TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsActivists defiant following acid attack on rights defender
Human rights group the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) has denounced the acid attack on its campaigner Andrie Yunus as a cowardly act aimed at silencing government critics, saying they will not allow any intimidation to threaten their work.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
A poster reading "braver because of Andrie" with flowers is seen during a demonstration on March 14 in Yogyakarta in support of activist Andrie Yunus of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), who was attacked with acid by unidentified persons. (AFP/Devi Rahman)
C
ivil groups have denounced the acid attack against human rights defender Andrie Yunus as a cowardly act aimed at silencing government critics, saying they will not bow down to any intimidation threatening their work.
Andrie, who works at rights group the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) as deputy coordinator, was attacked by two unidentified men on a motorbike with acid shortly before midnight on Thursday, when he was riding his motorcycle along Jl. Salemba I in Central Jakarta. He sustained serious burns to his right eye, face, hands and chest.
“The intimidation faced by Andrie will never deter or stop Kontras’ work that was first built 28 years ago,” Kontras coordinator Dimas Bagus Arya said in a press briefing hours after the incident. “This brutal attack is a cowardly act against an activist, who is a civilian.”
The 27-year-old Andrie has been vocal in opposing increasing military involvement in civilian affairs in Indonesia and had just finished recording a podcast on the topic when he was attacked.
Amnesty International Indonesia executive director Usman Hamid cited numerous past cases in which Kontras was targeted, including the unresolved murder of its cofounder Munir Said Thalib, a vocal activist who died of arsenic poisoning in 2004, aboard a flight from Jakarta to Amsterdam.
“But don’t think that we’ll back down even an inch because of the attack [against Andrie]. It won’t deter us at all from fighting for justice,” said Usman, a former Kontras coordinator. “This cowardly act must not be dismissed as ordinary street crime.”
Planned attack?
