|
By Aubrey Belford, Agence France-Presse
SRUWEN BOYOLALI, Indonesia: In the bloody
history of the 20th century, the killing fields scattered through
the lush greenery of Indonesia’s islands are a rarely mentioned
footnote.
In clumps of one or two or even a dozen,
unmarked graves containing between 500,000 and two million suspected
communists killed in purges between 1965 and 1966 were an unspoken
feature of the landscape during General Suharto’s 32-year rule.
But with the tenth anniversary of Suharto’s
1998 fall this month, activists are finally pushing for
investigations into one of the last century’s biggest killings,
which changed the course of the Cold War and formed the backdrop to
the strongman’s rise.
On a clattering rural road on Java island,
60-year-old farmer Achmad Nashori recalled how he helped dispose of
the bodies.
At his feet was the spot where, more than 40
years ago, he said he was summoned around dawn by local authorities
to help bury five communist sympathisers had been shot dead the
night before.
With seven other villagers, he dragged the
bodies into a pre-prepared grave and covered them in earth.
“There were those whose heads had been shot
off, split open, the insides of people’s guts had been shot out.
There were those who had been shot in the back of the neck, the side
of the head, the back and the waist,” Nashori said.
Down the road, in anonymous clumps, more graves
are believed to hold dozens of victims.
For now, the graves remain undisturbed. Human
rights group Kontras is travelling the country talking to witnesses
and identifying massacre sites. Indonesia’s official human rights
body Komnas HAM has also started its own investigation.
But those looking into the case say they are
running into resistance from the country’s elite, where few are
keen to revisit the killings.
The violence of 1965-66 had its roots in the
tense Cold War politics that marked the final years of the reign of
Indonesia’s charismatic first president Sukarno, who had fostered
the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) as a political force to balance
the power of mass religious organisations and pro-Western generals.
But this delicate balance collapsed on September
30, 1965, with an abortive coup—which was swiftly blamed on the
PKI.
An obscure general called Suharto took control
of the ensuing crackdown while soldiers and “youth groups”
trawled the country, rounding up and executing suspected communists.
“All the local people were ordered to bring
hoes to bury the bodies,” Nashori recalled of the killings near
his village.
Nashori said the killings in his area were
carried out by soldiers and members of Ansor, the youth wing of
Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Indonesia’s largest Muslim organization.
NU today is a major force in Indonesia, boasting
over 30 million members. Muhammadiyah, Indonesia’s second-largest
Muslim organization, was also involved, historians say, as were a
whole range of organizations that now make up Indonesia’s
political and religious mainstream.
“These groups were itching to do it following
the coup of the 30th of September,” said Greg Fealy, an Indonesia
expert at the Australian National University.
“Once they had the green light from the
military, away they went.”
Anti-communist propaganda became a mainstay of
Suharto’s New Order regime, although the killings themselves were
a taboo subject.
“Even though it didn’t talk openly about the
killings, [the regime] knew that everyone knew about the killings
and it used this for its own purposes,” Fealy said.
In the world at large too, the killings went
largely unnoticed.
In the grip of the Cold War, many Western
governments greeted the swift suppression of the PKI—which was
rivalled in size only by the communist parties in the Soviet Union
and China—with relief.
Many in Indonesia, particularly among the elite,
strongly oppose efforts to exhume graves and bring the 1965 to 1966
case to court. Komnas HAM has been the target of multiple protests
by religious and nationalist groups.
“The New Order’s propaganda was extremely
strong for 32 years, and up until now we also see that the people in
the government are an extension of those in power in the New Order,
both in terms of people and institutions,” said Yati Andriyani, a
campaigner with Kontras.
Nur Kholis, the head of Komnas HAM’s
investigation into the killings, said human rights cases were always
difficult to push in Indonesia.
“If reconciliation can be reached through
legal processes, a court, that’s great. But if that can’t be
done, these efforts can also push the reconciliation process by
political means,” Nur Kholis said.
“Actually, I’m not too confident about
bringing this case to court, but I should try.”
|
