Death of lawyer fighting Chinese-funded Indonesian dam casts shadow over project
- Golfrid Siregar was a fierce opponent of the controversial hydroelectric power plant being built deep in the Sumatran rainforest
- Environmental activists claim the project, which many see as unnecessary, endangers the habitat of the unique Tapanuli orangutan
In Indonesia, environmental activism can be a risky business. Golfrid Siregar knew that. His wife, Resmi Barimbing, knew it, too. Last year, Siregar would tell Barimbing it was no longer safe in the port city of Medan, where since 2016 he had worked as a lawyer for the largest environmental organisation in the Southeast Asian archipelago.
“Don’t go too far from home,” she recalls him warning her one day last autumn, not long before Siregar was found lying unconscious, gravely injured beside his motorcycle on the side of the road. Three strangers loaded him into a pedicab and took him to the Mitra Sejati Hospital, but Siregar never woke up, and three days later, on October 6, he died.
North Sumatra Police filed the incident as a traffic accident, citing the Batam City native for driving under the influence, having found traces of alcohol in his stomach. For Siregar’s wife and fellow activists, shock gave way to incredulity. Seeing his wounds in the intensive care unit and the state of his clothes, things did not add up. They knew he was not a heavy drinker, and would never have driven drunk. Why was his head so battered, one of his eyes bruised, but the rest of his body untouched? Why was he not, as he always would have been, wearing his helmet? Why did he have mud on his trousers if he crashed on a paved road? Why did his motorcycle show so little damage, and the asphalt no signs of skidding?
Four days after Siregar’s death, a coalition of human-rights NGOs issued a statement calling for an independent investigation, on suspicions Siregar had been murdered. Later that month, coalition member Amnesty International wrote an open letter to Indonesian President Joko Widodo, saying they “presumed [Siregar] was killed, it wasn’t an accident”, pointing to the “incongruous details” in the case.
“As his wife, I suspect he was murdered,” wrote Barimbing in a statement to Post Magazine. “I suspect that his death had something to do with his work as a human-rights and environmental activist.” Aside from her now being a widow, Siregar, not yet 40 years old, also “left behind a young child”.
Police closed their investigation in late November, less than two months after Siregar’s death. His employer, Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia (Walhi; the Indonesian Forum for the Environment), says authorities failed to provide it with the full autopsy results or accident analysis, after a year of requests.