The prison diary of Muchtar Pakpahan

As chairperson of the independent labour union SBSI, MUCHTAR PAKPAHAN was held responsible for the large labour demonstrations in Medan in April 1994. He was sentenced to four years jail. The following extracts from his diary were written at that time. In September 1995 the Supreme Court upheld his appeal and he was released. But in October 1996 Supreme Court Chief Judge Soerjono stunned legal opinion by cancelling the release order. Pakpahan now has to serve the full sentence. Worse, he faces subversion charges in relation to the 27 July 1996 Jakarta events.

About 10:30 pm on August 13, 1994, I was arrested by the police and taken to the Medan Detention Centre. There I was received by Lieutenants Sibeua and Purba. I was ordered to take off my shirt, trousers and watch and leave my bag there. I was then ordered to put on a dark blue prison shirt, number 042. I was not permitted to take any books with me, nor was I permitted to take any writing materials and I had to leave my shoes and sandals behind as well.

I tried to negotiate about this and asked if I could be permitted to just take some books with me. Eventually I was allowed to take in the following books:

1. The Bible and some daily meditations and spiritual guides.
2. Dili Massacre Lies Exposed by George Aditjondro.
3. The Indonesia Business Library by Richard I. Mann.
4. Nonviolent Conflict Strategy by Peter Ackermann and Christopher Kruegler.

When the iron door of the Detention Centre was opened and I was invited to go in, for a moment I called out to the Lord Jesus: 'Strengthen me in this time of trial. I am here in Your Name, struggling for the sake of the lowly. Do not forsake me.' I passed through the iron gate of the Detention Centre with a feeling of strength and an iron will.

When I entered the Detention Centre wearing a uniform printed 'Detainee of the Principal Detention Centre, Medan - Number 042' all the detainees inside lined up in the central hallway and said 'Good evening, Pak Muchtar, and welcome!' I returned the greeting and was immediately taken to Block C, where I became an inmate. The other prisoners soon surrounded me. I knew one of them, Pinta Tarigan, a former classmate from the Law Faculty at North Sumatra University, Medan.

This was to be my new life, jammed in, stinking and musty. Many of my friends' clothes had not been washed for a long time and many of them had not cleaned their teeth for a long time either. What was clear was that my head was starting to get dizzy and my nose was running like a tap.

At midnight the warders snarled and pounded on the doors and called out 'roll call', until everyone spilled out into the hallway and the detainees shouted out their number in turn: 'Block C - one, two, three, etc....21'. Then the warders called out 'Right Turn!' and they went back into the block. I followed this tensely and my head felt it was going to burst.

Then I went to the bed, opened the HKBP church's book of daily meditations. It was taken from Isaiah: 'O Lord, I am oppressed, be thou my security'. But I could not read it properly because my insides were in turmoil and my head was still dizzy.

There was one thing which pleased me. My fellow detainees were making a space for me. They were all being very kind and several amongst them repeatedly called out 'I have been spiritually uplifted to meet with the Father of us all.'

One night I could not sleep at all. Besides the dizziness in my head and my running nose my body burned with a fever. At 6.00 am 'Roll call, roll call' was called out by the warder. I joined in the lineup and C Block counted out 'one, two, three...21'. This was followed by an oath which everybody said together:

Then we were ordered to reenter our respective detention blocks.

At around 1.00 pm I noticed two warders entering Block C and everybody went quiet and was scared to death. Without warning the warders bashed up three detainees. I saw it with my own eyes, so I asked: 'What did you do that for?'. 'New prisoners,' they replied.

Apparently it is a tradition that every new inmate should be done over by the warders. There were four shifts of warders, so the new inmates were done over four times. My blood boiled wanting to fight back.

Before breakfast, the prison doctor came to perform a physical examination. He gave me a prescription following which I asked to meet with Sumarty, the Treasurer of the SBSI labour union, who happened to be in Medan. When he appeared in front of the iron bars of my cell I asked the commandant of the guards, Rinaldi, if my prescription could be brought in by Sumarty. Instead he got angry and replied that 'all prisoners are the same.' My blood boiled and I slapped him while I called out 'I am a special person here! Get it! Police are shit! Police are dogs!'

My friend told me, three times a day every day we had to get the money ready depending on which shift of guards was on duty. Breakfast money. Lunch money. Dinner money. Drink money. Strategy money and room money. The strategy money was given to the guard on the night shift so we were not punished. The room money was given to the lunch time guard - Rp 3,000 per person if you had a guest as well as door money which you had to pay up front. Anybody who had family visitors and did not pay door money got thrashed, as happened to a prisoner named Duha on Friday, August 26, 1994.

My heart bled because of this brutal exploitation. But I gradually came to understand the root of the problem. On one occasion at 2.00 am I went outside the block into a small alley in the detention centre and saw a guard asleep on a chair. After this occasion I asked several amongst them for a few answers. They had been paid the same low salaries for a period of ten years. They received Rp 240,000 per month (AU$130) and there was no daily transport or meal allowance for working every day. That still had to be taken from their monthly salary, leaving very little for their families in my opinion, while they had great responsibilities.

