Zairin Salampessy

Zairin Salampessy, usually known as ‘Embong’, is a graduate of the Fisheries Faculty, Unpatti. He was known as a pavement artist in Ambon from 1987 to 1992. In 1994, Suara Maluku newspaper asked him to draw caricatures and so he became a journalist, an assistant editor and then senior editor until 1998. He then joined the Baileo Maluku Network NGO in Ambon. When the conflict struck Ambon in 1999, he, together with a number of colleagues, immediately formed a team of Muslim and Christian volunteers, who worked to handle the victims of the conflict. He continued doing this until he moved to Jakarta, where he was involved in advocacy at a national and international level through the Advocacy Team for Case Solving in Ambon (TAPAK). While at TAPAK Ambon, he was on several occasions, part of the Indonesian NGO delegation to the Assembly of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland. He has now returned to Ambon and has become a freelance photographer for the Antara Photographic Bureau and a volunteer in the Inter-Faith organisation in Maluku.