Case 3 - David Case - continues

Seeking the truth from facts

Piliang made his first trip to Singapore in early April 2009 to learn more about the death case.

“I found it quite risky to do so, as it seems that there is a conspiracy behind David’s dead, especially about his final year project. But I have to verify things myself in searching for the truth,” he said.

He went to the campus many times to learn the crime scene and also made contact with Indonesian students at NTU trying to find more witnesses or anyone who had information about the case.


Fund raising for David’s family

Though David’s case was assigned to Coroner Court, the family tried to have the case handled in the criminal court for they believed the case should not be classified suicide considering doubts and questions that had been raised over the incident.

Lawyer Sashi Nathan, who represented the family, managed to obtain pictures of David’s body in the crime scene. But the effort was in vain and the case was handled by a coroner court. The family had difficulties in settling the legal fees which was about S$60,000.

A fund raising campaign for the family started on Facebook initiated by Wiloto. Wiloto also made a clip about the David’s case in hope of spreading out the message about injustice in the case through the social media platform.

A laptop which is believed to contain David’s suicide note has never been returned to the family

One of the reasons pointed out by the Singaporean authority to support classifying the incident as a suicide case was because a suicide note was found in David’s laptop.

Police investigators promised the family that they would give a copy of data in David’s laptop a week before hearing of the case began at the coroner court started on May 20 2009. But the data has never been given to the family. The laptop, David’s personally belonging, has never been returned to the family.

Another important piece of evidence was an eight-second video in a cell phone that showed a person who was presumed to be David sitting on a bridge.

During the hearing, a digital forensic expert of the Police Force testified that David had been found visiting websites about suicide. The judge asked for dates and time regarding David’s visits to these websites. But the expert said they could not have the information at hand. The expert also stated that a file ‘The Last Words’ written on January 25, 2009 at 12.54 pm which was believed to be written by David was found.

The expert said, according to the word file, David wanted to commit suicide and how much he hated his parents and would not shed a tear if they died.

But doubts had been raised, as the day on which David should be writing the note was in fact the day on which he had lunch with his family to celebrate Chinese New Year.

Several witnesses testified that they saw David jump off. One of them even said that she spoke to David for 10 minutes and he said that he was going to die.

According to pictures provided by police, David was already covered with blood when he was out Professor Chan’s office.

Having all these doubts and questions in mind, David’s mother Tjhay Lie Khiun noted testimonials given by the witnesses that seem to be inconsistent and suspicious.

Veteran journalist Piliang follows the clues in David’s notes and conducts his own investigation in hope of spreading the message to the public and arousing their attention to the David’s case.

Piliang’s effort pays off and the case captures Professor OC Kaligis’s attention, who eventually wrote a book about the case.

The other one is Ruby Z. Alamsyah, an Indonesian expert who has an international license on digital forensic. According to Alamsyah, the family has the right to ask the police for the data cloning from the laptop. He also volunteered himself to do the digital forensic but then the police have never given the data cloning to the family.

On July 28, the Coroner Court ruled that the incident was a suicide case.

But Piliang and the lawyer who represented the family, Nathan, were not convinced.

Veteran journalist in search for the truth

Piliang stayed 79 days in Singapore to conduct an investigation on the case and that cost him S$9500 –more than half comes from his own and his wife’s saving and his wife’s saving.

His wife Fifi, has been very supportive to her husband’s pursuit in the case for she, as a mother, understands how painful it was to lose a son like that

In Singapore, Iwan had to live at backpacker dormitory in order to cut down the cost, as the Indonesian embassy does not offer help.

“I borrowed money from friends and relatives. Now I’m still trying to pay it up.”

Despite doubts over the case and concern whether justice has been done, the mainstream media are too occupied with other issues in Indonesia and the case was quickly forgotten.

While the family tried to stage a peaceful demonstration against the ruling of the case, bombing happened at Marriot and Ritz Carlton. All attention was diverted to the attack.

Who is Iwan Piliang? Why is he doing this?

Piliang started his career as a journalist in 1985. As a young ideal journalist, he was disappointed to see journalists receiving money from sources which is a common practice in journalism in Indonesia.

In 1989, he decided to quit journalism and started his own business in advertising.

“There’s no point of being a journalist with that kind of practice, better to become businessman,” he said. But the business was not successful and he went bankrupt in 1996.

In 1998, Piliang joined Pantau magazine, which was operation on The New Yorker model. But the publication was folded after 1.5 years due to lack of funding. After that, Piliang decided that he wants to work as free-lance journalist and brand himself as a ‘literary citizen reporter’. He writes 1,000 words each day about issues that he cares about and posts his stories in his blog.

“Even though it’s for free I always do the writing whole heartedly,” he said.

He pays little attention to messages from his blog’s followers and he does not mind his writing being copied by others without giving credits to him. “As long as the message can spread around, it’s not a problem for me.”

Blogging has become a hit in the past few years in Indonesia. There is an annual event ‘Pesta Blogger (Blogger’s Party)’ where the bloggers from all around Indonesia gathered together.

"There’s assumption that being a blogger is different, more funky and fun. But what is actually a blog? It is only one of the medium of communication among so many other medium. So it’s basically the same. The most important thing is how many among the bloggers that actually producing truthful content. I don’t see many,” Iwan said.

Bill Kovach, the writer of Nine Elements of Journalism revised his book in 2007 and established a blog related to his book. Kovach considers bloggers have the potential to be an independent voice which can gain public trust, because the mainstream media can be stirred by money and power. Piliang considers the Nine Elements of Journalism as his bible when doing his job.


Piliang’s blog had 1,000 followers in one year after it was first launched and now the number shot up to 5,000 in three years.

He’s been invited to be a public speaker for many events all over Indonesia to comment on several cases that he covered. Regarding the David’s Case, he was invited to talk in “Kick Andy” the famous TV talk show in Indonesia.

Recently Piliang is working on a tax corruption case. He said that he faced threats when working on the story. “Somebody involved in the case threatens to kill me on the phone. I just gave him my address, but he never showed up,” he said.

The Online Citizen on David’s Case

On March 8, 2009 the same day that Pilliang wrote his first report about David, The Online Citizen (TOC) an alternative media in Singapore published a report on how mainstream media had been misreported on the case.

All the media mentioned that David slashed his wrist, some of them even put it as they were there and witnessed what happened. While in fact confirmed by the police that there are no wound at his wrist. Darren Boon a reporter from TOC made report to critize what the mainstream media like Straight Times, Channel News Asia, and Today report on the story.


Terence Lee also made critical analysis on the case.According to his observation
the mainstream media has been biasedly portrayed – intentionally or not — David as a reclusive loner hell-bent on murder while all the process of investigation was still on going.