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View all search resultsFamily still seeking justice after Marsinah named national hero
Marsinah’s death remains one of Indonesia’s most prominent unresolved human rights cases, alongside the disappearance of poet Wiji Thukul in 1998 and the assassination of activist Munir Said Thalib in 2004.
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Flags of Marsinah are shown on March 3, 2014, during a labor protest at the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle in Central Jakarta. Marsinah was a factory worker who was killed in 1993 for demanding workers' rights, including the right for women to take menstrual leave.
(Jp/PJ Leo)
T
he family of Marsinah, a murdered labor activist from Nganjuk, East Java, says they continue to hope for justice in her unresolved murder case, even as she was posthumously named a National Hero by President Prabowo Subianto.
Marsinah’s elder sister, Marsini, said she was deeply honored and grateful for the government’s recognition of the late activist’s struggle, but added that the family’s longing for justice remains.
“We entrusted the case to the police back then, and we still hope it will be resolved. But until now, it hasn’t,” Marsini told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
Marsinah, a factory worker at PT Catur Putra Surya (CPS), a watch manufacturer in Nganjuk, East Java, was a vocal critic of labor exploitation under the authoritarian rule of then-president Soeharto.
In early May 1993, the 24-year-old led a strike at PT CPS, demanding that the company comply with newly mandated minimum wage regulations and provide fair benefits for its workers.
On May 5, officers from the local military command summoned 13 CPS workers and forced them to resign. Later that day, Marsinah went to the military command office to inquire about her colleagues’ whereabouts. After telling others that she planned to file a formal complaint against the military, she disappeared.
Three days later, on May 8, her body was discovered in a hut near a rice field in Nganjuk. An autopsy showed that she had been raped and brutally tortured before being killed.
