We Have Tired of Violence: A True Story of Murder, Memory, and the Fight for Justice in Indonesia

(Hardback)

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Named a Best Book of the Year by The Economist

A chilling work of true crime about the midair murder of a human rights activist, set against a riveting political drama in the worlds fourth-largest nation

On a warm Jakarta night in September 2004, Munir said goodbye to his wife and friends at the airport. He was bound for the Netherlands to pursue a masters degree in human rights. But Munir never reached Amsterdam alive. Before his plane touched down, the thirty-eight-year-oldone of the leading human rights activists of his generationlay dead in the fourth row.

Munirs daring investigation of the killings and abductions that occurred over three decades of authoritarian rule by the former president, Suharto, had earned him powerful enemies. Undeterred, Munirs wife, Suciwati, and his close friend, Usman Hamid, launched their own investigation. They soon uncovered a conspiracy involving spies, a mysterious co-pilot, threats of violence and black magic, and deadly poison.

Drawing on interviews, courtroom observation, leaked documents, and police files, this book uncovers the dramatic murder plot and the titanic struggle to bring the perpetrators of Munirs death to justice. Just as Patrick Radden Keefes Say Nothing did for Northern Ireland, We Have Tired of Violence tells the story of a shocking crime that serves as a window into a captivating land still struggling to shake off a terrible legacy.

Reviews

Praise for We Have Tired of Violence:
By exhuming the crimes motives and actors and reconstructing the convoluted trials that followed, Easton also sheds light on why so many democratic institutions remain weak in post-Suharto Indonesiaand why one of the worlds biggest democracies remains so haunted by its violent past.
Foreign Affairs

[We Have Tired of Violence] reads like a gripping legal-procedural whodunnit, as evidence is slowly unearthed from telephone records, lost documents are retrieved from deleted computer files and intriguing new witnesses emerge. . . . As recent history, it is meticulous and moving.
The Economist

Matt Eastons We Have Tired of Violence is a detailed, carefully told treatment of [Munirs murder] drawing on substantial research.
TLS

Human rights researcher Easton debuts with a chilling account of the 2004 assassination of Indonesian attorney Munir Said Thalib. . . . Easton lucidly unravels the complex history behind the murder and shines a well-deserved spotlight on and how tirelessly Munirs wife and friends have worked to expose the truth. This harrowing account unearths the insidious legacy of authoritarian regimes.
Publishers Weekly

With a meticulously detailed and accurate reconstruction of the events of Munirs murder, We Have Tired of Violence charts the activists resistance to the authoritarian regime. A must-read for those interested in Indonesia, as well as the global fight for human rights.
Leila Chudori, journalist and author of the novel The Sea Speaks His Name

It is rare that a book about recent events is able to bring together the personal and political, the human and historical, into such a moving and coherent account. Post-Suharto Indonesia is a complicated, contradictory, and confounding story, which Matt Easton has explained expertly and in vivid detail. We Have Tired of Violence is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand modern Indonesia.
Brad Adams, Asia Director, Human Rights Watch

A gripping, meticulously researched whodunnit, We Have Tired of Violence is a monument to the heroism of Munir and his friendsperhaps the only monument Indonesias finest human rights campaigner will have.
Gerry van Klinken, professor emeritus of Southeast Asian Social and Economic History at the University of Amsterdam

It is so important to have this kind of narrative: how one mans history crosses with the history of a nation. The idealism that cost Munir his life provides a lesson, from a very great and humble man, about the struggle for humanity.
Seno Gumira Ajidarma, writer, journalist, and author of the novel Jazz, Perfume & the Incident

Author Bio

Matt Easton is a writer and a human rights researcher and advocate. The author of We Have Tired of Violence: A True Story of Murder, Memory, and the Fight for Justice in Indonesia (The New Press), he has lived and worked in Indonesia, Timor-Leste, India, and Zimbabwe and now resides in New York.