Last November, more than a hundred million people from all over Acheh gathered to participate in SIRA RAKAN (The Mass Rally of the People of Acheh for Peace) which took place in the capital city of Banda Acheh. This rally, organized by Mr. Muhammad Nazar, a chairperson of  SIRA (Central Information for Referendum Acheh), was aimed towards the withdraw of TNI and to appeal to the international society.  He was arrested immediately after the rally under charges of “insulting the government”.

I went to the city prison after being offered to meet Mr. Nazar.  Procedures to meet him were simple and it was not long before he appeared in the waiting room. I had seen Mr. Nazar’s photo in a magazine. It was a photo of him holding the prison bars and glaring fiercely at the camera. When I asked him whether I could take a shot, he held the bars with an equally fierce look without saying a word. Perhaps he had been asked to pose as so by other photographers. I thanked him after taking some photos.

When I was listening to his story in the empty waiting room, a woman holding a child in her arms came into the room. I was introduced that she was his wife and the child, his son whom he had not seen for a while.  Mr. Nazar is the chairperson of SIRA and at the same time, a husband and a father.

He held his baby with a grin of joy. 

The baby's name means Liberation Lion of Acheh (Asad Elmuharri El-Achie in Arabic).