Recounting the wounds: Former political prisoner Sri Sulistiawati, 76, gives testimony during a national conference aiming to examine the killings that took place from 1965 to 1966.A national symposium on the bloodshed of 1965 has brought together the persecuted, the persecutors and their respective families.Seating positions at the tables were being rearranged until late at night before a recent symposium about the 1965 anticommunist violence.

No glasses were provided beside the bottles of mineral water, “lest participants throw glasses at each other”, one of the organizers, Ezky Suyanto, wrote on her Facebook account along with posted pictures of a big group of grinning participants of the National Symposium on 1965. She added that, in any event, most of the participants were too old to throw glasses.

Police tanks were parked outside the Aryaduta Hotel in Central Jaka...