From the Liu Institute of the UBC, Vancouver

From beautiful complex of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, during the two-day workshop on Historical Memory, I found interesting encounters;



"You are so lucky that you can still use your local dialect to express your feeling and thought. We lost mine, and forced to speak the language of the alien, English, French or Spanish..." The First Nations representative at the workshop shares with us their concern on the fact that their culture as an Aboriginal peoples of Canada has been eliminated.




















A woman colleague from South Africa said to me, "TRC is still very far from successful. There are still so many unfinished businesses. More problems even more worrying than during the Apartheid regime". I believe this statement as very valid. She is working on the historical archives during and after the Apartheid.

In the morning of May 26, I congratulated a Croat colleague for the arrest of Bosnian Serbia war criminal Ratko Mladic. She said, "Yes Mugi, I am very happy today. Our long struggles achieved one of their objective. Justice will prevail!"

Well, more than that, I was able to walk through the UBC campus, crossing North West Drive into the Trail 6 of the Wreck Beach. It was about to sunset and day turned dark. The end of Spring is just like its beginning, freezing. I did not really see the nude beach (where clothing is optional) in detail. But from a distance, in the darkness, I saw a girl posing under the camera blitz..





The other good thing, however is that I was able to enjoy the beautiful Stanley Park at downtown Vancouver, and see the Beluga at the Vancouver Aquarium!

To share and learn to fight against forgetting

I will be sharing and learning in a workshop on May 25-26 at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada with other experts and practitioners on the works on human rights and historical memory in post-conflicts and post-authoritarian situation. Participants from Latin America,Africa, Asia and the host Canada will share theirs.

It must be a very interesting and useful experience. But a two-day workshop is just too short!

The Dictator was finally overthrown

Today 13 years ago, Indonesian dictator, Supreme General Soeharto was overthrown. Not by the popular movement, foreign pressure nor the domestic political rivalry among elites. He was overthrown by the combination of them all. No one liked Soeharto anymore.

But overthrowing Soeharto was not enough. It was never enough. What was more crucial was, what came next after Soeharto? Where will Indonesia go? What kind of leadership and political system Indonesia should have? Who will lead and continue the "reform" movement? How Soeharto and his cronies should be treated? And so many more questions to answer.

That was what I had in mind exactly 13 years ago, when I was still inside the detention centre of Jakarta Metropolitan Police. One other question for me personally was, whether I will be freed after the fall of the dictatorship.

Now, 13 years later, I have some small assessments and reflections.
I do believe and enjoy that there have been so many changes and improvements, as compared to the previous authoritarian rule of General Soeharto. But not to be mislead, I would prefer to compare the current regime to those countries with democratic rules, and most importantly with the demands and expectation of the vast majority of the people. This way, I oppose the way Indobarometer findings...

The current government SHOULD WORK VERY MUCH HARDER, not for they political groups today or for 2014, but for Indonesia as a nation, for generations to come...