Suciwati: Human rights activists need proper protection

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."