On Tuesday, August 16, my spirits rose. Around midday I was called to go to Lieutenant Purba's room. I met my beloved wife there together with Abdul Aziz, an attorney from the Legal Aid Institute in Medan. We embraced and she encouraged me. I asked how the children were and she told me they were fine and she passed on three letters from my three children. When I read the letters the tears just poured down my cheeks.

(Pakpahan was later moved to the jail in Medan, where conditions were a little better.)

What is interesting is that that afternoon as well as receiving visitors I met the 'subversive convicted criminal' Iwan Dukun.

In the city of Medan, Iwan Dukun is famous as the leader of a gang of thugs. However, he is quite a wealthy thug. He was sentenced to 13 years jail for subversion. He was convicted of financing the Acehnese separatists the government calls Security Disturbing Gangs (GPK), but who prefer to be known as the Free Aceh Movement.

He himself denied it. On several occasions he had actually helped pay the Indonesian Armed Forces during an operation to destroy the separatists. This was also confirmed by the hatred which a number of GPK leaders nursed towards him. They even said that this Iwan Dukun was once on a GPK Aceh hit list. I decided this character had been framed, but why?

From the way he spoke I concluded that he had been involved in a quarrel with a lieutenant-colonel in the Number 1 Military District Command who had the authority to make trouble. There was a rivalry between them in commerce and women. So this Iwan Dukun was set up as a source of funds for the GPK.

The witness who gave the evidence that Iwan Dukun had given financial assistance to the GPK was tampered with. In order to get a confession he was detained in the Gaperta Detention Centre and tortured. All the evidence which was obtained from him was bashed out of him with a rattan cane or a consequence of him being stuffed into a drum full of water for a night and put into a pool full of leeches.

Today, Monday, 19 September, 1994, was my day in court. I know justice in my case was like a scene from a play, where I would respond like an actor being forced to do this or that. I went outside the block and greeted all the inmates, asking them to pray for me.

We left at 8:30 am. This was the protocol for the trip to court. In front were six motor cycles led by the Chief. Behind was a sedan patrol car unit followed by the Prosecutors' vehicle carrying the detainee. Inside were two policemen and a person dressed in civilian clothes.

Following our car were yet another six cars including the car of my attorney, Siburian, and dozens of motor cycles. Our vehicle was a Jeep Taft. Police Major Panjang sat beside the driver, while in the back seat I sat in the middle between Prosecutor Manik on my left and Prosecutor Henry on my right.

Our group sped past the Sunggal market, through Jalan Gatot Subroto and Jalan Gajah Mada, entered Jalan Diponegoro and eventually reached the courthouse. The trip was uninterrupted, but the police were monitoring on their walky talkies, and lots of people showed interest along the road.

On arrival out the front of the courthouse it was quite noisy and the crowd chased after the car with the detainees in it. These were journalists and a TV crew. I said a prayer to strengthen me and ask for the Lord to be beside me, all this in His Holy Name.

On getting out of the car I was flanked by two tall police officers, J. Butar-Butar and Binsar P. (Pakpahan). It felt as if my feet were not treading on the ground. Journalists who tried to take a picture and greet me were rudely shoved aside. I heard 'Long live Muchtar Pakpahan!'

As soon as I went into the Tanjung Gusta Medan Jail I noticed several people inside who were cripples. If it wasn't a problem with the right leg it was a problem with the left leg. As a consequence of my questioning they all said it was caused by the police who had arrested them. I had encountered the same thing in the Detention Centre. There were more than twenty cripples in the Jail and the Detention Centre together.

The way in which they experienced this was always the same. After they were arrested they were taken to the Medan-Belawan Toll Road or to the Helvetiah Golf Links. The police would take them and order them to run away. Because they knew what would happen to them none of them wanted to run away. If they refused the following negotiations would ensue:

The police would say 'unless you pay us not to we will shoot this bullet into your right leg.' The price would vary between Rp 350,000 and Rp 1,000,000 per bullet. If they could pay, their leg was not shot. On the other hand, if they could not afford to pay their leg was shot full of all the bullets in the pistol. The number of shots usually varied between one and six.

After they had been shot they were usually operated on at Pirngadi Hospital, certainly under police supervision. There they were done over again. The Elang Room was also considered 'the room of hell', it was a special clinic for suspects. When the victims could not pay the amount of money the police had asked for they would be tortured. They were ordered to drink infected water, drink their own urine, or had their wounds seared with carbolic acid. Some had their leg broken or their ankle dislocated.

I asked the police why this happened, and they replied that the prisoners were shot to teach them a lesson because they were hardened recidivists.

Indeed I discovered it was true that almost all who had been shot had been recidivists. Their crimes were generally armed robbery and theft. There were also two victims who were not recidivists but who had had problems with the Chinese. Their problems originated with Chinese shopkeepers. One of them was called Alexam Hasibuan.

Muchtar Pakpahan was born in Pematang Siantar in December 1953. He has a postgraduate degree in law from the University of Indonesia (1989), and has taught law at Nommensen University in Medan and at two private universities in Jakarta. He has been involved with legal aid since the early 1980s, and has been chairman of the SBSI since 1992. He and his wife Rosintan Marpaung have three children. David Williams was the translator.

Inside Indonesia 49: Jan-Mar 1997