1 - Eureka Street

esponsibility for the killing. She is not Communistdriven to avenge her own suffering; atleast there is no trace of bitterness in herwords. Rather, Ibu Sulami is seekingjustice so that ghosts can be laid to rest.She wants to soothe souls through aproper and public accounting ofhis tori cal events.Five years ago, Ibu Sulamibegan touring the provincesand talking to the families ofvictims, especially the wives ofm en who disappeared withouta trace: 'Often they were stillwaiting for their husbands tocome back,' she says. 'A lot ofthem have never remarriedsince that time and they arevery anxious to know whathappened to their husbands.They wonder, if their husbandsare still alive, why have theynever com e back? Are they injail or were they killed? And ifso, who killed them and whereare they buried? That sort ofknowledge is veryimportant to them.'AT THE TIME of Gestapu,Ibu Sulami was the GeneralSecretary of Gerwani ( GerakanWanita Indonesia, the IndonesianWomen's Movement)which had been established in1950 to fight for equal rights:'I grew up in a village and youknow there were so many casesof discrimination between menand women,' she says. 'Boys atthat stage could continue withtheir education as far as theirmeans allowed, but for girls, aslong as they could read and write, wellthat was it. Like me, for example. Myolder brother was able to go to highereducation, but my younger sister and Iwere only able to go to primary school.'I was very attracted to Gerwanibecause I felt it was working to elevatethe dignity of women and overcome theinequality and the discrimination.'Gerwani established kindergartensand ran courses in midwifery and literacy.The organisation also campaigned forequal rights in marriage and for strongerrape laws. By 1961, Gerwani claimed ninemillion members and had becomeincreasing! y close to the IndonesianParty, although the organisationwas never formally affiliated withthe PKI.After the coup attempt of 30September, Suharto made Gerwani a keytarget of his crackdown on the left. Lieswere spread through newspaper and radioreports saying that Gerwani women had'In truth, there were no weapons inthe office,' says Ibu Sulami. 'All we hadwere bamboo musical instruments calledanldung. We had lots of them because wewere preparing to celebrate Gerwani'sanniversary and w e had about 500anklung ready for people to play in astreet procession.'The military suggested tothe people round about that theGerwani office was stacked withhuge stores of money, sugar, riceand other things. So the peoplelooted the place, but there wasnothing there, just a little bitof food, nothing at all. And thecrowd outside were all screaming,there's no money, there'sno food, we were being lied to!'Ibu Sulami fled from theoffice to a friend's place and forthe next 18 months she livedas 'a hunted person', movingfrom house to house and neversleeping in the sam e bed twonights running.Eventually, during a sweepcalled Operation Vampire, sh ewas arrested by the Jakartamilitary command.'It was really terrible,' sherecalls. 'I was beaten for aboutt en days and they kept oninterrogating us during thattime. I was asked questionsagain and again and I did notwant to answer.Today Ibu Sulami lives in a simple housein Tangerang, an industrial cityin West Java, that runs into the urbansprawl of Jakarta. She looks frail, but hermemory is sharp and she has summoned the'They asked whetherenergy to delve into the most sensitiveperiod in Indonesian history.castrated the six murdered generals,gouged their eyes out and then dancednaked in celebration before the chairmanof the communist party. In his HistoricalDictionary of Indonesia, Robert Cribbwrites that 'special attention was givento the destruction of Gerwani, on thegrounds that it allegedly encouragedwomen to abandon their duties within thefamily and promoted sexual promiscuity'.Nothing happened at Gerwaniheadquarters for the first three days afterGestapu. Then on the fourth day a groupof soldiers arrived at the office anddemanded that Gerwani m emberssurrender, with their weapons.Gerwani was involved inkilling the generals. ButGerwani had nothing to dowith it, so I kept my silence.'They were also askingwhether I knew someone called Sam,who was one of the figures involved inthe coup and who was a friend of theleader of the communist party, BrotherAidit. But I'd never met the man, I didn'tknow him at all, so I just couldn't answerthe question. They kept beating me up.They'd wake me up at one in the morningto destabilise me, to put my n erves onedge so that I would answer theirquestions. Many other women were alsotreated like that.'Th e interrogations eventually got soferocious that the women were strippedand it was absolutely inhuman what washappening to them at that time.'VoLUME 9 NuMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 35