Remembering Wiji Thukul, Indonesia's Murdered Poet-activist

Abstract

ABSTRACT Modern Indonesia has been shaped by human rights abuses, with the military regime of Major-General Suharto (1966 −1998) standing at the fulcrum of this history. Over twenty-five years since its fall, survivors and their families continue to struggle with this legacy. This paper focuses on the case of Wiji Thukul, a disappeared poet-activist whose life and work continue to inspire progressive Indonesians decades after he played an important role in the movement that helped topple Suharto’s dictatorship. It translates for a non-Indonesian audience his life, which was characterised by a creative practice that gave voice to working-class people like himself. It asserts that remembering Thukul has helped energise and galvanise efforts to advance Indonesia’s conflicted and fragile democratic project. In doing this, it also charts how, in the first two decades of the millennium, he came to be an underground icon of activism and public discourse on unresolved human rights abuses and democratic reform, notably through the ‘refusing to forget’ movement. This has been significant in resistance to the return of authoritarianism. Beyond this, it examines how his memory has been translated for a new generation that never experienced the regime and argues for his significance in an international context.