Respecting the dead

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.