[Yang Berlawan: Membongkar Tabir Pemalsuan Sejarah PKI (Those Who Fought: Lifting curtain on falsified history of the PKI) Imam Soedjono Resist Book, Yogyakarta, January 2006 469 pp.]

Endrizal, Yogyakarta – Modern Indonesian history was laid out during the authoritarian rule of the Soeharto regime. With the progress of time, this written history of the Indonesian people has become accepted by both laymen and academics.

Unfortunately, this history has been tainted and manipulated by the government elite so that it is laden with vested group interest. Facts are twisted and made up.

The overall impression is that Indonesia's modern history has been written by historians in a manner that is subjective in approach and in conformity with the wishes of the ruler.

Writers of history have deliberately painted black a number of events in modern Indonesian history. It is saddening to realize that, during Soeharto's New Order regime, the only correct version of history was that which was compiled by the government or by those backing that authoritarian.

A close analysis of this situation will reveal why that government was keen to blacken specific historical events or to forge their own version of events. We will also get an impression that the New Order was carrying out a major, hidden agenda. Indirectly, history was turned upside-down. The government removed any political foes that they determined were not in line with its own beliefs and interests. It is this twisting of history that has happened to the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and Indonesia's founding president, Sukarno.

The New Order regime deliberately twisted history to preserve their power. This falsification of history has led to the formation of an erroneous public opinion that the PKI was a cruel party, and a party that the people must take as their arch-enemy because it did not reflect the country's five-point principle of Pancasila.

This manipulated public opinion has served to engender the people with hatred for the PKI without first making an objective assessment of the party and its activities. It goes without saying that only the government, which sought its revenge upon the PKI, could benefit from this situation because they could retain power.

To legalize the repression of political foes, the New Order twisted, turned inside-out and engineered many historical accounts.

One obvious example is Soeharto's accusation that the PKI was the mastermind of the Sept. 30, 1965 abortive coup. This was clearly a trick that Soeharto employed to eradicate the PKI, because the party was then considered to be a very dangerous political foe, standing in the way of Soeharto's ambition to claim state power.

We must not allow this kind of historical engineering to go on. It is time for us to objectively assess our own history. If we allow our history to be manipulated simply to satisfy the wishes of one particular group, this is tantamount to allowing the younger generation to remain in the dark, ignorant and fooled.

As a result, it becomes impossible for us to assess historical events objectively and expose historical truths.

As noted historian Prof. Sartono has put it: "The present can be understood well only if we have good knowledge about the past." Yang Berlawan: Membongkar Tabir Pemalsuan Sejarah PKI (Those Who Fought: Lifting curtain on falsified history of the PKI) by Imam Soedjono tries, freely and daringly, to expose the past and straighten out our twisted history. He believes that without a good understanding of the past and without reviewing it with as objective an approach as possible, it will not possible for us to move forward correctly in future (p. vii).

Imam has tried his best to get rid of his subjectiveness and also of any accounts based on historical fabrication and falsification committed during the New Order regime.

At the same time, he has tried to introduce a history that has virtually never been explored in official versions of Indonesian history, such as on the repatriation of Muso and on the leftist movement that attempted to implement experimental social reform, particularly in rural areas.

Yang Berlawan claims that, although the PKI has written some black pages in Indonesia's history, the party also played a major role in the national struggle to win independence from the hands of the colonialists.

From 1916-1917, the Indonesian people suffered a major crisis under the Dutch colonial regime: Acute starvation swept through almost all parts of Java. In particular Wonogiri, an area of chronic poverty, was hit by high prices and incessant security disturbances, as well as an increase in its beggar population. (p. 23).

The Dutch imposed forced labor on the Indonesian people, growing sugarcane for the colonialists' sugar factories. In this increasingly worsening situation, new organizations such as the Islam Abangan sprang up.

The Islam Abangan, which claimed to champion popular interests, demanded that the government accord it official recognition. This demand was refused, as this organization both defied the government and agitated the people to rise against the Dutch government. The movement spearheaded by this organization ended with the arrest of its leader, Haji Misbach.

In mid-1922 Misbach was released from prison, and this event marked the emergence of Indonesian communists and a communist party movement in Surakarta. The cadres of this party were characterized by their perseverance in combining Marxist ideologies with Islam. This was quite a natural approach, because Islam held great sway in those days, so a religious leader had a dominant role in mobilizing his followers.

Indirectly, the PKI was a pioneer of the peasant rebellion in Indonesia. Agricultural laborers could no longer put up with the high taxes imposed by colonial rulers and capitalists; neither could they stand the arbitrary treatment to which they had long been subjected.

The people reacted strongly against the colonial rulers and the capitalists, resulting in the Bedewang affair, followed later by a peasant rebellion in Nias. Then the farm laborers in Karanggak rose up, along with members of the PKI and the Serikat Rakyat, or People's Union, and lay down their lives against the oppression.

Regrettably, during the New Order regime, these PKI-led events were cut from the nation's official history.

Although the PKI played a significant role in determining the course of Indonesia's independence, the party was instead accused of trying to bring down the national government in masterminding the Sept. 30 coup.

In Yang Berlawan, Imam counters any and all unfounded suspicions harbored against the PKI. This book is an excellent resource for those readers who seek historical truth.