to determine how their land will be developed and
how profits from that development will be distrib-
uted. In this work, SUARAM has formed coalitions
with such organizations as SIRD (Strategy Info
Research Development) to draw attention to issues
of urbanization, indigenous people’s rights, and
environmental justice in Malaysia, concentrating in
particular on the Sungai Selangor Dam project and
its displacement of the Temuan peoples from their
native villages. The movement to protect land and
culture from development projects intersects with
SUARAM’s central focus, the protest against
Malaysia’s ISA (Internal Security Act) which was
recently invoked against demonstrators supporting
Ibrahim Anwar and numerous other activists since
that time.
In Indonesia, activists offer another alternative to
the “Asian values” paradigm through their focus
on developing processes for “transitional justice”
based on the model of South Africa’s Truth and
Reconciliation programs. Efforts toward truth and
reconciliation are linked to aspects of postcolonial
dissent, in that they seek intersections between the
binarized narratives of victim and perpetrator, and
cultivate relationships between people from a vari-
ety of ethnic and religious backgrounds to draw out
broad, liberating truths. These efforts expand upon
postcolonial theory in their advocation of a hybrid
form of justice that draws from multiple legal sys-
tems and results not in punishment but accounta-
bility and healing. Many activists in Indonesia at
present are committed to this approach as perhaps
the only means of facing the future in the wake of
40 years of severe violence and oppression that is
yet unabated.
Efforts toward “truth seeking” came to the fore
with the work of TRK (Tim Relawan Kemanu-
siaan, Volunteers for humanity), an assemblage of
rights workers from a variety of NGOs and other
organizations, and multiple religious and ethnic
backgrounds that targets its efforts at major flash-
points of ethnic and gender violence in Indonesia.
TRK began its work by supporting the efforts of
student and other demonstrators at the height of
the struggle against the Suharto regime. After the
riots of 1998, the TRKP (the Violence against
women division of the TRK) collected data on the
victims of the mass rapes against Chinese women in
several Indonesian cities, and publicized the events
in an effort to force the accountability of the Indo-
nesian military. Using the discourse of the interna-
tional women’s movement, the TRKP argued that
the rapes were “crimes against humanity,” not
just “anti-Chinese” violence (Budianta 2003, 163).
TRK’s efforts led to the establishment of the674 postcolonial dissent
Komnas Perempuan (National commission on vio-
lence against women), which is currently involved
in an initiative to map and document violence
against women throughout Indonesia (Farid and
Simarmatra 2004, 24). Recently, TRK has set up
field offices in Aceh, Maluku, and East Timor
(Timor Larosae) and works to distribute medicines
and help displaced peoples while collecting in-
formation for investigations of human rights viola-
tions. Along with TRK, several organizations have
been working on the collection of testimonies and
oral histories from the 1965–6 violence that brought
ex-president Suharto (1966–98) to power, including
JKB (Jaringan Kerja Budaya, Cultural network)
and ELSAM (Lembaga Studi dan Advokasi Masya-
rakat, Institute for policy research and advocacy).
Despite the government’s slow progress in the
establishment of a truth and reconciliation commis-
sion in Indonesia, the activists at these organiza-
tions are continuing to prepare for the opportunity
to revisit past injustices in order to “forgive but not
forget.”Postcolonial dissent and
Muslim feminism
In response to the “Islamization” of social and
legal systems through increased influence of Islamic
law over civil law, women in Malaysia formed the
organization known as Sisters In Islam. Since its
inception in 1998, Sisters in Islam has taken an
inclusive approach to its discussions of the relation-
ship between mosque and state, incorporating the
views of Muslim scholars and members of Islamic
organizations with or without political affiliations,
as well as lawyers schooled in civil law, journalists,
academics, and activists. The organization’s incep-
tion was transnational in scope, incorporating
many of the ideas in circulation throughout the
Islamic world, including those of African American
theologian Amina Wadud, who was at that time
teaching at the International Islamic University in
Kuala Lumpur. A group of interested women schol-
ars studied Wadud’s concept of Islamic hermeneu-
tics, which distinguish those elements that “are
universal and eternal” from those that refer to “the
cultural and historical specificities of seventh-cen-
tury Arabia” (Anwar 2001, 229). Since that time,
co-founders Zainah Anwar and Norani Othman
have written for Malaysian and international audi-
ences about their organization’s efforts to include
all of the ummaor Islamic community (men and
women) in “female inclusive” readings of Islamic
texts, drawing upon insights developed by Muslim
feminists working in national and international
contexts, including Pakistani American writer Riffat