Devi Asmarani, Jakarta – In 1965, Mr Mujiman Jumakir, a member of the now dissolved Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), miraculously survived when Indonesian soldiers dumped him into a river near his village in Pematang Siantar, North Sumatra.
After two years in hiding, the military found him again and this time, he spent 24 years in prison. He was eventually released under strict conditions, including the requirement to report weekly to the local military and civilian authority. But it took the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998 to free him entirely from government scrutiny.
Mr Mujiman, now an activist for a Christian organisation that helped to win his release, has lost his family and his wife, who disappeared for security reasons because of their ties with him. Half-crippled from prison tortures, he has "ex-tapol" – the Indonesian acronym for political prisoners – printed on his identification card, which automatically gives him the status of second-rate citizen.
But all he wants is a simple apology from the government for his ill treatment. He is not alone in his sentiments. Nearly 500 former communist members, labour and student activists, and Muslim radicals imprisoned during the Suharto era have come together to seek redress – the first such move ever seen in the country – for the way they were ill-treated and ostracised by the former regime.
Last Friday, they held a two-day congress and demanded the restoration of their civil rights and financial compensation. The congress was opened by President Megawati Sukarnoputri's husband Taufik Kiemas, a former activist who had been jailed by Mr Suharto.
Said Mr Chris Siner Key Timu of the Justice Fellowship Indonesia, an organisation that helps rehabilitate former political prisoners: "Mr Taufik, as a former political prisoner himself, should help push Megawati to take action to rehabilitate these people."
Like Mr Mujiman, half of the participants were elderly, having spent most of their lives in prison. Many had also lost family members because of their links to the PKI.
The party was blamed as the mastermind of a 1965 abortive coup which helped usher Mr Suharto to power. Half a million people linked to the PKI were reportedly killed in the government-sponsored backlash, and hundreds of thousands more were jailed without proper legal process. These people have had problems getting jobs and entering schools. Government jobs and public posts are strictly out of bounds for them.
After former president B.J. Habibie came to power, all political prisoners were released. But even after that, getting together everyone who was once labelled subversive by the Suharto government was not an easy task as they comprised people with conflicting ideologies – such as ultra-right-wing Muslims, leftist communists and socialists.
Former prisoner Iman Hidayat Al'Iqbal spent 12 years in jail for links to a group behind a plane hijacking in 1982 and an attack on a police station in West Java. "We were young and we wanted justice," he said. "But it was never our intention to build an Islamic state." He added: "We all deserve a second chance to prove that we are not as bad as the government had made us look."