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.