Dinda Nuurannisaa Yura

Dinda Nuur Annisaa Yura is a feminist, and activist from Indonesia. She is now the chairperson of Solidaritas Perempuan (Women’s Solidarity for Human Rights), a feminist organisation working with women grassroots in Indonesia, and one of the APWLD’s members.

APWLD interviewed Dinda in January 2021 and below is her story.

The Indonesian context from a feminist’s perspective

When I first entered the NGO sector, I was a staff member at Solidaritas Perempuan’s Women, Migration, Trafficking, HIV/AIDS programme, and in 2013, I became the head of the division. In 2015 I was elected through member congress as Programme Coordinator of the National Executive Body. Since 2019, I have been serving as the elected Chairperson of Solidaritas Perempuan (SP) in Indonesia.

When I was in middle school, I learned about the tragedy of the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–1966. It was a coup and a mass killing of alleged Communist Party members. That was the first time I was exposed to societal issues. My personal experience led me to learn more about women’s issues. I asked questions about women’s ‘fate’ as victims, exploited and abused. In college, I took a course on women and law.

After graduation, I worked as a journalist for one year. I had the opportunity to learn more about women’s issues. I joined Solidaritas Perempuan in November 2010. By then, I had developed a deeper understanding of feminism, understanding that it is not just about gender equality, nor is it only about women. Feminism is also about unjust power structures.

Joko Widodo (Jokowi) became our president in 2014 and was supported by civil society. He appeared to be pro-civil society, but in actuality, a lot of his policies work against us. Some civil society groups became indecisive regarding their position toward the government. On one hand, the space seemed to be available, as we were able to have a dialogue with the government, especially with the President’s expert team, which consisted of former civil society activists. However, the reality was that the dialogues were never going anywhere, particularly those that related to structural issues and policies.

Several measures were taken by the government, threatening democracy and our basic rights such as freedom of expression. Still, some members of the civil society felt that it was for a good cause. The government dissolved one of the fundamentalist groups in Indonesia, which was good news for women’s groups since fundamentalist groups run anti-feminist campaigns and threaten the women’s movement. However, we knew that if the government were given the power to dissolve this group, it would easily target us.

During Jokowi’s second term from 2019 to the present, there have been many telling incidents, one of which occurred in 2019 when thousands of protesters, many of them students, became victims of police brutality and were arrested. Just in the year 2019, more than 50 people were killed during demonstrations. 

It is the first time since the 1998 reform that the police used unwarranted violence against civilians. Jokowi and the parliament have also compromised the Anti-Corruption Commission’s ability with new laws. Another new law is the Omnibus Law on Job Creation, which abolished the sectoral minimum wage, reduced severance pay, and removed restrictions on outsourcing. Not only impacting labour, this law also facilitates land grabbing in the name of development. It even weakened the requirement of environmental impact assessments for any project. 

Even during the pandemic, the Jokowi Government has used police violence to grab resources from the people.

Advancing structural change in Indonesia

Small-scale and traditional food producers, peasants and fisherfolk, play key roles in Indonesia. Among them, women face the most complex power structures, and they are the priority constituencies of my organisation, Solidaritas Perempuan (SP).

At SP, we aim to see and analyse multiple factors that influence and impact women. We aim to build and strengthen the feminist movement including at grassroots levels, so women grassroots can exercise their initiatives and fight for their rights. Every four years, our congress members come together and strategise our next four-year priority issues.

One of our missions is to fight for Agrarian Justice and Food Sovereignty. We work with fisherfolks and peasants on issues like land grabbing.

Climate Justice is another mission, and it is related to Agrarian Justice. In fact, because all our priority issues are closely interconnected, we tackle these issues all at once. We cannot talk about Climate Justice for women without discussing Agrarian Justice for women peasants.

We also work with women migrant workers. We not only advocate for their rights but also address the root causes—impoverishment, for example—leading to their moving away from home. Many migrants are unaware of the structural roots that cause their hardship, thinking they can change their lives by pushing themselves harder and saving more money. However, the system is not designed to reward hard work. To illustrate, many women from Karawang, Indonesia are driven into migration because the water resource is controlled by the water company, making agricultural irrigation unaffordable. Thus, our work includes raising awareness of the structural roots of their poverty. This is why we advocate for policy change and link our issues to the grander context, neo-colonialism globalisation and privatisation.

Another main issue we prioritise is women’s sexual rights. We focus on changing discriminatory policies. For example, in the conservative Indonesian province of Aceh, consensual sexual relationships, or even being together with the opposite sex, are punishable by public whip under local law. Our national law does not criminalise same-sex relationships or extramarital behaviour like Aceh’s local law do, so we brought the issue to the supreme court. Our appeal was unsuccessful. Till today, we are still advocating for the invalidation of the unjust law.

These are the four major issues SP focuses on. 

A major success of SP is that the grassroots movement has become stronger. Previously, peasant women were not aware of land conflict issues but with SP providing training, and carving out space for discussion and conversations for peasant women, they now actively fight to protect their collective rights. 

