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Truth be told
The state must first right one of its biggest wrongs, which was to deny the victims of the communist purge the truth by deliberately and institutionally erasing the history of violence and discrimination against them
Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Mahfud MD (second right) and Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly (right) give a framed image of a five-year multiple entry visa on Aug. 27, 2023, to Sri Budiarti (second left), who studied abroad on a government scholarship during Sukarno’s presidency, in Amsterdam. The government has committed to reinstate the rights of victims of past human rights violations, as recommended by a nonjudicial commission on rights abuses. (Kemenkopolhukam/-)
I
n his celebrated novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, the late Czech author Milan Kundera contends that “struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”. This, we imagine, is what the hundreds of thousands of 1965 communist purge survivors and their descendants have gone through over the years.
It is easy to forget the human rights abuses they suffered after the political upheaval in 1965, which was used as a pretext by the state to orchestrate the mass killings of at least 500,000 real or imagined communists. That part of history, which has apparently left a scar in our collective psyche, was kept from public discourse for decades by the New Order in one of the world’s most elaborate Cold War-era propaganda operations.
It is therefore reprehensible that, when asked by Indonesian exiles in Amsterdam to let the truth be told about the political persecution against them, Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Mahfud MD failed to acknowledge that one important fact: that the New Order had systematically obfuscated the 1965 history, particularly the chain of events that followed the putsch against then president Soekarno.
The minister was right when he said the state should not be writing history, and that the state could and should fund new research projects investigating that part of history. But in order to do that, the state must first right one of its biggest wrongs, which was to deny the victims of the communist purge the truth by deliberately and institutionally erasing the history of violence and discrimination against them. It must distance itself from the lies that have deprived the 1965 communist purge victims of a sense of justice, and more importantly, a semblance of closure.
It is true that after the downfall of Soeharto, alternative literature on a once taboo subject of our history became available for those critical and brave enough to confront the ugly and painfully depressing past. But we also know that the history lesson taught in public schools is still replete with questionable narratives about the social and political events surrounding the failed coup d’état. There have also been incidents where discussions about what happened in 1965 were disbanded by the authorities.
The grand narrative is that the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) was responsible for the putsch against Sukarno that included the brutal killings of several military generals accused of being pro-West. The party was then disbanded and outlawed, while its members were arrested on treason charges for their “betrayal”.
We are not saying that that particular narrative is entirely fabricated. It is not easy to come up with a coherent account of what happened before the Sept. 30, 1965, attempted coup, which scholars say was “shrouded in uncertainty”, citing the “intricacies of the political scene” at the time and “the suspect nature of much of the evidence”.
Whether or not the PKI could have masterminded a military putsch that saw the killings of several Army generals, or whether then Maj. Gen. Soeharto was complicit in the scheme, is a matter of academic debate. That said, the official narrative does omit some of the details and key events that could alter our view about the role of the PKI, or its members, in the attempted coup and the horror that transpired.
Not only did the New Order impose its own narrative on the nature of the putsch, which it squarely blamed on all PKI members, it also covered up the history of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and years of discrimination against those linked to the party. Historical records, including the existence of mass graves of the 1965 purge victims, have corroborated the claims that the state did in fact orchestrate the anti-left pogrom.
If the state wants to right past wrongs regarding the 1965 communist purge, it must begin with the political will to debunk the myths surrounding the event and let the truth be told, and debated, in our public institutions, including schools.
