Ati Nurbaiti – Despite unresolved debates on the details of the power struggle of the 1960s, the arbitrary killings and the detention of hundreds of thousands of people in the mid-1960s to the early 1970s clearly remain unaccounted for. They remain largely excused as a necessary purge of the communist movement.
Ignorance is one factor. Not many Indonesians are aware how thousands of families were scattered as couples were separated, children were left with neighbors in the belief they would be safe during civilian and military operations targeting suspected communists.
Denied all their rights, many could not continue schooling, adding to the difficulty of earning a living. And while Indonesians are used to resorting to family help in hard times, many do not realize that this was impossible for anyone associated with targets of the purge.
"I did not ask my brother for help. I could have put him and his family in serious danger if I even tried to contact him," said one woman whose father was arrested in the 1960s.
Another woman, former activist Lestari, now in her 70s, was among those who fled to Blitar, East Java, around 1967, where she was arrested during Operasi Trisula the next year. She said she left her fifth baby with a woman whose child had died in labor. But, when the raids got more intensive it turned out her daughter, Trisulaningrum, had been left in front of a cemetery gate.
"Maybe they were scared because [the baby] was my daughter," Lestari writes. Luckily, the infant was taken by a soldier. Trisulaningrum is now a teacher, says Lestari. Her story is one of several testimonies in Payung Hitam Keadilan (Black Umbrella for Justice) published last year.
Such publications help to slowly build public awareness of stories that were unknown for decades. Historians also challenge the widely accepted understanding that because the banned Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) was so aggressive with its massive support (ranking fourth with over 16 percent of votes in the 1955 free election), the witch-hunt and killings against them was justified and "spontaneous", in the words of the 1994 government White Paper on the "30 September Movement."
Blitar, East Java, where Lestari and many others were captured, is one questionable example of the PKI's real strength. The military targeted South Blitar, where many landless farmers were known to be supporters of the PKI and the Indonesian Peasant Front (BTI). As Lestari recites, she was one of many arrested on the coast. There was nowhere to run, but to the sea. Despite the fact that 85 percent of Blitar's votes went to the PKI in 1955, researcher Andre Liem writes, armed resistance was another story.
Muyatno, an activist who also fled to South Blitar, told Andre that preparations for resistance were largely limited to the identification of existing caves or makeshift hiding places near rivers, paddy fields and in forests, apart from discussing guerilla methods of other resistance movements in Asia.
Residents were reportedly willing to protect the PKI supporters, leading the local Brawijaya military commander Maj. Gen. M. Jasin to identify the enemy of the operation as the "entire population of Blitar", as a military document on the operation states. The operation therefore had to be backed up by various groups of civilian militia, even though the military had previously replaced 234 village heads with ABRI (military) caretakers.
A media report cited by Andre gave a glimpse of the real PKI strength in Blitar. The army said the operation succeeded in seizing just 37 weapons, including 10 pistols and various old weapons from the Japanese and Dutch occupation period, says the account from 2004 book, Tahun Yang Tak Pernah Berakhir (The Never-Ending Year).
Several historians believe that those who intended to wipe out the aggressive PKI and first president Sukarno who defended it, including Soeharto, knew that its massive support did not equate to its real strength both at the national and local levels.
Historian John Roosa accuses the killings of being a "pretext to mass murder", as the title of his 2006 book states, for those implicated in an easily crushed coup attempt could easily be punished without having to resort to widespread killings. Sukarno's remark that the army was "burning the house to kill a rat" was drowned out.
The rapid eradication of the PKI is lauded in the 1994 government White Paper as "the result of collaboration between the government and the people".
In 2000, Blitar hosted a rare attempt at informal reconciliation between local survivors and participants of the witch-hunt from the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). Previously, the late president Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid had apologized as a former NU chairman for the involvement of its youth wing, Anshor, in the killings. But, in the wake of the report of the national rights body released in July this year, Anshor leaders rejected suggestions of a state apology to survivors of the 1960s bloodshed, former political prisoners and their respective families. The PKI killed many NU members too, they said.
Thus historian Asvi Warman Adam says the Blitar initiative is unlikely to be replicated elsewhere, at least until the generation who lived through the 1960s passes on.
Yet former prisoner Sri Sulistiawati, who was also captured in Blitar, says she still hopes for rehabilitation and compensation for the homes of suspected communists seized by the government.
She adds, "My hope is that there is no more violence like in 1965, whether it is politicized, [related to] religion, or whatever... It was enough that we experienced it."