Indonesia’s greatest writer, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, died last month. He was an important symbol of resistance.

In 1965, Indonesia’s military seized power, led by General Suharto. They set out to annihilate the country’s left wing movements. Soldiers came for Pramoedya, a leading figure in the People’s Cultural Institute. They tied his hands behind his back, put a noose around his neck and threw him in the back of a truck. A mob burnt his house and library, a soldier hit him with a rifle butt leaving him almost deaf.

Pram spent 14 years imprisoned, many at the grim Buru Island penal colony. When his jailers prevented him from writing, he told stories to fellow prisoners over and over, learning them by heart.

Released in 1979, he published his famous ‘Buru quartet’ of historical novels, followed by other major works. Like his earlier writing, these books were full of critical ideas and defence of the downtrodden. Suharto banned each in turn. They circulated underground and appeared outside the country in translation.

Friends and foes asking whether his historical themes were ‘really’ critiques of the Suharto regime missed the point. Great art conveys truth, and that’s enough to unsettle tyrants.

Pram won prizes abroad, but endured house arrest at home. He responded defiantly that ‘when a book of mine is banned it's like a badge of honour pinned on my chest’.

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When Indonesians speak of 1965, they always use the word "trauma". In 2000 I got a feeling for what it means.

Way out on the fringes of Jakarta, I went to visit a leftist of that era, who told me that by sheer coincidence an old friend was about to arrive. A painter associated with the same cultural movements as Pram.

The horrors of 1965 had shaken him so badly that he'd returned to his village in Western Sumatra and disappeared -- for 30 years. After Suharto's fall he had surfaced. Today he was in town.

The door bell rang. A little old man entered, with a long beard. His grand-nephew spoke for him, because he was a mute; the trauma of 1965 had cost him his voice. I remembered Pram's memoirs are called "Song of a Mute". They made plans for the old artist to exhibit his art once again. The ghosts of the past had returned.

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Pramoedya, of course, had never gone away. But now he was triumphant. When the 1998 student movement challenged the dictatorship, Pram was ecstatic. When students came to visit, he suggested they forget their studies and concentrate on fighting the regime.

After Suharto’s fall, Pramoedya joined the far-left People’s Democratic Party. Mixing with the young revolutionaries he declared himself happy at last. The rise of a new generation of fighters, he said, was ‘the most important event in my life’.