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Issue of the day: Jokowi rejects apology, promotes stability
Oct
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strong>Oct. 2, p1
In a statement during the annual ceremony commemorating Pancasila Sanctity Day on Thursday, President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo told the country to remain vigilant against the prospect of socio political unrest that could threaten the country's stability, just as the botched coup blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in 1965 unleashed a squall of turmoil across the archipelago.
'I hope the G30S/PKI [coup] will not happen again in our beloved country,' Jokowi said after a ceremony at the Pancasila Sakti Monument in Lubang Buaya, Cipayung district, East Jakarta, on Thursday.
Your comments:
Without honestly acknowledging the 65 killings the future of Indonesia will forever remain bleak.
Kate
Before you can have an apology you first need to recognize the truth of what happened in 1965. Something that even today Indonesia refuses to do.
KH
If the government does not apologize, then what guarantees that the same thing will not be repeated in the future? How will the victims of those various incidents find consolation for the huge loss they've suffered? Who will take responsibility for all those atrocities? That is why an apology always precedes reconciliation. Omitting the 'apology' stage is a way for government to express that they are not 'honestly determined' to make things right!
Hannah Montana
How a country treats its own people and other countries shows its true character. Obviously, Indonesia is very bad at it and many other aspects.
Pedro Gonzales
This is putting the cart before the horse. To apologize or otherwise is not the issue now. The issue now is for the government of the Republic of Indonesia to pronounce the official history and stand on that fateful event in 1965. The rest ' apologies, reconciliation, amending the history text books, etc. ' will move from there.
It's not as if the government is short of good material to make that pronouncement. In 2012 after years of interviews and research, the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) submitted to the Attorney General's Office an 850-page report on the 1965 massacre, which called the incident a gross violation of human rights.
The AGO almost immediately rejected the report, while the House of Representatives refused to deliberate on it. There are also many other independent documents talking about the event, such as the Tempo magazine's special edition 'The Executioners' Confessions' and the award-winning documentary film The Act of Killing.
But it's better to sweep things under the carpet and cover the inconvenient truth with harmless reconciliation, because the truth may hurt powerful personalities of the past and present. And unfortunately a well-meaning president is clueless and powerless.
WS
Let's be realistic. It will decades before the Indonesian government as an institution will apologize. If ever.
Bebe
The very unpleasant reality for this government is that there were actually parents, spouses, children and other family members of those affiliated with the PKI, who were actually not communists at all, and who did not engage in any atrocities in any way.
These innocent people, also those who were only suspected to be members of the PKI, were ruthlessly persecuted, hunted down, even killed, and their basic human rights were denied for decades.
If the present government does not think it necessary to offer a sincere apology to this particular group of victims, then narrow-mindedness, irrationality, fear and hate are still reigning supreme in the minds of those who lead this country.
Firepooch
The point is not about saying sorry. And of course nobody holds, for example President Jokowi, personally responsible. The point is acknowledgment of fault and responsibility of actions of the previous governments in the name of the nation.
In my opinion, that acknowledgement is the necessary first step in any reconciliation. The 'your daddy didn't raise the flag on Independence Day, how could we know he wasn't a communist; now let's reconcile and forget about it, OK?' approach isn't going to work.
Kantisini
OK, so Japan doesn't need to say anything either.
Plus it's not about apologizing, it's about changing school textbooks. National heroes would become war criminals no?
The Tanjung Priok massacre is not a tragedy when radical terrorist are hunted down and killed.
Abdul Malik
