Arghea Desafti Hapsari, Jakarta – For any senior citizen, receiving a permanent lifetime identity card should be as natural as the aging process itself. But not so for Nani Nurani.

It took her more than six years, a Supreme Court decision and many hours of anguish before she received her rightful ID three weeks ago.

For much of her life, the now 67-year-old spinster was branded an ex-political prisoner, a sympathizer of the now defunct Indonesia Communist Party (PKI).

Ten years after reformasi and more than four decades after the PKI was banned, the stigma surrounding those even remotely associated with it lives on.

Article 64 of a 2006 law on population administration guarantees the right of those above 60 to obtain a lifetime ID card without discrimination. However, when Nani applied for one, she was rejected by the Koja District Office in North Jakarta on the grounds of her political past.

Lawyers for the district office maintained that prior regulations concerning former political prisoners remained valid and that, based on data from the North Jakarta Population Bureau, Nani was regarded as a known member of a prohibited political organization.

Lobbying by the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation (LBH) and the National Human Rights Commission on Nani's behalf proved futile, forcing her to file a lawsuit against the district office at the State Administrative Court.

The court ruled in Nani's favor, but its decision was appealed and went before the Supreme Court, which upheld the verdict last May.

The PKI was blamed by the New Order government as the mastermind behind a failed Sept. 30, 1965, coup. The following years saw a mass persecution of suspected PKI sympathizers. Some have estimated more than a million were jailed as a result.

Nani's life has never been the same since June 1965 when, as a young girl, she performed at a PKI gathering. She claims this was her only association with the PKI and contends no other involvement with it.

But that did not stop authorities from arresting Nani in 1968 at the height of the New Order's anti-PKI persecutions, and incarcerating her, without trial, for seven years at Bukitduri Women's Penitentiary in South Jakarta.

There were more than a dozen regulations and laws limiting the rights of suspected PKI members. Many have been repealed, but the mind-set has yet to change.

Asfinawati, head of LBH Jakarta, lamented the discrimination prevalent in society.

"Many former political prisoners were not tried or found guilty, but society still sees them as people who should be ostracized," she said.

"They fear the consequences of getting too close to these former political prisoners. The New Order regime made sure it worked that way... They made sure the stigma stuck. And it continues, even in the reformation era."

As recently as 2003, new laws still barred former members of the PKI or those believed to be members of its affiliated organizations from public office. It was not until 1997 that the classification of 'ET' (former political prisoner) was struck from national ID Cards.

Utati, another former political prisoner and sister-in-law of the late writer Pramudya Ananta Toer, recalls becoming a pariah after her neighbors learned her history.

"It's difficult to make friends openly with people other than former political prisoners because one often cannot speak openly," Utati, 64, says.

For Nani, the legal struggles she has endured the past few years are only the beginning. It her intent to ensure the stigma is washed away, for good.

"For us, it's not just a matter of ensuring that our rights are respected," she says. "This is a fight to regain our dignity."