In Poso (Central Sulawesi), and Kapuas (Central Kalimantan), the peasants reclaimed some of their lands. It was a small piece of land, kept as a communal tree and vegetable garden. They either consume the produce themselves or sell the produce and contribute the proceeds to their movement. This shows the impact of SP’s continuous work, and I count it as a success. Also, women migrant workers in seven areas covered by SP formed their own group to disseminate information about migrant workers and their rights, as well as advocate migrant’s rights through the local government. 

SP takes on a facilitating role by focusing on movement and capacity building and knowledge production, which is why we are most delighted to see those progress. We build safe spaces for women in communities so they can stay connected, learn from each other, and formulate strategies together. 

Growing together with APWLD

I communicated with APWLD for the first time in 2015 for FLTP (Feminist Legal Theory and Practice) training. Through FLTP, I learned APWLD methods that are being used by SP right now, such as intersectionality games and how to make a statement for that game. But the statement always changes because each time we conduct training, we analyse the background of the participants. For instance, if there is a widow participant or a Communist Party member’s relative, we include content that relates to them. FLTP has helped me understand why and how to criticise policies, and why laws in the book are always different in implementation.

APWLD impressed me a lot with its extensive training methods and activities, and we always use them in our strategic planning. APWLD’s theory of change is easy to understand, and the Anger, Hope, Action framework always awakens me and gives me the power to fight, and to act because we still have hope.

As a membership-driven network, APWLD is always mindful of the needs of its members when designing its programmes, activities, and training. APWLD staff always try to facilitate us. While it may be easier to draft statements and distribute them without consulting members, that is not how APWLD works.

I enjoy my experience in regional and international advocacy together with APWLD, particularly for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). APWLD always tries to make a significant contribution to international and regional events. As an example, I witnessed Women Interrogating Trade & Corporate Hegemony (WITCH) PO intervene at the RCEP multi-stakeholder meeting as well as among the civil society members involved in the forum. The APWLD people always demonstrate full commitment and effort.

As a WITCH POC member

In 2017, I became an organising committee (OC) member of the WITCH programme. WITCH itself is interesting—I mean the name.

It is important to have women’s organisations working on trade issues. In Indonesia, there are only a few women’s organisations that address such issues like free trade agreements, public service privatisations, or even the International Financial Institution. Even at the regional and international levels, it’s hard to find women’s organisations working on trade issues. Working on these issues is not easy—reading the chapters of RCEP is difficult for many organisations.

One thing that made me confident to join WITCH OC was knowing APWLD would respect and give significant space to stories of grassroots experiences. I knew that I probably could not have expertise in all the issues of RCEP, but I could contribute SP’s experience with women farmers, women fisher folks or women urban poor who have been facing the impact of the free trade agreements all these years.

As OC members, we need to contribute more women’s stories. The basic idea behind the WITCH programme is that we are against the current economic and trade system. To support the idea of another world or system, we must collect and document stories and evidence. The world needs an alternative that is more sustainable, fair, and just. It is not only the WITCH programme that contributes to grassroots women, stories from OC members also contribute to our advocacy.

The schedule and workload of OC members have become big challenges for APWLD’s programmes. Because of the protests against the Omnibus Law, for example, I was unable to reply to many emails, not only from the APWLD but also from other regular international networks. The same situation probably occurs in other OCs as well. However, I think APWLD has a mechanism in place with one or two focal persons in each OC. In such a case, the POs could at least continue the process after receiving feedback from the focal person.

It would be nice if we had more learning spaces between the OCs but choosing a time for programme meetings is already difficult. I think it will be more difficult to have more time for collaborative learning. I still have a lot to learn about WITCH issues, even though I am an OC.

Whenever I come in together with APWLD friends, I feel like they are not only like work fellows but also friends. Although we were unable to meet offline during the pandemic, we can feel solidarity during the WITCH programme meetings because we understand each other’s challenges. 

With the pandemic, we face even more challenges. How can we support each other, not only among OC members but also with other APWLD members? And how can we support them not only for regional agendas but also for national ones?

Ways moving forward

In Indonesia, the feminist narrative is dominated by sexuality issues. Meanwhile, there are a lot of women’s struggles coming from the grassroots level. They are fighting for their life and livelihood, for their culture and values, and for the sustainability of the environment. In many of those struggles, women are at the heart of the resistance. We learn from the women’s movement from Kendeng Mountain, the coast of Makassar, and Ogan Ilir. They are seldomly acknowledged as feminist movements, as they do not talk much about body autonomy, but in fact, they are already developing political movements. I think it’s important that we document the stories of various feminists and add intersectionality analysis to those stories. Each organisation can do that, but APWLD is playing a pivotal role.

As for how we can influence other movements like the environmental movement, the agrarian movement, and the labour movement with a feminist perspective, I believe that there are also women in these movements who are interested in learning about feminism and who face obstacles in their work. We can consolidate them.

APWLD plays a very important role in this movement. I hope APWLD keeps its strength, persistence, and militancy so that we can keep our work going and get stronger. Despite our differences, we are all part of the same movement. Please continue and be consistent— that’s a wish from a member of APWLD.