The inmates who chose to remain on prison island says they ate rats to survive

Buru Island in East Indonesia was once home to 12,000 political prisoners, suspected communist sympathisers sent to toil there during the rule of President Suharto from the late 1960s.

It became known as the prison island: it was where people were detained without charge, forced to do hard labour clearing the jungle with simple tools to make roads and farms.

They were not given adequate food or clothing. Hundreds died due to illness, worn down by the toll of physical labour. Some others committed suicide.

In the face of increasing global condemnation they were released by the end of the 1970s. They were free to leave the island but had to report regularly to the local authorities. This continued until President Suharto fell from power in 1998.

But for some of the prisoners, returning to everyday life was simply not possible because of the stigma surrounding their detention.

Diro was in his late 20s, married and with a young son when the military arrested him from his village of Boyolali in Central Java in 1968.
"I was a farmer, helping my father on the farm, nothing more," he said.

"Until now, I really don't understand why they detained me for more than 10 years; my wife never recovered from the shock and became mentally ill. She died while pregnant with my second child," he said.

"We had to eat rats, snakes, mushrooms and plants—anything we could find in the jungle to survive," he recalled.

He says he was beaten many times: "They beat my head and my legs. It hurts sometimes even now."
His family were ostracised from their community.

"My oldest child left school because he couldn't stand the stigma of being a son of an accused Communist Party member," he said.

"If I went back to my village and I married again I was worried that my new wife and children couldn't stand it when people stigmatize them for being so-called communists," said Utomo.

The Communist Party is still banned in Indonesia. When former political prisoners have tried to hold meetings in recent months they have been shut down.

After being released Diro married a local woman, Mada, and they now live with their four children in the Savana Jaya Village alongside a small community of former political prisoners.

His wife runs a food stall in front of their house and he works in their vegetable fields.

Credit: BBC