Johannes Cornelis Princen, 76; Indonesian Human Rights Activist
Johannes Cornelis Princen, 76, a former Dutch colonial soldier who became one of Indonesia’s leading human rights activists, died Friday in his Jakarta home of a stroke, family members said.
Princen, who had been bedridden since 1998 when he suffered an earlier stroke, served as a soldier in the colonial army that fought to reoccupy the archipelago, then known as the Dutch East Indies, after the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II.
Although Princen was awarded Indonesia’s highest military award, he soon fell out with the country’s founding President Sukarno over the government’s persecution of political opponents. He was imprisoned from 1962 to 1964.
After 1965, when a military dictatorship led by Gen. Suharto overthrew the civilian government, Princen was jailed several times on charges of organizing illegal political protests.
He headed the Institute for Defense of Human Rights, which handled many high-profile human rights cases during the Suharto dictatorship.
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