On Wednesday, Sept. 30, Indonesia will
hold the 50th commemoration of the butchering of innocent and guilty victims
either because they were members of the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party
(PKI) or because they were assumed to be communists or supporters of the party.
Hundreds of thousands — some even speculated millions — were killed throughout
the country.
“It is difficult to judge the past by the criteria of
the present,” Pope Francis said in his address before Congress in Washington on
Thursday. He made this remark in reference to the sufferings of Native
Americans when immigrants flocked to the continent and treated the people — who
had been there long before the arrival of Europeans — in a brutal way.
CNN broadcasted live the historic event. When the Pope
talked about the difficulty of judgment, I immediately remembered the defensive
statements of Indonesian activists who were involved or followed very closely
the national tragedy that occurred 50 years ago. In his remark, the Pope also
asked all Americans to learn from the oppression of the Native Americans and to
make sure that it would not occur again.
On Wednesday, Sept. 30, Indonesia will hold the 50th
commemoration of the butchering of innocent and guilty victims either because
they were members of the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) or
because they were assumed to be communists or supporters of the party. Hundreds
of thousands — some even speculated millions — were killed throughout the
country.
We will never know the exact number of people who were
jailed without trials or those who were taken by force from their families. Nor
will we ever know many of these people’s whereabouts.
After 50 years, will we as a nation be willing to
reconcile with the past and help heal those who are still suffering from our
uncivilized acts as a nation?
I am very confident about my answer to that question:
Indonesians will never be willing to openly and honestly make peace with the
past. It will remain an unresolved case forever!“We only had two choices in
1965: To kill or be killed. Now human rights activists and film makers describe
us as perpetrators while our enemies are innocent victims,” that was the common
answer coming from activists at that time when asked about the horrors, which
lasted several weeks.
As a 7-year old boy, I followed what had happened at
that time, as I have testified in my previous writings. I still vividly
remember how weeks before the tragedy, the communists intimidated my father, an
elementary school teacher, simply because he was a devout Catholic. At that
time, the communists in my home town were very confident that the PKI would
rule Indonesia. Even their children also bullied me and my siblings.
But I also still remember the fearful expression of
those children when military and anti-communist youths tortured their fathers
in front of their houses. Many of my childhood friends could not get a proper
education and could not find decent jobs, or they had to let themselves be
adopted by other people in order to cover up their true identity. It lasted for
32 years until the fall of President Soeharto in May 1998.Do you need a
concrete example? Indonesia’s fifth president Megawati Soekarnoputri is a
living witness. She and her siblings had to endure unbearable pains just
because their father was Sukarno, the country’s first president.
Soeharto’s regime once branded Sukarno as a PKI member
or supporter.Fifty years have passed. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has
indicated that he would address the nation about the atrocities. But I am ready
to bet that there will not be any meaningful change in our attitude! I will not
blame Jokowi, because he has nothing to do with the gross human rights abuses.
The President has set up an inter-ministerial team to formulate a kind of
reconciliation with the past, but at least until Friday this team failed to
make any significant progress. Will the President apologize to the victims on
all sides? No.His predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was very reluctant to
touch the issue for several reasons, including the fact that his father-in-law,
the late Gen. (ret.) Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, played a key role in crushing the PKI.
Megawati also refrained from taking a drastic stance to restore the honor of
her father.
Yudhoyono even failed to realize his promise to an
activist to arrest the person who stabbed him a few years ago.Of all our
predecessors, only our fourth president Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid proved that
he was very willing to reopen the case and try to settle it.Why would I dare
say that the crimes against humanity in 1965 will remain a mystery?
In our culture, especially Javanese culture, we tend
to hide dirt under the mat. We are reluctant to settle embarrassing problems.
We prefer to pretend that nothing wrong has happened. There are so many smaller
human rights abuses in this country, but most of them remain in the dark not
just because of the government’s failure, but we as a nation tend to take on an
attitude of self-denial.Soeharto’s regime was also very successful in
brainwashing the people through school textbooks. Probably most Indonesians
still believe Soeharto’s version of the 1965 tragedy.
We believe that communism is still an extremely
dangerous threat for Indonesia, while communists in China have chosen the market
economy to develop their nation. We are very anti-communist, but very eager to
be friendly to the economic superpower.Nothing will happen this Wednesday,
because we will pretend to not know or forget about the barbaric acts
\The writer is senior managing editor of The Jakarta
Post.
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