2018 ASIA DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD : ACCEPTANCE SPEECH FROM GUSDURIAN NETWORK INDONESIA

When my father, president Abdurrahman Wahid of Indonesia, or Gus Dur as we fondly call him, passed away on Dec 30 2009, millions of Indonesians and many around the globe mourned him. His grave was never short of people paying tribute or just praying for him. Nine years after he passed away, 3,000 people to 15,000 people every day visits his grave. We mourned him, but the real mourning for me came one day in 2010 as I sat comfortably in a coffee shop in a mall. I received a short message about an Ahmadi village being attacked by Islamist hardliners. I immediately sought out contacts inside the village and local activists networks to go straight to the place. And for the whole day, I worked from 500km away to assist those under attacks.