Ronna Nirmala & Faisal Maliki Baskoro – Hundreds of human rights activists gathered in Jakarta on Saturday to commemorate the 47th birthday of slain activist Munir Said Thalib and urge President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to bring Munir's killers to justice.
Eight years since Munir died, the circumstances of his death remain unexplained and the identities of the killers are a mystery yet to be solved. On Saturday, activists issued a declaration titled "Opposing Forgetting," a criticism of the authorities' apparent reluctance to solve the case.
Arief Aziz, director of Change.org, said human rights activists were celebrating Munir's birthday in Jakarta and in Malang, East Java, as a message to the government that pretending to forget the issue was itself a breach of human rights.
Eddy Rumpoko, the mayor of Malang, was scheduled to name a street after Munir and inaugurate a monument in Batu, where Munir was born, to honor the activist's unrelenting efforts to promote human rights until the last day of his life.
Munir's widow, Suciwati, was busy gathering signatures to petition Yudhoyono to solve the mystery surrounding Munir's death. More than 250 people had signed the petition by Saturday and she expected the number to grow.
On Sept. 7, 2004, Munir passed away onboard a Garuda Indonesia flight. Investigators concluded he died of arsenic poisoning. Off-duty pilot Pollycarpus Priyanto was convicted of Munir's murder in 2005. The conviction was invalidated in 2006 for insufficient evidence, but was reinstated in 2008.
To date, however, none of the so-called masterminds behind the murder have been jailed, with Muchdi Purwopranjono, the former National Intelligence Agency (BIN) deputy chief, acquitted of murder charges.
Munir established the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), a human rights advocacy group, barely eight years before he died.
His death was associated with his vocal advocacy of the disappearances of 24 student activists in 1997-98, when Prabowo Subianto was commander of the Army's elite force, Kopassus. Prabowo was later fired for his involvement. However, Prabowo has since become general chairman of the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), and the party's presidential candidate for 2014.
Meanwhile, English musician Sting has been petitioned to dedicate a song to Munir during his Saturday show in Jakarta. Sting's 1980 hit "They Dance Alone" has been suggested as a tribute song, according to Usman Hamid from Kontras and Change.org.
Human rights advocacy is gaining momentum in Indonesia in recent years, yet many blatant violations that claimed the lives of thousands or even millions of people have remained unresolved to date.
The largest case is the reported killings of between 500,000 and two million people said to be associated with Communism in the aftermath of an alleged abortive Communist coup in September 1965.