TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Activists reject Marsinah hero title without justice for her murder
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
A motorbike rides past a mural of slain labor activist Marsinah at Babakan Pocis, South Tangerang, Banten, on Monday. Marsinah, then a worker at a watch factory in Sidoarjo, East Java, was killed on May 8, 1993, as she led a strike demanding better wages and working conditions. (The Jakarta Post/Dhoni Setiawan)
W
omen’s rights activists have firmly rejected President Prabowo Subianto’s plan to name slain labor activist Marsinah a national hero unless her murder during former president Soeharto’s authoritarian New Order regime is first recognized and investigated as a human rights violation.
Dian Septi Trisnanti, a women’s activist and founder of marsinah.id, a community media platform named after the activist, questioned Prabowo’s motive. She further described the gesture as “symbolic violence” that belittles Marsinah’s contributions to labor rights and allows the state to sidestep responsibility.
“Declaring someone a hero means recognizing their service, but if Marsinah’s struggle is not acknowledged [and] if her murder is not treated as a gross human rights violation, the state only continues to reduce her to a victim,” Dian told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
Marsinah was a vocal critic of labor practices during the New Order, protesting low wages and poor working conditions at a factory in Sidoarjo, East Java.
After a confrontation involving the military, the 24-year-old unionist disappeared and was found murdered on May 8, 1993, in a forest hut in Nganjuk, showing signs of rape and torture.
Her death remains one of the country’s most high-profile unresolved human rights cases, alongside the disappearance of poet Wiji Thukul in 1998 and the murder of activist Munir Said Thalib in 2004.
Read also: Prabowo considers naming slain activist Marsinah national hero
