Amid pressure from local authorities to cancel some of its key programs, the organizers of the 12th Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF) kicked off the annual event in Bali on Wednesday, with a mission to introduce Indonesia to the world through literary works and art performances.

Under the theme '€œ17,000 islands of imagination'€, this year'€™s festival will be held until Nov. 1, featuring events including literary lunches, workshops and art exhibitions.

The event will also bring together more than 165 of the world'€™s leading authors, thinkers, artists and performers from some 30 countries across the globe.

UWRF founder and director Janet DeNeefe said that she was expecting to see the event'€™s participants gain a better understanding of Indonesia.

'€œIn the next four days, we are going to showcase Indonesian literature. We have participants from Aceh, Papua, and even further afield,'€ she said in the opening ceremony.

The festival, the brainchild of Australian-born DeNeefe, began in 2004 to help the famous tourist island recover from the impact of deadly terrorist attacks two years earlier.

The annual event has expanded over the years, gaining international recognition.

Last week, the UWRF organizer, however, was forced to drop all sessions that were to look at the massacre of communists in Indonesia in the 1960s following pressure from local authorities.

Three panel discussions, a book launch and an art exhibition, as well as a screening of Joshua Oppenheimer'€™s film The Look of Silence, have been scrapped from the festival, which takes place in an internationally renowned artists'€™ district in Gianyar regency.

The removal of the events was announced after organizers attended a meeting with officials led by Gianyar Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Farman.

Speaking in a press conference before the opening ceremony, DeNeefe admitted that the organizer had decided to compromise with local authorities to ensure that the event kept going. '€œIt was a severely disappointing moment for the festival, but the response from the national and international community has overwhelmingly highlighted the importance of ensuring the continuation of an event like UWRF,'€ she said.

The panel discussions held will be dedicated to exploring Indonesia'€™s past and present, from recovery in the Tsunami-devastated region of Aceh to environmental and political degradation in Papua, as well as sessions delving into issues of national identity, the annexation of East Timor, environmental advocacy and the glossing over of social injustice.

The government has reportedly been displeased with the way many Indonesians this month marked the 50th anniversary of the massacre, which is believed to have resulted in the death of 500,000 supporters of the now defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).

The killings, which remain unrecognized in official history textbooks, were triggered by the kidnapping of seven Army officers by a unit of the presidential guard on the night of Sept. 30, 1965, a move the military blamed on the PKI.

The party was subsequently banned and Gen. Soeharto, who led the military at the time, took over the presidency from Sukarno six months later.

Discussions of the massacre were banned during Soeharto'€™s three-decade rule, but they began to surface after he stepped down in 1998 and Indonesia embarked on democratization.

Festival program manager I Wayan Juniarta also expressed his regret at the scrapping of the sessions.

'€œA significant proportion of our program is dedicated to discussing extremely important issues, such as human rights, activism and freedom of speech, and we felt that these also deserved to be discussed over the course of the festival,'€ he said.

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