Ulma Haryanto – At first glance, 71-year-old Nani Nurani looks like your typical Indonesian granny: Always smiling, always friendly.
She's also quite sprightly for her age, still taking public transport wherever she travels.
But beneath the cheerful exterior lies a much more sobering reality, branded into her being – and her ID card – with the letters ET: "Eks-Tapol," or "former political prisoner."
At the age of 27, Nani was taken away by the Military Police, known then as the CPM, for her alleged involvement with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). She was detained for seven years, during which time she was repeatedly interrogated.
In October last year, she filed a lawsuit with the Central Jakarta District Court against the government, naming President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as the respondent, for the unlawful detention and stigma she has suffered since her arrest in 1968.
Her life prospects were promising enough at first, when in 1962 she joined the retinue of palace dancers at the Cipanas Presidential Palace in West Java. She was reputed to be one of President Sukarno's favorite performers.
On May 20, 1965, she was invited by the PKI to perform at a celebration of National Awakening Day, followed by another performance for the PKI anniversary a month later. Little did she know that it would later prove her undoing.
Rice that a rat wouldn't touch
If she had been born 30 years later, Nani's life would have been different. Raised in a family with ties to the West Java nobility, Nani grew up to be a beautiful, talented and educated young lady with good connections to military generals and ministers.
A photograph taken in the early '60s shows a young woman with thick, wavy black hair smiling softly and sweetly. "My daily activities included shopping, dancing, singing and trying on makeup. I was living pretty well-off, with no interest in politics whatsoever," she told the Jakarta Globe.
At one of the hearings in her lawsuit, one of the judges asked what the secret to her vitality was, even at her age. "Try sleeping on a concrete floor," she replied. "Eat rice that a rat wouldn't even touch, with a small piece of boiled tempeh or tofu, for seven years."
Forcing a confession
It was two nights after Idul Fitri in 1968 when Nani was awakened by the stomp of military boots in her parents' house in Cianjur, West Java.
"I could hear them shouting 'This is the CPM!' When I opened my bedroom door, there were two rifles pointed at me," she said. "One of the officers shouted at me, 'Are you Nani of the Cipanas Palace?' I said yes, and they took me away."
At CPM headquarters in Bogor, Nani was shown a stack of documents, which she was told were "anonymous letters" all claiming that she was at Lubang Buaya in East Jakarta when six military generals were killed during the supposed communist coup attempt on Sept. 30, 1965.
"The interrogators kept pushing me to confess that I was a PKI supporter," Nani said. "But I didn't. I was prepared to die rather than confess to something I never did. I told them my only crime was failing to do anything for my country. I was a spoiled young girl."
When she was detained at CPM headquarters and later in Guntur, South Jakarta, she was denied visits from her family until early 1969, when she was transferred to the Bukit Duri women's penitentiary in South Jakarta.
"Only then could I see my parents, even though it was only for 15 minutes, through a small window. We cried and blew kisses to each other," Nani said.
She said the people who arrested her thought that they had nabbed someone important: a spy for the PKI who had infiltrated the palace and the military. They based that suspicion on the fact that after her stint at the palace, Nani had moved to Jakarta to live with her older sister and work as a secretary for Soerjosoemarno, a prominent military general.
"Soerjosoemarno tried to bail me out but it didn't work out. But I believe it was my connection to him that saved me from rape and other humiliation at the hands of the CPM," Nani said. "They eventually had to let me go, since they couldn't prove anything against me."
No lifetime ID
After her release, Nani remained traumatized and lived in fear. For years she had to check in once a month with the urban ward and subdistrict offices.
"But then I met a woman at the subdistrict office, and I was so scared I didn't dare to ask her name. She told me to stop crying, because I had too much misery in me already," she said.
That bucked up her spirits and she began questioning the basis for the discrimination against her. But none of the government officials she approached, even after Suharto was no longer in power, offered to clear her record or compensate her.
In 2003, Nani turned 62 and became eligible for a lifetime ID card. But as a former political prisoner, she was prohibited from applying for one.
After consulting with the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) and the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation (LBH Jakarta), she decided to take the matter to court.
At the Jakarta State Administrative Court, she sued the Koja subdistrict office, where she is registered as a resident, for not granting her a lifetime ID. The court ruled in her favor but the government mounted an appeal. Five years later, the Supreme Court upheld the administrative court's ruling.
This victory encouraged Nani to file another lawsuit, this one demanding an apology from the president, as well as rehabilitation and Rp 7.76 billion ($853,000) in compensation.
"We needed some time to prepare the suit. There was talk about who would represent me, but we decided that I would go alone. This is also to avoid speculation that this is just another NGO campaign," she said.
She said she had been nervous about facing the judges alone. "I have been scolded many times for not knowing basic courtroom rules," she said with a smile.
The judges, she added, often doze off during hearings. "I am treated like a criminal. So much different from how the judges treat Angelina Sondakh," she said. "But I have to follow through with this. I have to finish what I started."