A special team with the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) recently indicated that government officials were allegedly involved in gross human rights violations in the aftermath of the abortive coup by the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in 1965. Such indications were made following a three-year investigation into the bloody incidents, which included interviews with the relatives of the victims. The Jakarta Post interviewed the chairman of the rights body, Ifdhal Kasim, to get more insight into the issue.

Question: Members of the investigation team had said that it found systematic gross human rights violations in the 1965 purge that involved state officials. Can we say that the investigation has reached a conclusion?

Answer: The team's finding isn't something new because what happened during the 1965 coup is an undeniable fact. All people know that terrible mass killings occurred throughout Indonesia, except Maluku and Papua, back then.

Countless scholars have conducted research into the bloody incidents. Books about the gross violations, backed up by military officers, have been published.

Komnas HAM has been trying to gather information and systematize what happened back then through a legal approach to investigate whether or not the 1965 purge involved crimes against humanity.

All of our findings have pointed to such crimes so far. This mass killing was one of the greatest massacres during the 20th century, along with what happened in Vietnam and Cambodia. Moreover, the 1965 purge was also the greatest mass murder that occurred in Indonesia after independence. However, we haven't reached a final conclusion because we still have three months to provide further details in order to bring the case to court.

What does Komnas HAM aim to do with the investigation?

We want to invite all people, as a nation, to look at the nearly 40-year old incident from today's perspective so that all of us can take a distance with what had happened.

We are trying to tell people that a struggle for power caused such a terrible purge, and similar things must not happen again in the future. All of us are responsible for it.

What can Komnas HAM do to ensure its findings bring responsible parties to court?

We cannot solely use a legalistic approach when we talk about any parties deemed responsible. It is a complex issue because different parties were involved in it.

Many of our findings have led to Gen. Soeharto, who was the head of the Operational Command for the Restoration of Security and Order [Kopkamtib], as the person most responsible for issuing commands to kill all those who were suspected communists. However, it is still very difficult to prove this.

It is also difficult to identify the perpetrators because many of them were lay people. We have found that those who were directly involved in the killings were members of civil society, and were given orders by state officials.

For these people, it was legal to kill people believed to be communists, or those who were suspected communists, because they were told that communists would kill them unless they killed them first.

During the investigation, we found that these people didn't feel guilty for committing murder because they did it for heroic reasons. None of them saw this as a crime and, thus, refused to take responsibility.

Many people demand a trial as vengeance. They want the perpetrators to be punished. We disagree with such a perspective. Accountability for what happened doesn't necessarily mean a trial.

We aim to make all people understand what had happened and admit that the state had committed a terrible mistake with its involvement in the 1965 purge.

A state recognition of the incident will clarify misunderstandings about the history of the event, put a stop to false teachings about the coup, and prevent anyone from manipulating it for political reasons in the future. For me, this is far more important than a trial.

What will happen if the investigative team cannot provide the details required?

The investigation will stop there. We won't submit our findings to the Attorney General's Office for further action. As I said before, many of those who were directly involved in the killings were members of the society, and it will be difficult for the court to bring the perpetrators, who have mostly passed away, to trial.

Again, the investigation doesn't aim to bring these people into trial but to educate all of us and to help us understand what had happened in order to clarify the history. No matter, the findings we have discovered will be valuable investigative documentation.