I’m blind. Indonesian justice isn’t: acid attack graft-buster Novel Baswedan
Sixteen months ago, thugs threw a vial of hydrochloric acid into the face of the country’s leading anti-corruption investigator. So why aren’t Indonesian police taking his case seriously?
ONE MORNING IN April last year, Novel Baswedan, Indonesia’s leading anti-corruption investigator, was walking home after praying at his local mosque in North Jakarta. He heard a noise behind him, turned his head, and had a vial of hydrochloric acid thrown into his face.
At first, he thought the liquid might be water. But then came the burning sensation, and the realisation that – not for the first time – he had been attacked by unknown assailants. Baswedan was rushed to hospital in Jakarta and then transferred to Singapore, where he would spend months having surgery to save his sight. He still bears the scars of the attack in his heavily repaired left eye, turned white by the process.
“I have undergone five major operations on my left eye and now I have vision, even though my field of vision is limited, very narrow,” he said this week. “More surgeries are still needed.”
Yet more than a year after the incident, despite the huge publicity and a police investigation involving 167 officers, his attackers have still not been officially identified, much less brought to justice.
Baswedan, 41, has no doubt that the attack was connected to his role in the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), the Indonesian anti-graft watchdog, where he has only recently returned to work.
