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216 Panel 5Life of a female journalist in Aceh: The story ofLinda Christanty: Chief Editor of Aceh Feature, anonline news service.Linda Christanty is a journalist and author of manyworks of fiction and non-fiction. Her essay Militerismedan Kekerasan di Timor Leste (Militarism andViolence in Timor Leste) won a Best Essay on HumanRights (Indonesia) award in 1998. Her collection ofshort stories, Kuda Terbang Maria Pinto (MariaPinto’s Flying Horse), won the Khatulistiwa LiteraryAward in 2004. Her novel Tongkat Sultan (Sultan’sStick) addressed the 30-year conflict in Aceh, and thesocio-political status of the post-tsunami Aceh peaceprocess that followed. Her recent non-fiction books,Dari Jawa Menuju Atjeh (From Java to Aceh), andJangan Tulis Kami Teroris (Don’t Write Us Down asTerrorists), discuss shari’ah, political conflict, ethnicnationalism and homosexuality.Linda – a daughter and a wife“…one day you will have a family, you can’t be above theman”. (Linda’s mother)Linda Christanty, aged 41 in 2011, was born in avillage in Bangka island in southern Sumatra. Sheenjoyed significant freedom during her childhood asher parents treated their daughters and sons equally.Her father was a civil servant and her mother workedin a private company. Her mother told Linda that sheworked outside the home because she wanted to helpLinda’s father to earn more income for the family.Linda considered her mother a modern woman at thattime.“I have old pictures of my family, from the 1980s. Oneshows my mom wearing shorts and no scarf,” sherecalled. Linda also saw that her mother enjoyed equalrights with her father and that they respected eachother at home. But she wondered why her mother kepttelling her “you’re a modern woman but one day youwill have a family, you can’t be above the man”.Linda holds a bachelor’s degree in literature from theUniversity of Indonesia. At university she was veryactive in the student and labor movements and did notfeel she was any different from male activists. In 1995she helped mobilize thousands of female workers torally at parliament, demanding increased wages andopposing military power.“They [protested] the first time in the Suharto era.[Female] factory workers – about 5,000 –demonstrated at parliament, which shocked themilitary faction in parliament a bit,” she recalled.According to the Komisi Nasional Anti KekerasanPerempuan (National Commission on ViolenceAgainst Women), working in factories was notregarded as women’s primary duty, especially whenthey were married and had children. They were paidlower wages than their male colleagues because theywere not perceived as the main breadwinners.But Linda did not take the case only as a gender issue;she said it was also a class issue. “The owner of thefactory was a woman. I think it’s not about [being] awoman or not. We don’t talk about women anymore.We don’t care about their biological sex. It’s a classissue,” she said.After graduation, Linda worked with a nongovernmentalorganization and joined the People’sDemocratic Party (PRD). In 1999 she ran in thegeneral election. She later quit the party and around2000 began her career as a journalist.In 2003 Linda worked for Bandeau magazine. She metand married a local journalist. Linda believed that shewas a more modern woman than her mother. Shewanted to marry a modern man to open her world.Unfortunately her married life lasted only one year.Soon after the wedding, Linda found that she couldn’tstay with the man.“Because I was a journalist, sometimes I got home late.Suddenly, he told me, Linda I need you to cook for me,like our neighbors. I know you have to work but I wantto taste your cooking”.He also pressured her to have a baby but she said it wasimpossible because at the time he had lost his job andher pay alone wasn’t enough to raise baby. Then he seta condition that she should stay at home and he wouldgo and find a job.When Linda asked him for a divorce, he did not agree.She knew well that it was not easy for Muslim womento divorce. Linda went to an Islamic court, asking thejudge to allow her a divorce. She filed complaintsagainst her husband in the court that “he didn’t workand took no responsibility and I had to work, to cookfor him, and this was unfair for me”. Linda told theThe Work of the 2010/2011 API Fellows