Reviving the dead
More than four years have passed since May 1993, when Marsinah, a labor activist, died a gruesome martyr's death defending the rights of her fellow workers at a small watch manufacturing plant in Surabaya. As may be recalled, her death and the tangled court procedures that followed it at the time caused great uproar among the public, both at home and abroad, as foul play was suspected.
To briefly recount the case: On May 9, 1993, Marsinah's badly mutilated body was found by villagers in an abandoned shack near the East Javanese town of Nganjuk. The labor activist had apparently been killed after she organized a workers' strike at PT Catur Putra Surya, a watch manufacturing company in Sidoardjo, Surabaya. Police charged nine people with the murder, including the company's owners, managers and security officers. All were found guilty and convicted by the Surabaya District Court although all of them insisted they were innocent, claiming they had been framed.
On appeal the next year, all of them were acquitted by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the trial had been inconclusive and that much of the evidence had been extracted from the accused by force. After their release, however, police insisted that the nine remained their chief suspects in the murder and that DNA tests would provide the evidence to warrant a new trial. Police, however, closed their investigation into the case in September, after their last lead -- the DNA test -- failed because the blood sample had been contaminated.
With Marsinah's murder still unresolved to this day, controversy continues to linger. During the course of these four years, however, new events have pushed the Marsinah case into the dim periphery of public memory and the case was more or less forgotten. Nobody surely could have expected that, suddenly, in the past few days the case would be so strongly revived. Ironically, it was the police who triggered the renewed debate by banning a play on Marsinah in Surabaya and Bandung in a bid to prevent the controversy from cropping up once again.
The ban, on the pretext that no permit had been obtained by the organizers, is difficult to understand for a number of reasons. First, the same play has already been staged in four other cities without causing any trouble whatsoever. Indeed, with the scant publicity it had been given by the media, few people would even have known it had been performed had the present clamor not started.
Second, the banning of plays is in violation of a directive issued by the chief of the National Police in 1995. The directive stipulates that no police permit or prior notification is required for cultural events -- including musicals, dance, poetry, opera, pantomime performances and plays. Indeed, the very legality of the police ruling which requires an official permit for such performances is questioned by many.
Third, one might question the point, or the wisdom, of banning plays at this stage of our society's intellectual development. In the present case, obviously the measure has been counterproductive. Rather than keeping the Marsinah case buried, it has once again put the spotlight on this unfortunate case. Surely, though the truth must be sought in each and every case, the last thing we need in our present condition is to be unnecessarily troubled by nagging incidents from the past. The pointless banning of the Marsinah play only helps to make an old wound that has not totally healed more painful.