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Criticizing '€˜The Look of Silence'€™: What silence?

As an English teacher at a tuition center where most of my students come from schools in North Jakarta with foreign curriculums, I have witnessed their lack of knowledge of Indonesian history

Januarsyah Sutan (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Sat, February 13, 2016

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Criticizing '€˜The Look of Silence'€™: What silence?

A

s an English teacher at a tuition center where most of my students come from schools in North Jakarta with foreign curriculums, I have witnessed their lack of knowledge of Indonesian history.

It was a surprise when one of my secondary school students said he had watched The Look of Silence in class. My initial response was to remind him to be critical of the movie.

A week later, he inquired through a WhatsApp message if the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) had really committed murders as I told him. Apparently, he had argued with his teacher, who then asked him for the resource.

I found it disturbing that a teacher could present contentious materials without knowing about other resources that provided a pretext for such an event. According to my student, the movie was the only source given in the class.

The Look of Silence was a companion piece to The Act of Killing, both of which have brought the world'€™s attention to the mass murders that began in 1965 in Indonesia.

The documentaries, directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, successfully capture the problematic perspectives of some Indonesians toward the issue, with an artistic touch.

However, The Look of Silence fails to show that many Indonesians have never been silent about the massacre; it implies that Indonesia, as a nation, is ignorant of the misery of the victims. This, of course, is incorrect.

My student'€™s experience was similar to that of Indonesian students in the US in 1969. That year, Soe Hok Gie, a Chinese-Indonesian activist, visited the US only to find widespread anti-Indonesian government propaganda. He wrote about his experience in the Sinar Harapan daily.

Gie also wrote that his acquaintance, an Indonesian student, complained that the Indonesian embassy had not provided him with proper resources about the struggles back in Indonesia, the same problem now facing my student and his friends.

Had they found the right resource, they would have known that the silence was broken as early as the beginning of the New Order.

Gie was known to be an anticommunist. Despite his criticism of communism as an ideology, he was compassionate toward those who were mistreated by the authorities related to the now defunct PKI.

He wrote two articles about the mass murders in Bali that followed the 1965 coup attempt blamed on the PKI.

According to Hilmar Farid in Gie lewat Gie: Mengenang Rasa Malu (Gie through Gie: Remembering the Shame), because of the articles, a mysterious car almost hit Gie and he received a scroll of paper with a death threat written on it.

There are other resources including books and articles that show how Indonesians have strived to address their haunting past. Memecah Pembisuan (Breaking the Silencing), for example, a compilation of memoirs by Putu Oka Sukanta, presented a story by Nina Junita titled Benny: Mencari Penyembuhan (Benny: In search of healing) which tells the story of a police officer in Timor named Benny, who '€” claiming to be following Soeharto'€™s instructions '€” executed 17 communists from 1966 to 1967, an action that almost drove him insane with guilt.

The guilt haunted Benny and changed his behavior. He even believed God was punishing him by not giving him a child after three years of marriage. He was advised to cleanse himself through religious and cultural rituals. When his wife finally gave birth to a baby girl, he believed God had forgiven him.

The interesting part of the story is that all seven of Benny'€™s children tried to get to know and make peace with the families of the victims. They even recorded the narrated stories of the victims'€™ families as part of the healing process.

There are more books that provide nuanced perspectives about the mass murder in 1965: Pulang (Going home) by Leila S. Chudori, Trilogi Buru (Trilogy of Buru) and Cerita dari Blora (Story from Blora) by Pramoedya Ananta Toer as well as Masa Peralihan (Transition Period) by Gie. All, except the latter have been translated into English.

In 2009, Mira Lesmana and Riri Riza produced a movie based on Gie'€™s life titled Gie, which portrays the complexity of Indonesian people'€™s struggle in 1965.

The movie shows how Gie maintained his friendship with Han, a childhood friend, who becomes a member of the communist party.

Hilmar, now the director general of culture at the Education and Culture Ministry, wrote that Gie regretted his treatment of a professor from the University of Indonesia who died in his cell because he did not get decent medical treatment.

'€œFriendship and respect from his students to this old professor are bigger than prejudice and anticommunist slogans that were injected into our motherland,'€ he wrote.

Watching The Look of Silence in a secondary school class without accompanying materials is clearly unwise. We, as teachers, should also provide students with other resources that show how Indonesians have attempted to unravel the 1965 tragedy.

If students look at how their nation strove together to support humanity and fight those who abused their positions, we can inspire them to love their nation but be critical of those in power.

Furthermore, the commemoration of 50 years since 1965 has passed but, as the government has not yet made a move to reveal the past crimes, those who have been fighting for justice must continue their struggle and show the future generations that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

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The writer is a tuition school teacher and owner.

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