Ken Setiawan (Courtesy of Ken Setiawan)

Her father’s past encouraged Ken Setiawan to study human rights and has eventually seen her become an academic with a focus on human rights, striving for the betterment of Indonesia.

Ken is the daughter of Hersri Setiawan, a writer and former political prisoner who was sent into exile on Buru Island, Maluku, in the late 1960s for his involvement in Lekra, a cultural group associated with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). Hersri was imprisoned for years without a formal trial due to the government’s anticommunist agenda that also killed hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in 1965.

Recently, Ken followed her father on a journey to Buru Island to trace the steps of his troubled past there.

“I went for him, because he asked me to […] I thought that by going I would understand his past better, and in doing so, understand a little more about my family and myself,” Ken said in an email sent to The Jakarta Post.

The journey has been made into a documentary titled Pulau Buru: Tanah Air Beta (Buru Island: My Homeland) by director Rahung Nasution. It has been screened in various places this year despite protests from religious hard-liners.

Ken has heard about Buru Island since she was little from her father’s stories.

“My dad told me stories about what happened in the prison. The food they ate [or lack thereof], how he and his friends were treated [or mistreated] and the songs they sung,” the 34-year-old said.

She said her father’s experiences were so central to her family that they became part of her. In fact, it was probably her father’s stories that helped her live a normal childhood. She told the Post her childhood was not hard, as she “didn’t feel anything in particular”.

“It may sound strange, but I can’t really imagine my childhood without those stories, and I cannot imagine myself not being the daughter of a former political prisoner. It’s just who I am,” Ken said.

She wrote for an online publication that she was proud to be the daughter of a political prisoner.

“When I was 6 years old, I told my classmates: ‘My Dad went to jail […] for nothing!’ — and I was proud,” she wrote.

Ken’s story is different from the tragic accounts shared by many family members of victims from 1965, who have suffered from discrimination and mistreatment from society and the government, forcing them to cover up their real identities.

Born in 1981, Ken spent her childhood in Jakarta, until she was 6 years old. The family then moved to the Netherlands after Ken’s mother, Dutch writer Jitske Mulder, became terminally ill.

“My parents feared that if she passed away in Indonesia […] there would be no one there to protect me, after all, as an ex-political prisoner my father could be arrested at any time,” she said, adding that her mother passed away in 1989.

The decision to move was also made to secure Ken’s future. Her parents believed that by living in the Netherlands, Ken would be able to access a good education more easily.

Growing up in a family where human rights issues are a topic of interest has influenced Ken’s study interests. Besides studying human rights, she was also an active youth member of Amnesty International.

“I wrote letters urging governments to release prisoners of conscience and to abolish the death penalty. I was interested in other areas where I saw injustice, such as access to education [particularly for girls], access to clean water and deforestation,” she said.

Her parents’ friend told her recently that as a child she had once aspired to become a human rights lawyer. Well, Ken may not be a human rights lawyer, but she has chosen a career path that still promotes the same ideas, but as a researcher and lecturer.

Ken launched her academic career as a research and teaching associate at Leiden University in 2005 after obtaining a master’s degree from the same university.

Her career expanded as she started teaching in other universities Down Under. Her CV includes teaching experiences at Australian National University in Canberra and Australian Catholic University and the University of Melbourne, both in Melbourne.

She obtained a PhD in law from Leiden University for her research on national human rights commissions in Indonesia and Malaysia, and her final thesis has been published into a book.

Starting 2015, she became a fellow for the prestigious McKenzie Postdoctoral Program at the University of Melbourne. She now resides in Melbourne with her small family.

Despite having an established career as an academic, it seems that Ken still can’t move on from her family’s past.

Therefore, she has initiated a blog, living1965.org, to share her story and those of others that are affected by the 1965 tragedy. She runs the blog with artist Tintin Wulia, who lost her grandfather in that darkest of periods in Indonesian history.

“We talk about our families’ pasts and what they mean to us,” she said.

Through her profession and her blog, Ken wants to continuously bring discussion on the 1965 massacre into the public domain to remind the government of its homework — that is, to resolve this human rights issue.

“There’s still so much resistance, from within the government and state bodies, as well as from societal groups that keep denying any wrongdoing and refusing to face the past,” she said.

But those disheartening attitudes do not stop Ken from moving forward in her fight for justice for the 1965 victims. She keeps revealing the truth behind the tragedy, including to her two children.

“I think it’s important not only to understand what happened to my father and therefore our family, but also to understand other injustices in the world,” Ken said.

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