This not unprecedented, in 1963 Sukarno, Indonesia’s first president, conferred the title (Opens in new window) on Tan Malaka, a revolutionary executed by Republican troops in 1949. What is new in the cases from Suharto’s military-backed New Order (1966 to 1998) is how the honour interacts with the clock of criminal procedure.
The case of Marsinah perfectly illustrates this paradox. In May 1993 Marsinah, a 24-year-old worker at a watch factory in East Java, disappeared after a strike. Under the New Order the army policed labour disputes, and she went to the local military command to ask after colleagues interrogated there.
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