Indonesia and the Act of Forgetting
By ANDREAS HARSONO
The New York Times, FEB 28, 2014
JAKARTA, Indonesia — I
grew up in the shadow of the Indonesian massacres exposed in Joshua
Oppenheimer’s extraordinary documentary, “The Act of Killing,” which has been
nominated for an Academy Award.
I was a couple of months
old in October 1965, when the Indonesian government gave free rein to a mix of
Indonesian soldiers and paramilitaries to kill anyone they considered to be a
“communist.” Over the next few months into 1966, at least 500,000 people were
killed (the total may be as high as one million). The victims included members
of the Communist Party of Indonesia (P.K.I.), ethnic Chinese, as well as trade
unionists, teachers, civil society activists and leftist artists.
My father, an ethnic
Chinese, recognized early on the threat to our family, and we fled our East
Java town of Jember to the relative safety of the port of Surabaya. There we
took refuge while Jember was the scene of savage killings of our friends and
neighbors.
Years later, my father’s
trusted employee, Man Tuka, would walk with me around Jember and tell me
stories about the many lives lost during the massacres. When I was eight or
nine years old, he described to me a scene that has haunted me ever since.
Man Tuka told me about
how the Jompo River that runs through Jember turned red with the blood of
victims dumped into it by paramilitary murderers. He spoke of seeing a raft
float by: On it was a baby crying with hunger as it tried to suckle its
murdered mother.
In the 48 years since
these dark months, the Indonesian government has justified the massacres as a
necessary defense against the P.K.I. Its narrative holds that the Communists
attempted a coup, murdering six army generals on Sept. 30, 1965, as part of
their attempt to make Indonesia into a Communist state. Every Sept. 30 since, a
state-owned television station has aired a government-sanctioned film luridly
depicting the P.K.I.’s “treachery” and the bravery of the Indonesian soldiers
and paramilitaries who “exterminated” that peril.
My generation grew up on
this propaganda; we had little or no knowledge of what really happened. Only
through Man Tuka and some elderly ethnic Chinese residents of my hometown did I
start to learn the truth about what occurred during those months of 1965-66.
“The Act of Killing” has
now broken the official silence about the massacres. In response to the
government’s unwillingness to approve the film for release in Indonesia, Mr.
Oppenheimer made it available in Indonesia for free on YouTube. Despite limited
Internet access outside of the cities, the film has been a distressing
revelation for younger Indonesians. Indeed, it has provoked a public debate
about the need for accountability for those crimes.
The past two years have
seen tentative steps in that direction. In July 2012, Indonesia’s human rights
commission produced a report documenting the mass killings of 1965-66. The
panel interviewed hundreds of witnesses to massacres, torture and rape.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono responded by instructing the attorney
general to assess the findings and report back.
But some government
officials are unhappy about moves toward accountability. In October 2012, Djoko
Suyanto, the political, legal and security affairs minister, publicly justified
the killings, saying, “This country would not be what it is today” had they not
occurred.
Mr. Oppenheimer’s film
and the government’s reaction to it are powerful reminders of the culture of
impunity and the lack of rule of law that continue to weigh on Indonesia.
Impunity expresses itself in a systematic failure to hold accountable members
of the security forces and Islamist militants who commit abuses against
religious minorities across the country.
The Islamic People’s
Forum, the Islamic Defenders Front and other Islamic groups are at the
forefront of this intolerance. These groups have attacked the places of worship
of Shiite and Ahmadiyah Muslims as well as some Christian churches. Although
government officials and security forces have played a passive, or even active,
role in such violence, Mr. Yudhoyono’s government has failed to confront those
responsible or to obtain any redress for the victims.
The legacy of impunity
for the crimes of 1965-66 also extends to a lack of accountability for abuses
by security forces operating in Indonesia’s easternmost provinces, Papua and
West Papua. Papua is the site of a low-level insurgency by the Free Papua
Movement, a small and poorly organized armed group seeking independence. Over
the last three years, Human Rights Watch has documented hundreds of cases where
the police, soldiers and intelligence officers used unlawful force when dealing
with Papuans exercising their right to peaceful assembly. The government’s tight
control over the flow of information from Papua complicates efforts by foreign
media to expose these abuses.
The government needs to
provide accountability for the 1965-66 massacres as a crucial step toward
justice for families who lost loved ones, and to work to dismantle the toxic
culture of impunity that victimizes Indonesians to this day.
On Sunday, I will watch
the Academy Awards ceremony to see if “The Act of Killing” wins an Oscar — and
remember Man Tuka and the victims of Jember.
Andreas Harsono is an Indonesia researcher at Human Rights
Watch.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on
March 1, 2014, in The International New York Times.
No comments:
Post a Comment