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There was no mention, however, of hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions, of Indonesians killed in just one year after the coup or about tens of thousands of men and women who were sent to prisons and concentration camps. No one noted that the 1965 coup may have been performed by the military itself. Instead, everyone spoke only about the generals and their alleged PKI killers. They simply did not know any other version of the country's history or pretended not to be aware of other interpretations.
Pramoedya Ananta Toer, a former political prisoner and one of Indonesia's greatest novelists, declared during the filming that after the coup "the Brantas River was red from blood." Time magazine also described what had transpired in Indonesia at the time of the massacre: "The killings have been on such a scale that the disposal of corpses has created a serious sanitation problem in northern Sumatra where the humid air bears the reek of decaying flesh. Travellers from these areas tell us small rivers and streams have been literally clogged with bodies. River transportation has become seriously impeded."
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| The 1965 coup and the deadly violence that followed gave Indonesia's military undue influence in the political life of the country that has not been entirely erased. (Photo: EPA) | |
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Until now, when asked about the past, the great majority of Indonesians profess not to remember or not to know about the 1965?966 massacres. They are in a state of mind which we call terlena in the film. It is difficult to translate this word into English or any other Western language, but it essentially means a state of false happiness or oblivion bordering on amnesia.
This frame of mind, of course, is one of the results of intensive propaganda designed by the masterminds of the coup and applied for several decades on the entire population, but it is also a result of the silent acceptance of this propaganda by the majority of Indonesians.
The beginning of the propaganda campaign can be traced to the first days after the coup. All national newspapers were banned for one week, except for two publications that repeated that the coup was carried out by the PKI. To instigate anger, gruesome details were invented, including those accusing the PKI of mutilating the bodies of the generals.
What really happened though in 1965?
One explanation is provided by Terri Cavanagh in his articles first published in 1991 by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI):
"The Indonesian military coup of Oct. 1?, 1965, was the outcome of a carefully orchestrated and long-planned operation by the CIA and the U.S.-trained and backed commanders of the Indonesian armed forces.
"Throughout 1965, class tensions mounted. The year began with peasants seizing the estates of large landowners and oil and rubber workers occupying U.S.-owned enterprises. President Sukarno had brought the army commanders, led by Gen. Nasution, and the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) leadership into his cabinet to suppress the movement.
"The PKI leadership halted the takeovers, but the mass movement was becoming increasingly difficult to control. There was growing discontent over the sentencing of 23 peasants to 15 to 20 years in prison for allegedly beating an army officer to death in the course of resisting military action to suppress land seizures in Sumatra.
"On the evening of Sept. 30, 1965, a CIA provocation was organised. A group of middle-ranking military officers, at least one of whom had close personal relations with Gen. Suharto, arrested and executed the army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Yani, and five other leading generals, and announced the establishment of a Revolutionary Council.
"The round-up of the generals did not include two key figures. The first was Suharto, then the commander of the Strategic Reserve Forces (Kostrad), comprised of the military's crack troops. The mutineers led by Lt. Col. Untung made no attempt to arrest Suharto nor to cut off his headquarters in Jakarta despite being in a position to do so. The Defence Minister, Gen. Nasution, also escaped. He was supposedly on the plotters' death list but miraculously survived.
"At the time of the coup, the PKI was the largest Stalinist party in the world, outside China and the Soviet Union. It had 3.5 million members; its youth movement had another 3 million people. It controlled the trade union movement SOBSI, which claimed 3.5 million members, and the nine million-strong peasant's movement BTI. Together with the women's movement, the writer's and artist's organisation and the scholar's movement, the PKI had more than 20 million members and active supporters.
"Yet by the end of 1965, between 500,000 and a million PKI members and supporters had been slaughtered, and tens of thousands were detained in concentration camps without any resistance being offered."
Why do the majority of Indonesians only remember the killing of the six generals instead of the millions of men and women who lost their lives in the months following the coup? Is it possible that Indonesians just want to forget this genocide?
The numbers of those who were killed in the aftermath of the coup may never be known. The number stands between 500,000, according to historian Asvi Warman Adam, and three million in the discourse of Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, the general who was assigned to liquidate members of the PKI after 1965. Yet, until now, the majority of Indonesians do not consider it a crime against humanity.
But what happened after the coup?
The answers can be found inside Indonesian families. They are large—extended ones can consist of 100 to 200 people—and they manage to control their members, demanding obedience and the fulfilment of obligations. Often they demand silence. Families have suppressed the facts in case one or more of their family members used to be in the ranks of the PKI, which was considered threatening and shameful in the eyes of the New Order regime of Gen. Suharto that came to power after the coup. They also wanted to conceal the identity of those who became murderers in the aftermath of the 1965?966 massacres. A culture of silence had been created and with it a culture of collaborators.
