Indonesians have never stopped talking about 1965 – the world should listen

Escalated media interest in the mass violence of 1965-66 has largely ignored some Indonesians’ efforts to bear oral and written witness to the past

  • Join Guardian Australia online on Friday 13 November at 3pm AEST for a live webchat to discuss the issues raised in this article

No doubt about it. The forced cancellations of activities related to the 1965-66 mass violence in Indonesia at the recent Ubud writers and readers festival have escalated international media interest in this period of Indonesia’s history. This, despite the fact that the 50th anniversary of the start of this violence, 1 October, passed by with relatively little comment. Unfortunately, recent reports have largely ignored Indonesians’ own efforts to address this past.

It was these efforts we wanted to highlight to an international audience with the events we organised at Ubud. At the festival we planned to launch three books in English translation – Breaking the Silence, Ongoing Truth and Truth Will Out – and to hold open discussions with their authors. Part of an ongoing translation series, all three books were originally published in Indonesian and belong to a burgeoning vernacular literature that includes memoirs and collections of testimonies compiled by survivors of the violence and activists, based on painstaking oral history work.

The first-hand accounts of this period in these edited volumes are sometimes shocking and always powerful. Activist Galuh Wandita describes the testimonies included in Breaking the Silence as depicting “holocaust-like situations: slaughter; concentration camps; giving numbers to replace identities; prisoners organising their own food, health and arts; families torn apart; female prisoners having their hair cut short”.

Despite emphasising the common theme of intense human suffering during this period, all three volumes nevertheless canvass a wide range of views. These include the perspectives of survivors, bystanders as well as those complicit in the violence – some who continue to believe it was justified, others who came to regret their past actions. They may be histories, but these collections offer important insights for contemporary Indonesian debate about how to deal with this past.

The case of the 1965-66 mass violence became more widely known to the world in 2012 with the release of Joshua Oppenheimer’s Oscar-nominated film, The Act of Killing, and its 2014 companion piece, The Look of Silence (a screening of which was also cancelled by the festival). This increased awareness is welcome, but there is a need for further nuanced understandings of this history, led by those who lived it.

As conveners of the book series, we hoped commissioning these translations would allow greater understanding outside the country of how this violence continues to affect Indonesians and how they now speak about this traumatic period in their nation’s history. In a similar way, our purpose in organising the three panels and related activities at Ubud was to profile Indonesian views and activism about the violence at a forum inside Indonesia, but one attended by both foreigners and Indonesians.

We wanted to highlight efforts by younger activists to engage now ageing survivors in the narration of their histories through a photographic exhibition and a song project. Because this violence touches so many lives, there are many Indonesians young and old who feel it has not yet been adequately resolved.

The efforts of the police to force the festival to cancel our sessions suggested the vibrant space for Indonesian writing and activism on this issue is under threat. We do not yet know if this is a temporary aberration, or from what level this is operating. Nevertheless, comments in the media in recent days by the coordinating political, legal and security affairs minister, Luhut Panjaitan, indicate there is absolutely no political will within this government to remember this past, let alone to seek some form of justice for its victims.

The International People’s Tribunal on 1965, a response to extreme frustration at this repeated stalling, got under way on Wednesday at the Hague in the Netherlands. Just a week beforethe Ubud festival, 1965 was also a prominent theme at the Frankfurt book fair, where Indonesia was the guest of honour. Perhaps this clustering of activities highlighting 1965 may have played a part in the police threats targeted at the festival. There is no real way of knowing. What is clear is that intimidation of victims and survivors of 1965 in Indonesia has increased in recent weeks and, for the time being, some are choosing to stay quiet.

Rahim Marhab is one of the former political prisoners who shared his story in Breaking the Silence and his message is echoed throughout these volumes. “My final hope is that there will never again be a tragedy like this in this land that I love, Indonesia,” he says. “History will reveal the truth!” We hope this can be so. For 50 years, Indonesians have made repeated efforts to tell these stories, and events of recent weeks suggest they bear repeating.

• Guardian Australia is hosting an online Q&A with Indonesian authors, academics and campaigners about these issues at 3pm AEST on Friday 13 November. Email nancy.groves@theguardian.com if you would like to be involved

Contributors

Jemma Purdey and Kate McGregor

The GuardianTramp

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