Munir was found dead on Sept. 7, 2004, on a Garuda flight from Jakarta to Amsterdam. An autopsy by the Netherlands Forensic Institute concluded that Munir was killed by arsenic poisoning. He died about two hours before his flight landed at Schiphol airport.

Suciwati, Munir’s wife, immediately went to Amsterdam to pick up his body, burying him in their hometown in Batu, East Java. The murder prompted global news headlines and outrage. Under pressure from Suciwati, an Indonesian human rights community and foreign governments, the Indonesian government acceded to demands to investigate. 

Munir was arguably Indonesia’s most internationally recognized human rights lawyer. He helped set up the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (KontraS) to look into the abduction of dozens of activists at the end of president Soeharto’s authoritarian rule, the period from 1997 to 1999. Before that he worked at the Foundation of Indonesian Legal Aid Institute. Munir later joined a commission to investigate human rights violations in East Timor during a United Nations-sponsored referendum in 1999.

His reputation made him very unpopular among senior figures in the Indonesian military and intelligence services, which had operated with impunity under Soeharto. Because of the work of Munir and other activists, they were at risk of investigation and prosecution.

The killing shocked the country but what is often overlooked in these kinds of situations is the impact on family members. Munir’s killing forever changed the lives of Suciwati and her children. Months after her husband’s death, Suciwati decided to move from their house in Bekasi. Suciwati told me, “I could not stand it. It had so many memories of Munir.” There were other memories too: someone sent a dead chicken to the house, and in another incident, huge firecrackers were thrown at the house, blowing out the windows.

Their children, Soultan Alif Allende and Diva Suukyi Larasati, were only 6 and 2 years old when their father was murdered. As Alif was old enough to at least partially understand what was happening around him, Suciwati tried to protect him from watching news reports, fearing that the intense media coverage might affect him. “Diva was still a toddler, but Alif asked me about his father, ‘When will Abah come home?’”

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