The culture of silence often swallowed the sons and daughters of both victims and victimisers. Many of them were not informed of what happened to their fathers and mothers, their uncles and aunts. Most of them did not know whether their relatives were killers. There was a consensus: issues related to the massacres of the mid-1960s were not to be discussed. Sons and daughters would never find out what "crime" their formerly imprisoned or killed father or mother had committed. Many of them just had to learn how to live with the trauma of being sons, daughters and relatives of those who were persecuted for being Communists or accused of being Communists.
There were also many discriminatory practices. Some of the worst concerned Chinese minorities. Anything Chinese—culture, religion and language—was banned, their properties were seized and they could not even paint their places of worship red. Their names had to be changed to Indonesian names, and they had to go through certain procedures just to get an Indonesian ID card or passport. The number of Chinese students entering state schools or universities was limited, and attaining scholarships was not even considered even though they were poor. Some of these forms of discrimination are still in place today.
Other forms of discrimination were related to victims' families. They have been denied the opportunity to be civil servants because they need to have a surat keterangan bebas G-30-S/PKI, a certificate stating that they did not have any involvement in the Sept. 30 coup. To apply for jobs in the government, they have to pass screenings; and if their family members or relatives were involved in the 1965 coup, they are not accepted for government positions.
After being released from prisons and concentration camps, the political prisoners were given letters stating that they were not involved in the coup, but they still had to report to local military offices and had to attend brainwashing sessions for several years. They were given special ID cards too with the ET symbol after their ID card numbers, showing that they were "Ex-Tapol" or ex-political prisoners. With this ID card, their chances of obtaining jobs have been practically nil, and most of them have become dependent on their families.
Impact on Indonesian Society Today
Silence is just one aspect of post-1965 Indonesian culture. It is accompanied by obedience to power, family or religion that has roots in tremendous fear. The fact that there was no armed resistance after the massacres in 1965?966 is proof that Indonesians thoroughly accepted their position as obedient beings. Until now, there is no substantial opposition able to challenge the existing power structure in the country. Results are predictable: those responsible for the killings are still free and are still controlling the country. They pretend to be above all laws, and, in many practical ways, they are while the victims are still living in shame, suffering from trauma and expecting no compensation or apology.
This dark chapter of Indonesian history continues to cast clouds on the nation's psyche. Rulers from the old days are still in charge, clinging to economic and political power. Moral corruption feeds financial corruption. Indonesia now ranks 137th on a corruption scale of 156 countries surveyed by Transparency International (TI) in their report for 2005. Moreover, the military is still omnipotent in its control of society. Would-be resistance cannot even find a place to gather as there are almost no public spaces in Indonesian cities. Mosques have been given permits to broadcast their prayers so the government can monitor the content of their sermons. In addition, the legal system is continuously collapsing as money can easily buy impunity. Fear makes Indonesians suspicious of each other; trust is often broken or non-existent even between family members, friends and neighbours. The nation is extremely atomised and individualistic.
The scarcity of compassion in the nation is evident: Indonesia's cities are socially divided between the extremely rich, who are few in number, and the extremely poor, who are the majority of the people. Glamorous and overpriced shopping centres rub shoulders with miserable rows of street vendor stalls on narrow and broken sidewalks. Slums are growing at the back of five-star hotels and apartment complexes. Condominiums are often next to garbage dumps worked and inhabited by scavengers. Luxury cars sail through hoards of beggars and prostitutes in front of every traffic light. High-rise office buildings are encircled by unsanitary warungs (improvised eateries that usually lack running water and toilets).
Driving through Indonesian cities, it is hard to avoid the enormous advertisements on billboards, selling dreams to ordinary citizens, but Indonesians have lost the ability to dream. There are hardly any high hopes or aspirations and lofty principles left. Down below, in the shadow of the billboards, a 12 year-old scavenger who is working a South Jakarta garbage dumps—Jaya—told me that his dream is to become an army officer. And he means it. He has never heard that the army itself was, and still is, the main element responsible for the destruction of Indonesia. In this milieu of national amnesia, the victims of 40 years ago are forgotten, and justice is lost. This tragedy though does not just affect the victims of the mid-1960s but has reverberated throughout the country for the past four decades in the form of human rights violations with impunity and a dysfunctional legal system that offers little, if any, protection for Indonesia's people from abuse by those with power.
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