A book about Indonesia’s story from different perspective: serious, but never loses its sense of humor
In the eyes of writer Horst H. Geerken’s, the Dutch were not only a brutal and vicious colonial power in Indonesia, but also hypocrites.
After World War II, they condemned and isolated Germany from what Hitler had done to their country, but at the same time, what the Dutch colonial government did in the East Indies was comparable to the horrors that the Nazis had inflicted, three centuries of hard labor, massacres and concentration camps in the three centuries they held the reign of Indonesia.
While the Nazi criminals have been brought to justice at the international human rights tribunals, Geerken notes that Dutch military leaders, such as Captain Raymond Westerling, were in fact rewarded for their brutality. Westerling was responsible for the killing of 40,000 people in South Sulawesi, a mass killing that involved brutal executions and beheadings. It is something of a local legend that thousands of sacks containing severed heads that were dumped in the sea.
A Gecko for Luck — translated from the German version, Der Ruf des Geckos, reveals the details of the vicious military actions of the Dutch, and is now available in English and German, and will soon be translated into Indonesian.
The book was inspired by Geerken’s experience in Indonesia, where he worked from 1963 to 1981 as the director of the German telecommunications company, AEG. But more than a document on history, the book also includes his observation of modern time Jakarta: Its social political gossip and the lives of diplomats, transvestites, foreign journalists and beautiful women.
In the book, Geerken also told stories about his close friendship with General Soenarjo, an adjutant of former president Sukarno, who introduced to him to the world of mysticism and the complexities of Indonesian politics. He tells the story of how Soenarjo could escape death because he hid inside Geerken’s residence. Soenarjo in fact was one of the military officers targeted by the Sept. 30, 1965 purge.
During those nerve-wrecking days, Geerken, a telecommunications engineer who helped build Indonesia’s early warning radar system to guard against a Soviet Union missile attack on America and Canada, tapped into a conversation via a self-assembled radio, about the supply of weapons being sent to Indonesia from a US military base in the Philippines.
The book, which has been reviewed by the European media and has been promoted by the German radio, Deutsche Welle also uncovers the involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the 1965 coup. The role of the Indonesian’s Communist Party (PKI) was nothing compared to that of the CIA’s, Geerken surmised.
Geerken says that the US secret agents were the real masterminds behind the operation. Sukarno was considered an enemy of the US for his anti-West stance who, without any outside help, had successfully built good rapport with leaders in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Sukarno was also deemed too close to the People’s Republic of China and this stood in the way for American interest in the region.
A Gecko for Luck presents the facts clearly and assertively, and asks its readers to imagine a bright future for Indonesia. It’s investigative and serious, but at the same time raw and playful. A German version of the book has sold more than 2,000 copies, and a second edition has hit the shelves recently.
This book has been a hit in many German-speaking countries and soon it will be available in English and Indonesian where the 1965 coup has been shrouded by mystery until now.
I, for one, have had the pleasure of hearing another side of the story.
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