The man who empowered sex workers

The man who empowered sex workers

Duncan Graham, Contributor, Surabaya

Journalists are prey to many ills but not all are physical.
Impotence is a major hazard.
We stand on the touchline of history-making to watch the
powerful play hardball, doomed to be spectators forever. We see
the awful social ills that plague society and wish we could do
something.

Most of us fear failure and condemnation. The call of
deadlines is more pressing. Only the truly dedicated and brave
jump the boundary between reporting and activism in the belief
that they can really change the world.

Former Kompas Group journalist Julius Reinhardt Siyaranamual,
who died in Jakarta on 23 May aged 60 was one of those
exceptional people.

Born in Sumba the eldest of eight children he rapidly revealed
his extraordinary intellect. He was handpicked for training as a
Protestant priest, first at a college in Flores, later at the
Jakarta Theological Seminary.

He rapidly mastered English, devoured the European classics
and gained a competent hold on Latin and the Greek philosophers.
But he was also a lively storyteller and joke-maker, and it was
these skills that moved him away from the church and into
journalism.

His extensive reading and his experiences during the 1965 coup
when he was still an impressionable idealist hardened his
determination to promote human rights.

As a young theological student he won a national short-story
competition and was soon communicating with the masses instead of
preaching to the few. He particularly liked writing for young
people and sought to lift educational standards by editing a
children's magazine.

After moving to Surabaya to work for the new daily Surya,
Julius became aware of the plight of the port's thousands of
prostitutes.

At the time progressive overseas governments were starting to
seriously confront sexually transmitted diseases. However,
Indonesian authorities found it easier to ignore HIV and AIDS
labeling them penalties for degenerate Western lifestyles.

Together with another fearless Surya journalist, Esthi Susanti
(who had been trained as a social scientist), Julius started
writing about Surabaya's sex workers, not in the sleazy shock-
horror style of tabloid reporting, but as wronged human beings.

Getting hotline started

The response was positive, and the newspaper daringly set up a
hotline so people could ring and tell their tales. Many of these
appeared on the front page along with advice on health issues,
including the need to use condoms.

Buttoned-down naysayers tut-tutted at such convention-
shattering activities. But this groundbreaking journalism also
attracted the attention of sympathetic doctors, lawyers and
overseas aid agencies. Starting in 1993 money from the US and
Australian Governments, and later the US Ford Foundation, helped
make Hotline Surya a national leader in the anti-AIDS campaign.

Eventually the program grew too big for the newspaper. Julius
and Esthi quit daily journalism and established a new foundation,
Hotline Surabaya, with a board of prominent human rights
activists.

Julius knew that transplanting Western health education
programs into Indonesia would never work. Most Surabaya sex
workers were poorly educated village girls. Usually they'd been
dumped by boyfriends who had stolen their virginity and trust;
then they'd been ostracized by their families and had fled to the
city.

Many believed in black magic and did not fully understand the
cause-and-effect principles of sickness or the workings of their
reproductive organs. They were also powerless; any woman who
asked a soldier to use a condom risked a beating for implying the
TNI was diseased.

To reach these people required new techniques, and the sex
workers had to own the process. In the buzz phrase of Western
social work the women needed "empowerment". In Surabaya's red-
light district this translated as having the courage to say "no"
to harassment and violence -- and getting support from
colleagues.

Residential workshops for sex workers were held in out-of-town
locations, including theological colleges. The idea was not to
proselytize; by now Julius had become disillusioned with much
church teaching and never sought to convert.

Empowerment

The plan was to take the women away from their slum
surroundings, respect them as equals in a decent environment and
allow them to talk out their troubles far from city pressures.

The idea worked. In these sessions some women emerged as
natural leaders. They got special training and returned to the
brothels to act as group educators. Julius knew that a word of
advice from an experienced sex worker was worth a thousand street
banners carrying government health warnings.

Annual conventions were held to air grievances and demand
change. Julius argued that if business people, politicians and
academics could hold major conferences and set the public agenda
-- why not sex workers who serviced the needs of so many
influential men?

Yet even among prostitutes used to the awful crudity of
brothel life taboos remained. They could perform the intimate
actions but not communicate their intimate feelings. Julius hit
on the idea of using theater, a medium where the women might
speak out through the persona of another.

He wrote two plays, Matahari dan Matahari (Sun and Sun) and
Gerhana dan Gerhana (Eclipse and Eclipse) that were performed in
Surabaya and Jakarta.

The cast were all sex workers coached by a professional
director. The productions got rave reviews and national
coverage.

Julius took a break from activism to return to Nusa Tenggara
and his old profession as prose-master. He worked as a senior
writer with Pos Kupang but the call to be a participant was too
strong.

Back in the East Java capital Hotline Surabaya was becoming a
major force in promoting the rights of the downtrodden and giving
real assistance as overseas funds flowed. Health clinics and
drop-in centers were set up.

Nonjudgemental doctors were recruited. The message Julius and
Esthi had pushed for so long -- that the faults were with the
social system, not the individuals who were the victims -- was
starting to take hold.

Advocacy in the offices of aid agencies, religious
organizations and business tycoons now took up most of their
time. In the absence of politicians who were still tip-toeing
around the issue Julius and Esthi were invited to international
conferences in the U.S., Australia and Europe to explain how a
developing nation was battling a pandemic through grassroots
activism.

Truama of 1965

Three years ago, the sudden death of a fellow journalist
reminded Julius of his other mission -- to complete a major novel
based around the 1965 coup.

Despite urging others to speak out he found it difficult to
articulate the awful things he'd seen during the purge of so-
called communists and which had shaped his philosophies. But he
could write of these events.

Like many journalists he worked best under pressure. He would
shut himself alone in his tiny Surabaya house to thrash the
computer keyboard for days on end, sustained only by nicotine,
caffeine and a determination that the past must be remembered but
never repeated.

Skilled at giving health advice to others he ignored the
warning signs of his own mortality. He had been diagnosed with
diabetes but continued to chain-smoke kretek cigarettes and add
coffee to his cups of sugar. Shortly after finishing his
masterpiece and passing this to the Kompas Group for
evaluation he suffered a major stroke early last year.

Despite one side of his body being paralyzed he struggled to
recover with the help of his wife Theresia Jansen and his four
adult children. But to no avail. Fourteen months later he
suffered a second, fatal heart attack.

At his funeral in Jakarta some of the most distressed keening
came from the Surabaya sex workers. They were no longer the trash
of society -- but individual human beings demanding the right to
be heard, to control their lives, to be treated with respect.

These black-clad women had driven across Java to pay their
last respects to a witty, wise and gifted raconteur, reciter of
Aesop's Fables and lover of orchids.

More important, they mourned a journo who had jumped the fence
between reporting and advocacy -- and who had made a real and
lasting difference to their lives and Indonesian society.