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"Andreas Harsono is not well known to the public but he is very well known among a small network of human rights activists, dissident scholars, Indonesian journalists, and foreign correspondents. He is often the fixer behind their stories – unacknowledged, unassuming, unselfish. Now he has shown just what a superb chronicler he is in his own right."

Clinton Fernandes of University of New South Wales University

on Andreas Harsono's book Race, Islam and Power

Andreas Harsono meliput dampak dari tsunami 2014 di Aceh. Ombak raksasa tersebut membunuh lebih 100,000 orang dan mengakhiri perang selama tiga dekade antara Gerakan Acheh Merdeka dan Indonesia lewat perjanjian damai Helsinki pada Agustus 2015. ©Hotli Simanjuntak

Media dan Jurnalisme

Saya pernah bekerja sebagai wartawan The Jakarta Post, The Nation (Bangkok) dan The Star (Kuala Lumpur) serta majalah Pantau (Jakarta) soal media dan jurnalisme. Saya suka menulis soal jurnalisme, mulai dari sejarah sebuah majalah mahasiswa di Salatiga sampai kebebasan pers di Asia Tenggara. Bill Kovach, guru jurnalisme, mendidik saya buat menjadi wartawan ketika belajar di Universitas Harvard.

Buku dan Laporan

Saya menerbitkan dua antologi –Jurnalisme Sastrawi (2005) bersama Budi Setiyono dan “Agama” Saya Adalah Jurnalisme (2011)—serta beberapa laporan termasuk Prosecuting Political Aspiration: Indonesia’s Political Prisoners (2010), In Religion’s Name: Abuses Against Religious Minorities in Indonesia (2013) serta "I Wanted to Run Away": Abusive Dress Codes for Women and Girls in Indonesia (2021). Pada 2019, buku Race, Islam and Power terbit.

Hak Asasi Manusia

Sejak 2008, saya bekerja sebagai peneliti buat Human Rights Watch. Ia membuat saya banyak menulis soal diskriminasi terhadap minoritas agama di Indonesia: minoritas dalam Islam termasuk Ahmadiyah dan Syiah; minoritas non-Islam termasuk Protestan, Katholik, Buddha, Hindu dan Khong Hu Chu; minoritas agama kecil maupun agama baru macam Millah Abraham. 

Minoritas gender --termasuk perempuan serta LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer)-- juga sering saya bahas. Secara geografis saya juga banyak menulis minoritas etnik macam Aceh, Kalimantan, Jawa, Maluku, Timor serta Papua.

Perjalanan

Saya pernah jalan dari Sabang sampai Merauke, dari Miangas sampai Rote, lebih dari 80 lokasi, selama tiga tahun. Saya menulis tempat menarik. Saya juga sering menulis perjalanan di negeri jauh, dari Eropa sampai Amerika, praktis berbagai kota besar di Asia Tenggara. 

Cerita

Pengalaman hidup, dari kegembiraan sampai kesedihan, dari kawan sampai adik. Saya selalu tinggal di Pulau Jawa --Jember, Lawang, Malang, Salatiga, dan Jakarta-- namun pernah bermukim di Phnom Penh dan Cambridge, dekat Boston. Kedua anak saya lahir di Jakarta. Isteri saya, Sapariah Saturi, kelahiran Pontianak, pindah ke Jakarta buat bekerja. Mungkin kawan saya di luar Indonesia, paling banyak di New York sehingga saya sering berkunjung ke New York maupun kota-kota sekitarnya.

Indonesia’s President Declares Late Dictator Soeharto a ‘National Hero’

Whitewashing History Undermines Efforts to Bring Justice for Victims

Andreas Harsono

Indonesia Researcher

Human Rights Watch

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto declared 10 people “national heroes” on November 10, which Indonesia celebrates as Heroes Day. Among them was the late President Soeharto, who ruled Indonesia from 1965 to 1998. 

More than 80 public figures, including historians, have written a letter protesting the “hero” title for Soeharto, who presided over three decades of military dictatorship and systematic human rights violations. 

Soeharto’s rule included media censorship, tight restrictions on freedom of association and assembly, a highly politicized and controlled judiciary, widespread torture, attacks on the rights of minorities, massacres of alleged communists, and numerous war crimes committed in East Timor, Aceh, West Papua, and the Moluccan islands. He also led a notoriously corrupt regime in which he, family members, and cronies amassed billions of dollars in ill-gotten wealth; funds that could have addressed Indonesia’s widespread poverty and social problems.

President Prabowo’s choice of Soeharto as a national hero sends a deeply troubling message to Indonesians and to the rest of the world. Prabowo has been implicated in serious human rights violations and war crimes while a general under Soeharto’s command, and was dismissed from the Indonesian army in 1998 for kidnapping student activists. As president, Prabowo has supported amendments to the 2004 Armed Forces Law that significantly expands the military’s role in civilian governance and weaken legal checks on abusive officers.

Giving a “national hero” award to Soeharto is not without consequence. Soeharto never faced charges for the crimes he oversaw and to date there has been virtually no accountability for the widespread abuses committed during his rule.

The failure to hold Soeharto and his abusive generals to account facilitates the whitewashing and distortion of history that is now taking place under Prabowo. This will make it even harder for Indonesian authorities now, and in the future, to end impunity for serious human rights violations and obtain justice for the victims and their families.