Bramantyo Prijosusilo, Ngawi, East Java – The end of September has always been a time of questions throughout Indonesia's political history.

Way back in the early days of the Republic, in the 1950s there was the debate about the brief "Madiun Affair" of September 1948. At that time Leftist forces attempted to build an Indonesian Soviet Republic in the East Java town of Madiun and were annihilated by government soldiers.

Although many at the time described the incident as a complex conflict, involving not only elements in the Indonesian military and Prime Minister Mohammad Hatta's government, but also the interests of the Western and the Communist blocks of the Cold War, Indonesian history – as taught in schools here – simplifies the tragedy as merely a "communist revolt".

Descriptions of the events of September 1965 that preceded the downfall of President Sukarno were simplified in a similar way during the New Order era of Soeharto.

During the height of power of the Soeharto government, Arifin C Noor's propaganda film Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI (The Treason of the Sept. 30 Movement/the Indonesian Communist Party) was aired on the state television channel (the only channel available), all over the country on that date. As if the monopoly of television broadcast was not sufficient, in many areas school children were marched to football fields to watch screenings of the film, depicting the deaths of Army officers on that last night of September 1965.

Although independent analysts and historians have offered many unanswered questions to illuminate those sad events, Indonesian official history has never mentioned the role of Soeharto, the US, the UK and the Cold War in the killings that engulfed Indonesia for most of the year following September 1965.

The massacre of hundreds of thousands (maybe even millions – no one knows for sure) of Indonesians leading up to Soeharto's rise to power was always described here as the "godless" communists getting what they deserved. Soeharto was always portrayed as a reluctant but decisive hero, who took command of the country not because he wanted to but because circumstances forced him to save the country from the specter of communism.

Soeharto's version of history never satisfied independent thinkers who sought to truthfully reconstruct the past. Trickles of information contrary to the official story began to seep through the "batik curtain" that Soeharto tried to cover this country with. Academics began to question Soeharto's own role in the mass-murders after a few inconvenient details of the events were published in the West. These included the post-mortem reports of the bodies of the murdered officers found in an old well on the Halim Perdanakusumah air base in Jakarta.

Upon finding the bodies there, Soeharto immediately went live on television and radio, describing the officers' bodies as having been tortured and mutilated, hinting that the atrocities were committed by members of the communist women's organization. These broadcasts served to whip up a frenzy of revenge and retaliation which ended only after many Indonesians had killed their neighbors in cold blood.

However, post-mortem (unpublished in Indonesia) notes that the kidnapped officers were killed in military execution style with a single, clean, bullet wound. Declassified files from the US and the UK later also described their involvement in giving technical and financial support to Soeharto.

The fall of Soeharto created an academic openness and suddenly all information available about his rise to power became publicly accessible. In 2004 the government published a reviewed national history curriculum and decided that it was no longer necessary to add a forward-slash PKI after mentioning the September 30 (G30S) incident. In March this year that decision was revoked and the Attorney General's Office banned all history textbooks based on the 2004 curriculum that failed to relate PKI to the attempted coup.

In several cities, government officials confiscated offending books and burned them. Although the burning of books is a most embarrassing occurrence for our fledgling democracy, only a few intellectuals appeared to consider this a cause for concern.

The 2004 curriculum was revoked not because of new evidence but because of the uncomfortable realization that the PKI was no longer being cited as the sole culprit of the tragedy. The truth was that several parties had motives and the opportunity to be involved in the fateful night of Sept. 30, 1965.

No definite conclusion on who is to blame has been accepted by independent historians to date. The kidnapping of the officers was done by members of the Tjakrabhirawa presidential detail, which means – at least on the surface – the execution of the officers was an internal military operation. This fact is probably what the powers-that-be would like to suppress.

Today, 42 years after the event, it appears that some are still unprepared to make an honest note in our history. It is absurd to force the opinion that the PKI was the sole perpetrator of G30S when facts blatantly suggest a more complex state of affairs. The 2004 curriculum was correct in opening space for academic discussion, and the banning and burning of books produced under it is a grave mistake.

If the truth about who really orchestrated the murders of the officers on the night of Sept. 30, 1965, is important, it is imperative that we don't conclude that the PKI is solely to blame. Burning books that state a different opinion is not something that an honorable government committed to democracy and the building of a civil society should ever do.

The government must apologize for its barbaric conduct in this matter, and reopen the questions surrounding G30S: Whodunit?

[The writer is an artist and farmer who lives in Ngawi, East Java.]