Adisti Sukma Sawitri, Jakarta – The Education Ministry has rewritten school history books once again, restoring the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) as the sole culprit of the aborted 1965 coup and the bloodletting that followed, in which tens of thousands of people died.

In the earlier 2004 trial education curriculum, the PKI is mentioned as only one of several perpetrators of the grassroots violence after the coup attempt, in which at least 80,000 people were killed. Thousands more PKI members and alleged sympathizers were imprisoned without trial for many years.

"When we arranged the 2006 history curriculum, we found that making the PKI the main perpetrator was the most acceptable truth for Indonesians," University of Indonesia historian Susanto Zuhdi told The Jakarta Post.

Susanto was part of the special team that arranged the revisions at the end of last year. Consisting of five historians and teaching experts, the team held a series of public discussions and workshops to find the most "appropriate" version of history.

Susanto said there was a lot of public resistance to the earlier 2004 curriculum. A group of Muslims and nationalists from East Java had protested at the House of Representatives, demanding the curriculum be revised.

Because of the immanent changes, Susanto said he could not understand why the Attorney General's Office had probed two top ministry officials for the "misinformation" in some 12 graders' history books based on the 2004 curriculum.

The AGO recently questioned ministry curriculum center head Diah Harianti and former head Siskandar over the older content. "We are investigating several people in connection with the publication of books which have caused restlessness among the public," AGO spokesman I Wayan Pasek Suartha said Tuesday, as quoted by Reuters newswire. Six publishers of the books were also questioned last week.

Separately, National Institute of Sciences historian Asvi Warman Adam doubted the ministry's latest version of the 1965 tragedy was the result of a fair scientific process. Asvi, who attended the discussions but was not part of the special team, said that some of the forums were biased against the PKI since many in attendance had been teachers whose families were PKI victims.

Asvi doubted that a "scientific" forum of teachers and historians, who were supposed to be skeptical and objective, could have ended up with an "old and emotional" version of history that blamed the PKI for the tragedy.

"There must have been a conspiracy to retain the old version proposed by the New Order, which would close the way for the PKI to be rehabilitated," Asvi said. The recent questioning the officials and publishers was part of an effort to terrorize academics who were only searching for the truth behind the violence, he said.