Nur Janti

The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Overseas Indonesian students who were stripped of their citizenship during the 1965 communist purge are wary of joining a program intended to clear their names and restore their legal status nearly 60 years after the fact, especially as some still face ill treatment over their connection to the dark chapter of Indonesian history.

For the past few months, the government has been devising a scheme to reinstate the rights of political exiles who were rendered stateless after the Sept. 30, 1965, abortive coup blamed on the now-defunct and outlawed Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).

At the time, hundreds of thousands of people traveling or living abroad were accused of being Indonesian leftists and were barred from returning to their homeland, even those who were studying on scholarships provided by the then-Sukarno administration.

Now, faced with the opportunity to return and have their rights restored in full, some exiles have said the government must set the record straight before they consider the offer, partially to prevent similar violations from happening in the future.

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