had been planned long in advance, and that imitation jewelry belonging to the dead woman and blood- stained clothing presumably belonging to the suspect had been confiscated as evidence.

Had Ita been an ordinary citizen without a background in social work that many consider to be sensitive and even dangerous, the murder might indeed have been dismissed by the public as having been the work of one of those violent criminals who seem to be growing in number in Jakarta as the economic crisis begins to bite deeper and deeper in society.

To be fair, such an "ordinary" murder as Ita's could well have been that. After all, no proof to the contrary has so far been produced. On the other hand, there is ample reason for skeptics to suspect that there is a much more sinister background than simple robbery behind the incident.

Activists and humanitarian workers helping last May's rape victims in Jakarta to cope with their fate have claimed -- quite convincingly -- that they and their families as being constantly stalked by terrorists making obscene or threatening telephone calls.

Against such a background, surely it is not too much to ask the law enforcement authorities to take seriously suspicions of Ita's death being linked to her work, and probe deeper into the death. Like other activists, Ita, too, must have had her share of terrorist threats and telephone calls before she was murdered.

Instead, the Police are threatening humanitarian workers and activists who dare to "politicize" the case with court action. To add insult to injury, experts in forensic medicine and psychology have come out with public statements that many observers see as deliberate attacks on the deceased girl's personal life and virtue.

There are many who believe that Ita was one of the rape victims of the May riots, and that it was this traumatic experience that drove her, with her great courage, to try to help others who shared her fate. Whether such an assumption is true will be most difficult to establish.

If she was such a victim, any public statement made to revile her memory would be disrespectful in the extreme. In connection with the current efforts to shed light on what really happened during those fateful days in May, they are entirely irrelevant.

Even if Ita was not a victim of the May upheavals but died in a plain robbery-murder, as the police claim, such a character assassination after her shocking death is thoroughly tasteless. It is to be hoped, as efforts are still being made to uncover the real cause and motive behind Ita's death, that the public controversy over the affair can teach us that in cases such as this, the way to help to clear up the mess is not by making loose, irrelevant and disrespectful remarks about the dead but by keeping a level head and opening our ears to what people who are sincerely trying to help are saying.