The Economist - USA (2022-06-11)

The Economist June 11th 2022 Culture 83

Plasticsurgery

Thegooddoctor

W

henyouthinkofplasticsurgery,you

probablyimaginethecosmetickind.

AccordingtotheAmericanSocietyofPlas­

ticSurgeons,Americanswentunderthe

knife2.3mtimesin 2020 foraestheticrea­

sons: the most common procedures

included rhinoplasties (ie, nose jobs),

blepharoplasties (eyelid surgery), facelifts,

liposuction  and  breast  augmentations.

Non­surgical  interventions,  particularly

injectable dermal fillers, have also prolifer­

ated  in  recent  years.  Such  beautifying  ef­

forts  have  a  long  history.  Texts  from  an­

cient Egypt and India describe some early

attempts at reshaping noses.

“The  Facemaker”,  a  new  book,  looks  at

the  other  aspect  of  plastic  surgery—that

which focuses on reconstruction, in many

cases  after  trauma.  Lindsey  Fitzharris,  a

medical  historian,  describes  the  pioneer­

ing work done by Harold Gillies in the early

20th century. The powerful weaponry used

in the first world war, including shells, gre­

nades, mortar bombs and automatic guns,

killed  millions  of  men.  It  maimed  many

others: as Ms Fitzharris notes, “before the

war  was  over,  280,000  men  from  France,

Germany  and  Britain  alone  would  suffer

some form of facial trauma.” Such injuries

TheFacemaker:AVisionarySurgeon’s

BattletoMendtheDisfiguredSoldiersof

WorldWarI.ByLindseyFitzharris.Farrar,

StrausandGiroux; 336 pages;$23.99.Allen

Lane;£20

Indonesia

In the shadows

W

riters about Indonesian politics
findthemselvesdrawnirresistiblyto
comparisonstoJavaneseshadow­puppet­
ry,andthenotionofthedalang, theall­
powerful puppet­master, manipulating
everythingfrombehindthescreen. The
habitbecameingrainedduringthe32­year
dictatorshipofSuharto,forwhoseruling
methodsitwasanexcellentmetaphor.He
toleratedtheappearanceofpoliticalcom­
petition,butonlysolongashecouldcon­
trolthe outcome.Nearly aquarter ofa
century after his downfall in 1998, the
Indonesiandeepstatehecreatedendures.
Theimageryhasnotgrownstale.
ThemetaphorrecursthroughoutMatt
Easton’saccountoftheeffortstobringto
justicethekillersofMunir,aprominent
human­rightsactivistmurderedbyarsenic
poisoningin 2004 whileflyingtotheNeth­
erlandsforacourseofstudy.Thelikely
poisonerwasidentifiedfairlyquickly,and
eventuallyconvicted.Hewasfreedfrom
prisonin2014,afterservingeightyearsofa
14­yearsentence,anddiedofcovid­19in
2020.Butdespiteyearsofpoliceinvestiga­
tionsandspecialcommissionsofinquiry,
andintensiveeffortsbyMunir’ssuppor­
ters—notablyhisheroicwidow,Suciwati—
andnotwithstandingpersuasiveevidence

that the killing was at the behest of Indone­

sia’s  security  services,  nobody  has  been

brought to justice for having planned or or­

dered the murder.

The  book  reads  like  a  gripping  legal­

procedural  whodunnit,  as  evidence  is

slowly unearthed from telephone records,

lost documents are retrieved from deleted

computer  files  and  intriguing  new

witnesses  emerge.  As  fiction  the  story

would  be  profoundly  unsatisfying,  be­

cause it has no ending. As recent history, it

is meticulous and moving.

The legal process, for all the vigour with

which  Munir’s  supporters  pursue  justice,

ends  in  near­farce.  Even  the  prosecutors

find it expedient to present the murder as

an apparently motiveless personal vendet­

ta,  undermining  the  subsequent  prosecu­

tion of an alleged instigator. In that trial, a

number of witnesses withdraw their earli­

er evidence; the courtroom is packed with

thuggish supporters of the accused senior

intelligence  officer,  their  cheers  and  jeers

going  mostly  unrebuked  by  the  judges.

After the acquittal, many of those who had

worked hard on the case find their careers

blighted. At least five people connected to

it die in mysterious circumstances.

Munir made his name as a campaigner

and  investigator  during  the  unrest  at  the

tail­end of the Suharto era, when a number

of  activists  were  abducted,  some  never  to

be seen again. His efforts to bring those re­

sponsible  to  account  were  as  fruitless  as

those to apportion blame for the cataclys­

mic bloodletting across Indonesia that ac­

companied Suharto’s rise to power in 1965­

66.  Never  having  faced  up  to  this  mass
    slaughter, Indonesia still suffers its conse­
    quences.  The  thugs  who  commandeered
    the  courtroom  were  from  a  group  that
    emerged in 1965.
    Munir  was  killed  in  the  dying  days  of

the presidency of Megawati Sukarnoputri,

a  former  leader  of  the  lacklustre  opposi­

tion to Suharto. Two supposedly reformist

successors—Susilo  Bambang  Yudhoyono,

a former general, and Joko Widodo, a busi­

nessman  and  city  mayor—have  failed  to

provide the political leadership that might

have emboldened the judiciary to bring the

case  to  a  conclusion.  Instead  they  have

promoted  and  relied  on  those  implicated

in Suharto­era atrocities.

Reflecting  on  this,  Mr  Easton  aptly  re­

fers to “The Leopard”, Giuseppe Tomasi di

Lampedusa’s  novel  of  political  ferment  in

19th­century  Sicily,  and  its  nobleman’s  la­

ment: “If we want things to stay as they are,

things  will  have  to  change.”  The  Indone­

sian elite, he notes, had made the same cal­

culation. What seemed like a revolution in

1998 did not transform power structures; it

preserved  them,  and  the  cultureofimpu­

nity that protects the puppeteers.n

We Have Tired of Violence: A True Story

of Murder, Memory and the Fight for

Justice in Indonesia. By Matt Easton. New

Press; 341 pages; $27.99

Rallying cries