Fatia Maulidiyanti
Fatia Maulidiyanti is a woman human rights defender and the Coordinator of the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (KontraS), a prominent human rights organization in Indonesia established in 1998. She has been involved in various civil society movements since she was in the university, namely student press, working on various human rights issues such as death penalty, business and human rights, unfair trial, human rights defenders and human rights in conflict. She is also the founder of a book donation community for death-row inmates called Books For Tomorrow.
Since Indonesia’s transition to democracy, the role of human rights defenders has been of particular importance. The country’s record of its treatment of human rights defenders has been floundering, including ongoing surveillance and harassment, restrictions on the freedom of expression and freedom of religion, gender- specific violations against woman HRDs, judicial harassment including criminal defamation suits, stigmatisation, arbitrary arrest, ill-treatment, torture, forced disappearances and killings. Impunity in cases of murders of HRDs and grave human rights violations continue to thrive.
