Udin's murder: A crime without punishment
Bruce Emond, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The Invisible Palace: The True Story of a Journalist's Murder in Java, Jose Manuel Tesoro, Equinox Press, August 2004, Rp 139,000
Some of us, most of us, perhaps, prefer to let painful matters slide, unconcerned about finding solace in the now hackneyed term of "closure".
Dredging up our past, especially about who did what in 1965- 66, would be difficult to face, for it would mean taking a long, hard, perhaps mortifying look at ourselves (and the murderers among us). For others, especially the Petrus killings of hoodlums in the early 1980s, we probably don't care too much.
But there are other cases of injustice that still prod the conscience, often involving individuals who took a stand, and were branded "rabble rousers", only to suffer the consequences.
One example is Fuad Muhammad Syafruddin, a reporter for a small Yogyakarta newspaper who was beaten to death outside his home, most likely for writing stories that infuriated the powerful, in August 1996.
Former Jakarta-based Asiaweek correspondent Jose "Joel" Manuel Tesoro is not letting Udin's case die. The Invisible Palace, launched last month, is an enthralling account of the investigation into Udin's death. Written in the narrative "nonfiction novel" style first used by Truman Capote in In Cold Blood, it vividly brings to life the facts of the story.
Tesoro is blessed with a cast of characters any pulp fiction writer would envy, among them the imperious local regent Sri Roso Sudarmo and a young, slick detective on the make, Edy Wuryanto, who morbidly totes a bag of Udin's blood around with him.
His colorful tableau is the heartland of Java, steeped in myths and superstitions, as the country hurtled inexorably toward Soeharto's exit from power.
But why choose Udin from all the other unsolved cases around, apart from the fact that he was a fellow journalist?
"I wanted to do a crime story, first of all, and also because as I journalist I hadn't gone through the obituary-crime-police (newspaper) beats, as I had started working for Asiaweek almost immediately," said Tesoro, 31, who is currently studying law at Harvard but returned to Jakarta for the book launching.
"Secondly, I wanted the technical challenge of a crime story, which comes in both the reporting of it and the writing of it ..."
Living in the cultural hub of Yogyakarta while conducting research also appealed to Tesoro, who majored in anthropology as an undergraduate at Yale.
The Filipino, who is the son of a lawyer and a leading expert on Philippine textiles, said he was seen as a "sympathetic ear" by those he interviewed (only Sri Roso and Edy refused to meet him).
"There's always a sense Asians can talk about certain things together, things that would be more embarrassing to discuss with Westerners or those who haven't lived in Asia for a while."
He spent nine months in the area, but he said it was only "scratching the surface" in the effort to piece together the story of Udin's murder and its aftermath.
"I guess, naively, I thought it wouldn't be as bad for me (compared to Capote's drawn-out investigative saga), not that I went through any breakdowns doing it, but the amount of material that you have to go through, the people you have to meet, as well as the writing of it -- I really wasn't prepared for all the research."
The Invisible Palace is sobering in its depiction of how leaders in parts of the country off the main radar of the media could keep an iron-grip on their citizens -- and sometimes get away with murder.
The tale revolves around Udin, but he is effectively gone by page 54, and then it becomes the compelling story of all of those affected by his death.
Although he has been held up as a martyr for the press, Udin comes across as a man simply trying to earn a living for his family, reporting on the dubious wheeling and dealings in the corridors of power without realizing the risks he was taking.
What in the West would be considered the search for the real story, for truth and confirmation, Tesoro said, became an unforgivable example of impertinence in Yogyakarta at a time of heightened political sensitivity.
Yet he was heartened by how the Yogyakarta community rallied around Iwik, the poor delivery driver shanghaied into confessing to the murder but eventually freed.
Eight years on, it's no open-and-shut case, with all the loose ends tidied up at the end of the book.
"There is no closure to this case. There are some people who hope this (book) reopens things, and we're going to get closure. But the point is to read and learn," Tesoro said.
"It kind of holds up a mirror to society and says that because things aren't finished, there'll always be questions that are never answered, so you're never going to get the truth of things. And, in a sense, then, you don't really know where you stand."
Life moves on: Udin's widow, Marsiyem, who attended the book launching in Jakarta, has remarried; Iwik is back to driving a minibus and Sri Roso lives quietly with his family, the cloud of suspicion shadowing him on the rare occasions he goes out in public.
The Invisible Palace may not change our preference to leave things hanging, but at the very least it acts as a nagging reminder about the guilty who still walk the streets.
"Somewhere out there is a murderer who got away with what he did," Tesoro said. "And somewhere out there is the person who paid this murderer to do it ... "