 In March 1998, the 73-year-old Princen – on a wheelchair and undergoing what was described as "mutilating surgery" for his skin cancer – was among some 150 activists who openly violated a ban on political protests in the capital Jakarta, demonstrating against the undemocratic re-election of Suharto and defying the police to arrest them.As it turned out, that was a last effort in the long struggle, and Suharto finally fell from power two months later.However, later in the same year Princen suffered the first in a series of near-fatal strokes and remained bedridden, tended by his daughter Wilanda Princen, for his remaining years.