Suciwati: Human rights activists need proper protection

The death of human rights campaigner Munir from poisoning during his trip to the Netherlands two months ago, has highlighted the need for the state to legally protect activists, his widow says.

"The protection could take the form a law that safeguards activists, including journalists and doctors whose work relates to human rights," Suciwati, a well-known labor activist, said in an interview with The Jakarta Post recently.

The 37-year-old said such a law was needed to fight the fear of intimidation, violence and even murder that was often faced by activists.

She hoped the death of her husband, who was the executive director of the Imparsial human rights watchdog, a non- governmental organization critical of rights abuses, would not cause fear among other activists.

Suciwati, who was born in Malang, East Java, believes her husband was assassinated for political reasons because of his past activism. Munir was often critical of the Indonesian Military (TNI) and spearheaded efforts to uncover human rights abuses surrounding the independence of East Timor.

"I will continue to struggle so that the murderers and the masterminds of the assassination will be revealed," she said.

Suciwati was working as a Bahasa Indonesia teacher at a high school in Malang in 1991 when she quit to become a labor activist. The graduate of the Malang Teaching Institute then went to work at a garment company.

The South Korean company fired her after three months because she organized the company's workers and held protests.

She said the company's director was jailed three years later because of tax fraud, instead of for violating labor regulations, which his employees had protested.

As a chairwoman of the Kelompok Buruh Malang (Malang Labor Group), Suciwati often met Munir, who was a labor lawyer at the Malang chapter of the Surabaya Legal Aid Institute.

"But Munir never succeeded in helping me. When I was detained by the police after a workers' rally, he failed to get me out of detention," Suciwati said with a smile.

She was involved in demonstrations to protest the murder of labor activist Marsinah in 1993 and joined a massive rally of thousands of workers at the Maspion company in Surabaya the following year.

Suciwati married Munir in 1996 after he moved to Jakarta and began working at the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI). She has a son, Soultan Alif Allende, 6, and daughter Diva Suukyi Larasati, 2.

The public may know Suciwati primarily as a labor activist, however, she has also been involved in women's movements in Malang.

"And Munir was also very aware of gender concepts. He never differentiated between men and women, and the work done by women either in their homes or in the public domain," she said.

Munir and Suciwati were known as a modest couple. They had been living for years in a dormitory for YLBHI's lawyers and employees in Central Jakarta before they moved to a rented house in Bekasi, West Java.

Many women's movements, including the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan), have acknowledged Munir and Suciwati as women's rights campaigners.

Komnas Perempuan chairwoman Kamala Chandrakirana said Munir gave the mothers of victims of violence a chance to speak out.

"The involvement of women's experiences is the most important factor in women's rights issues," Kamala said recently.

Facing down threats and intimidation is nothing new for Suciwati. Since the beginning of her activities as a labor and women's rights activist until the death of her husband recently, she says she continues to confront violence.

Violence could be terror and intimidation from individuals, groups or state officials, she said.

After the autopsy of Munir in Holland ruled he was poisoned last month, Suciwati received a package containing a mutilated carcass of a chicken.

A letter in the package said that the death of Munir should not be connected to the military if she did not want to end up like the chicken.

However, she said these kind of threats would not stop her for demanding justice for her husband.

Along with other activists, she has joined rallies, urging the police to further investigate the murder of her husband, to find out and make public who masterminded the killing.

The death of Munir has revitalized Suciwati's commitment to acting against all forms of violence.

"It's a matter of choice. Actually, I have never stopped being an activist -- and I never will."