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em>For the first time, a state-sponsored investigation has concluded that the 1965-1966 killings following the 1965 alleged aborted coup was a “gross human rights violation”. Below are reports by The Jakarta Post’s team, following on from yesterday’s report from Medan and Jakarta.

The sun was shining brightly on a cool Yogyakarta morning. Sumilah, 60, was preparing her sate stall, “Bu Milah”, a six-square-meter space in the Prambanan market in Sleman. She poured the gulai, the spicy coconut soup for the goat meat dish, prepared the fire to grill the sate and hung a big hunk of goat meat. The stall and its owner look pretty much like all the others.

Few would guess that these mundane activities have been part of Sumilah’s daily routine since she was released from the Plantungan prison in Kendal, Central Java, in 1979.

On Nov. 19, 1965, Sumilah said she was detained for supporting the soon-to-be outlawed Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), which was blamed for the aborted coup of Sept. 30, 1965. She was one of tens of thousands of people arrested, tortured and held without legal proceedings.

Trying to trace what she did wrong, Sumilah pins it down to her innocent schooldays.

 “I only danced to Genjer-genjer [a Javanese folk song] at concerts in the village,” says the petite woman, who left elementary school after the fourth grade.

At 14, she naturally had no inkling of the rapidly developing political events rocking the country. Events that led in the following decades to the stigmatization of anything linked to the PKI — including the song Genjer-genjer that was associated with Gerwani, the PKI’s women’s group, which was also later banned.

“I only joined in the dancing because the gamelan music was enticing to dance to,” said Sumilah, a mother of two.

As a political detainee for 16 years, she moved from the Wirogunan penitentiary, one of those mentioned in the report on the 1965-1966 killings of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) to Bulu prison in Semarang, and finally to Plantungan prison — where she ate rice for the first time since 1973, after an unvaried diet of corn and sweet potato.

The way she tells it, it is difficult to imagine the emotions that seem to have faded over the decades.  

In front of the all-male interrogators, Sumilah said she was constantly tortured and sexually abused. “I was always beaten during interrogation, told to strip with my body being turned over and over as they searched for a mark, I don’t know what mark they were looking for,” she said flatly.

But the recently widowed Sumilah, says she bears no grudges, saying her life was what the Almighty destined for her.

 She had little to say about the commission’s recommendations in its report — following a detailed report of its findings, Komnas HAM proposed two options; legal or non legal settlement of the victims’ lifelong search for justice.

Sumilah falls silent, and then says she would like an official statement that she did nothing wrong. “I would like the government to pay attention to my life, I need capital for my business.” Selling sate was not an easy way to make a living, especially since her husband died, she said.

Yogyakarta is also home to Kristina “Mamik” Sumarniati, 67, who was similarly detained at Wirogunan, Bulu, and then Plantungan prisons.

“I was detained for being an activist of the Indonesian Association of Youth and Students [IPPI] which was considered as an affiliate of the PKI,” said Mamik, who sells household goods in the Umbulharjo area. Mamik would have been confused as president Sukarno himself was the source of the IPPI’s ideology — but then time and politics were turning against the first president too.

Mamik retells her story in her simple, clean home, occasionally wiping away tears. She says she still feels pain in her chest when recalling her experiences during repeated interrogations from 1965 to 1968.

 “They stripped me during each interrogation. They burnt my hair.”

She cited a life of stigma and discrimination, as she was not even allowed to join the local arisan, the customary monthly community savings meetings. “The stigma is like a death penalty to the 1965 victims,” she said. Her husband, who died in 2010, was also a former political prisoner.

 However being a victim also became a source of strength, she says. The family survived by selling fried snacks, until they had enough capital to open a small kerosene kiosk, which paid for the children’s education. Mamik is skeptical over what can be achieved by the commission’s report, saying there was no way the country’s leaders would care about people like her, what with the focus on corruption.

Yet, Mamik adds that she does hope the government will come up with something concrete, given the momentum for thousands of innocent people like herself.

Mamik said she was not seeking a complicated legal settlement, particularly given that most of the responsible parties mentioned in the report were now dead.

 “I need rehabilitation of my name, as I am sure I’m innocent,” Mamik said. She also said that the now elderly victims needed health and old age insurance, having long lived in harsh conditions.

Another victim, Bondan Nusantara, 60, is a leading traditional artist in Yogyakarta. He was stigmatized because his mother, the leading lady of a cultural troupe, was a member of Lekra the cultural group associated with the PKI. Theresia Kadariyah, his mother, star of the Kridho Mardi Ketoprak, a Javanese comedy group, was detained for seven years.

Bondan reflects on what children of the political prisoners went through — shame, anger and isolation for over 30 years

“The main thing is that the government must acknowledge that there were innocent victims,” he said when interviewed at Yogyakarta’s Cultural Center. He adds that the lifelong discrimination made him a stronger person, and says he is not vengeful.

However, he rejects the commission’s recommendation of an ad hoc human rights trial. Such a measure “would be politicized by certain groups”, he said. “Then my friends and I would face more difficulties, we’d be accused of ‘stirring things up’ and reviving the [communist] movement again.”

The new post-Soeharto freedoms have encouraged some victims to speak out along with their advocates, in turn leading to loudly expressed fears of a “communist revival”.

Government acknowledgement of the state’s errors would at least be a first step to reconciliation, says Bondan. “It’s time to think of Indonesia’s future,” he says.

— JP/Bambang Muryanto