TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results‘Revolusi’ versus Indonesia's attempt to rewrite history
Rewriting history is not inherently wrong, but when it is done opaquely with an aim to benefit the powers that be in today's regime, it not only negates facts but also the very journey our nation and people trod to get where we are.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Activists carry umbrellas on Oct. 23, 2025, during the weekly Kamisan (Thursdays) peaceful demonstration in front of the State Palace in Central Jakarta. (The Jakarta Post/Iqro Rinaldi)
A
s I listened to David Van Reybrouck talk about the struggles of Indonesian freedom fighters during a session discussing his superb book Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World (2024) at the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival (UWRF) 2025, an unbidden thought arose: How frivolous and evil the current regime’s plan to wipe out some of the most important periods in the nation’s history, just to protect a handful of people at the top of the food chain.
It is ironic that while foreigners are working hard trying to restore our history, the Indonesians who should protect national memory are trying to erase it.
The government has already begun its attempt to rewrite the historical narrative, especially by awarding national hero status to corrupt and authoritarian leaders like Soeharto. This is the same man who oversaw the mass killings of countless Indonesians with impunity during his regime.
As Van Reybrouck translated testimonies in Malay and Dutch and read out letters from villagers, former soldiers and Dutch colonial administrators, I found myself thinking of home and the stories my mother and aunties told me about the darkness that descended on Makassar during the years of the Indonesian Revolution (Revolusi).
It was in South Sulawesi that Capt. Raymond Westerling and his men slaughtered thousands of villagers between 1946 and 1947 in the name of restoring order.
Those stories linger in my family’s collective memory like ghostly echoes: whispers about men taken away in the night, women hiding in silence as gunfire crackles through coconut groves. Van Reybrouck writes about that massacre too, carefully and without sensationalism, and hearing him speak at this year’s UWRF made me realize how rare it is for our nation to discuss those wounds openly.
Even as I sat there, however, the shadow of another project crossed my mind: the current administration’s push, led by Culture Minister Fadli Zon, to produce a new, “official” version of Indonesia’s history.
