Arief Budiman (JP)

Arief Budiman, a public intellectual who introduced leftist ideas to students and activists in the early 1990s and a leading opposition figure against the New Order regime, died on Thursday. He was 79 years old.

Arief, born Soe Hok Djin to a poor Chinese family in West Jakarta on Jan. 3, 1941, passed away at Ken Saras Hospital in Salatiga, Central Java, after a battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was survived by his wife Leila Ch. Budiman, his son and daughter and several grandchildren.

Arief’s colleagues and friends shared the news of his passing on social media. Human rights activist Andreas Harsono was among the first to deliver the news on Twitter.

“Arief Budiman or Soe Hok Djin […] passed an hour ago in a hospital near Salatiga, Central Java, from Parkinson’s,” Andreas wrote in a tweet on Thursday afternoon.

Later, in a statement sent to The Jakarta Post, Andreas said the sociology professor had planted the seeds of resistance against the oppression of the New Order regime by introducing radical ideas to students, first at the Satya Wacana Christian University (UKSW) and later through his book Teori Pembangunan Dunia Ketiga (Development Theory of the Third World).

“I joined his discussion group. Nothing was formal but he gave us a lot to read, from Karl Marx to The New Yorker magazine — as well as samizdat like Inside Indonesia [Melbourne] and Tapol [London],” Andreas said.

Arief also practiced what he promoted in his classes and books by joining protests against the New Order’s oppressive policies.

“In 1989, when the Soeharto regime began to inundate hundreds of villages in Boyolali for the construction of a dam, Arief got involved, not only through his writing and protests against the World Bank, but also by helping organize student protests,” Andreas said.

Arief, who was the older brother of legendary student protester Soe Hok Gie, often scathingly criticized General Soeharto, who became the president of Indonesia soon after a 1965 coup that was blamed on the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). Soeharto was deposed in 1998.

“Soeharto is corrupt. He killed a lot of people, just like Pinochet. He built an unstable political system. But he did more. He ran a school that produced politicians, including opposition politicians, who cannot change the system,” Arief wrote in Tempo in January 1999.

UKSW rector Niel Samuel Rupidara said the university had lost its most “precious asset”. One of Arief’s legacies at UKSW was the creation of a postgraduate program in development studies.

Niel added that Indonesia had lost one of its brightest intellectuals and that Arief had made an essential contribution.

Arief’s former colleague at the University of Melbourne Asia Institute, director and professor of Asian studies Vedi R. Hadiz, said Arief was a man of a great integrity and courage — two qualities that got him into trouble with the authoritarian New Order regime.

“He was a scholar-activist in a true sense and a mentor to many subsequent scholars of Indonesian society, including me,” Hadiz said in a statement made available to the Post on Thursday.

Arief, who got his PhD in sociology at Harvard University in 1980, joined the University of Melbourne’s faculty in 1997 and was appointed chair of the Indonesian program.

Born into a Chinese family, Arief was determined from an early age to defy the stereotype of ethnic exclusivity and proudly considered himself an Indonesian.

In 1970, against the wishes of his American author-academic friend Benedict Anderson, Arief decided to change his name and asked his Minang wife Leila to pick a suitable one for him.

Mira Lesmana, the producer of the movie Gie, a biopic about Arief’s brother Soe Hok Gie, said she “respected Arief highly and adore his family”.

Arief’s friend, scholar Daniel Dhakidae, the chief editor of social economics journal Prisma, said that “it is a tough job to describe Arief Budiman in a few words, as a man of many talents, with many sides to his personality”.

Arief was also part of the early feminist movement during the New Order era. Andreas said one of Arief’s classes was on gender discrimination.

Triningtyasasih, the head of Yayasan Rifka Annisa Sakina, a well-known Yogyakarta-based women’s crisis center, said Arief and his wife Leila were involved in the establishment of Rifka Annisa.

— Ganug Nugroho Adi contributed to this story from Surakarta, Central Java

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