BY MAX LANE
On February 22, Haji Ponke Princen died. Princen, who was 76, was one of Indonesia's finest militant democrats.
As a young man, Princen was sent to Indonesia as a Dutch soldier to fight against the Indonesian people's struggle for independence and freedom. He changed sides, became a soldier with the pro-independence forces. After independence, Princen became an Indonesian citizen.
Charged with being a traitor by the Dutch state, Princen was unable to visit the land of his birth for decades.
In the 1960s, Princen was a strong critic of the undemocratic tendencies of the Sukarno government and was imprisoned for three years.
After Sukarno was overthrown by General Suharto in 1965, Princen became an even more militant anti-dictatorship fighter. Always outspoken against all violations of human rights and corruption, Princen was detained several times by the Suharto dictatorship.
Princen was among the founders of the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute Foundation, the first serious human rights organisations established in the 1970s. He later established the Institute for the Defence of Human Rights, which was in the vanguard of the struggle for the restoration of basic rights during the 1980s.
Despite the risks, Princen called for the restoration of the political rights of the tens of thousands of political prisoners from the Indonesian Communist Party and affiliated mass organisations. In 1981, he protested strongly against the banning of the writings of Indonesian revolutionary writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer at a time when solidarity with left-wing people was strictly taboo.
In the early 1990s, Princen helped establish Solidarity, the first independent trade union established under Suharto. When this failed, he made its offices available to the Indonesian National Front for Labour Struggles (FNPBI), the independent union federation headed by Dita Sari.
Despite being severely crippled and confined to a wheelchair during recent years, he still attended human rights and political events.
I met Princen many times when I worked in Jakarta in the early 1980s and used to play badminton with him. The last time I saw him was at the launch of the FNPBI after the release of Dita Sari from prison in 1999.
Sitting in the front row in his wheelchair, barely able to speak, he was determined to show his total solidarity. Princen was a person of enormous energy and courage. The Indonesian democracy movement will miss him.
From Green Left Weekly, February 27, 2002.
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