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comment on '€œWhy Indonesia should embrace The Act of Killing,'€ (The Jakarta Post, Jan. 15) by Daniel Ziv.

I watched The Act of Killing from start to end. Not impressed. My criticism of the film is that it covers only one group of killers, and it does not interview the Islamist and other religious figures in Bali who, unlike Anwar and Pemuda Pancasila, to this day have not one shred of remorse or guilt for what they did.  

Second, the events surrounding the film are unknown in the West. You need a lot of context.

The responsibility as human beings is to be truthful and comprehensive. I don'€™t think you would believe me if I said that Hutomo '€œTommy'€ Mandala Putra met (in 2010) with the children of Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) leader DN Aidit or that the House of Representatives met with PKI members.  On a personal level, culturally and ideologically there is little that separates the PKI leaders and the secular Indonesian elite.

I wouldn'€™t be surprised if their grandchildren go to the same schools.

I think it is rather arrogant that the film'€™s director Joshua Oppenheimer, Ziv and other Westerners telling Indonesians what to think about 1965. Ziv is even more arrogant in suggesting that The Act of Killing be used as an educational tool.

I wouldn'€™t allow either of them near a classroom.

People like Oppenheimer want to portray it as class warfare, because they can'€™t even believe that the elite went after their own. How is what happened in Indonesia in 1965, any different from what happened in the Partition of India in 1947?

The PKI was not some hippie organization. They too had several armed paramilitary organizations.

They had started a series of failed revolts in the 1950s. Unlike Muslim groups today, they actually controlled units and even whole branches of the Indonesian military.

The PKI were the first to raise the issue of taking Papua from the Dutch, they crossed over into Malaysia and tried to stir up trouble there.  I find it ironic that some ignorant people here blame the New Order for Papua, as if the PKI would have been any better.

Oppenheimer to me is arrogant and naive. In an interview he said that The Act of Killing was what opened up Indonesians to 1965.

The Indonesian government and elites aren'€™t scared of some Hollywood liberals. Why? It is because Australia, Britain and the US had their role in 1965.

Since 1998, academics have been pretty free to talk about it. People can write books on it.

But since most Indonesians don'€™t read, no one cares. TV shows have been produced showing alternative versions of events (from the PKI side), but few people watched them. Indonesian and Western journalist have covered 1965 since 1998.

But only when a foreigner does a '€œhip'€ film about it, do they pay attention.

William
Jakarta