We Have Tired of Violence

A work of true crime about the death of a human rights activist and a window into one of the world's most complex developing nations On a warm Indonesian night in September 2004, Munir Said Thalib said goodbye to his wife and a carload of friends at Sukarno-Hatta Airport in Jakarta, bound for a year in the Netherlands. But before his plane touched down, one of the greatest human rights activists of his generation lay dead in the fourth row. Munir's wife, Suci, and his close friend, Usman Hamid, had no faith in the police and they launched their own investigation. They would soon uncover a conspiracy involving spies, a mysterious co-pilot, and deadly poison. The unfolding story also reveals the incredible details of a brief and heroic life and a nation living with the ghosts of a violent past. Drawing on interviews with the key actors, firsthand courtroom observation, interrogation records, confidential State Department cables, and Indonesian intelligence documents, globetrotting human rights activist Matt Easton uncovers for the first time the dramatic murder plot and the titanic struggle to bring the perpetrators of Munir's death to justice. As Patrick Radden Keefe's Say Nothing did for Northern Ireland, this book tells the story of a crime that is also the story of a remarkable country coming to terms with a terrible legacy.