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melia Yani, the daughter of one of the generals slain between Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, 1965, said her mother always asked: “Why was your father killed, what did he do wrong?”

A number of historians agree that Gen. Achmad Yani, then the army commander, was one of seven victims of a military purge. One continuous debate is whether that purge involved communist-leaning officers, and whether it was part of a bigger plan to overthrow the country’s first president, Sukarno.

Amelia and other offspring of the slain officers said they would like answers to why they lost their fathers so abruptly, but added: “We do not inherit conflict.”

Amelia and retired officer Agus Widjodjo, the son of another murdered general, Maj. Gen. Soetojo Siswomihardjo, said they had already made peace with the sons and daughters of DN Aidit and the other elite of the banned Indonesian Communist Movement (PKI), and added that families on both sides were equally victims.

This movement toward reconciliation has extended beyond the survivors and family members of the nation’s conflicts, grouped in the Forum Silaturahmi Anak Bangsa (Forum for the Ties of the Nation’s Children).

The mere mention of apologizing to all the victims of the 1960s has met with instant, vehement resistance. One reason is that the events of 1965 and following years were deeply traumatic and divisive at the national, communal and family level. The offspring of the then political elite, at least, largely knew what happened to the victims. Yet many are still in the dark about why their loved ones were kidnapped, tortured and detained without trial — or killed.

In July the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) released the results of its investigation into the events of 1965-1966, the first official report in the reformasi era.

It details the “gross violation of human rights” against civilians and also security personnel in various areas; an about-face from the 1994 White Paper by the State Secretariat. The latter’s explanations of the PKI’s preparations to take over power suggests that the bloodshed that followed its alleged coup attempt was justified and “spontaneous”. And now we have a state report that recommends reconciliation, apart from prosecuting those responsible (though most have died).

Civilians participated in the killings, but Komnas HAM points to the responsibility of ABRI (the military, including the police) commanders, who issued instructions to crush PKI members and supporters, and authorized local officers to draw up a list of targets.

The late president Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid apologized for the participation of the youth group of his Islamic organization in the murders; but today the leaders of Ansor (the youth wing of Nahdlatul Ulama) insist that apologies are unnecessary, as both sides hunted and butchered each other.

We can deny accusations that the 1960s murders constituted a genocide; researcher Hermawan Sulistyo is among those saying there was no “blueprint”, as the definition of a genocide requires. But Komnas HAM states that similarities across various areas suggest plans and “preparations” by the perpetrators, which contradicts the claim of the 1994 White Report that civilians’ actions were “spontaneous.”

Agus Widjojo once said, “It is not easy for involved parties to remain distant” from these traumatic events. “Preparations to initiate reconciliation require the destruction of a myth,” he was quoted as saying during a discussion in January 2011 at the Goethe Institut in Central Jakarta. “[The myth is that] victims are on one side and that those who caused the violence are on the other.”

His appeal was drowned out by demonstrators outside — until today.

If we continue to fail to keep a critical distance from the 1965 bloodshed, the next generation will merely inherit the heroic stories of “us versus them”, the “good” against “the evil communists”, saved by Soeharto and the military, to the delight of the then communist-wary West.

Even today’s generation has difficulty fathoming the published accounts of former political prisoners, like that of the late Mia Bustam, the wife of the renowned painter, Sudjodjono.

Detained without trial and tortured for being an activist of the Gerwani women’s organization, affiliated to the PKI, she finally met her son, who had lost his entire youth in a political prisoners’ camp on Buru Island in Maluku. Instead of embracing him, she only shook his hand, saying, “C’est la vie” (That is life).

And unlike Germany’s post-Holocaust generation, mere heroic stories will not help future generations understand why we continue to be seen as a nation indifferent to — or even proud of — its murderous past.

The writer is a journalist of The Jakarta Post.