It was one of the bloodiest massacres of the 20th
century, well hidden from the outside world - the systematic killing of
communists or alleged communists in Indonesia in 1965 and 1966. Researchers
estimate that between one and three million people died.
Never before have the executioners spoken out in as much
detail as in the recently-released documentary The Act of Killing. In this
film, killers in North Sumatra give horrifying accounts of their executions,
and even re-enact them.
The killers have always considered themselves heroes
because their acts were supported by the government and large parts of society.
Many executions were directly committed by the military.
In the years that followed, Indonesians were bombarded
with anti-communist propaganda and, until today, most people do not know what
really happened.
The film, and a recent report by the Indonesian
national human rights commission that called the killings crimes against
humanity, have launched a new debate on how the country should deal with this
very traumatic past.
Mass graves have yet to be exhumed and victims are yet
to see some kind of justice. In many villages, killers and victims' relatives
are still living with the awkward reality that 'our neighbour has killed my
father'.
Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen talks to former executioners
and finds out why so many people - mostly Muslim youths - turned into
cold-blooded killers, and why this dark episode in Indonesian history is still
very sensitive and alive today.
'The Act of Killing'
By Syarina Hasibuan, producer
When a friend told me of a documentary about an
executioner involved in the killing of alleged communists in 1965, I did not
believe her. I had never heard of anyone confessing to this - let alone a
documentary about it screening at international film festivals. I was dying to
see it and, luckily enough, I was one of the first Indonesians, along with a
small group of journalists, to attend a secret screening of The Act of Killing
in Jakarta. We were told not to reveal the location of the screening for
security reasons, which reveals just how sensitive this bloody period in
Indonesian history remains today.
After I watched it I felt shocked, confused and
betrayed. Shocked to find out how horrible the situation was at that time -
with people living in fear and killings taking place everywhere, every day.
Confused because I did not know what to think of Anwar Congo, the executioner
in the film. Somehow I did not hate him because I saw him as an uneducated man,
brainwashed by the government into believing that he was doing the right thing
by killing all those people. It was clear that his actions haunted him for
life. I felt betrayed because the government never told us the real story when
I was growing up. They lied to us. And now I wanted to know more.
As an Indonesian who grew up during President
Suharto's 'New Order' regime, I was taught that the Indonesian Communist Party
(PKI), which was one of the biggest political parties in 1965, was violent and
that its members did not believe in God. When I was a child, if we hated
someone we used to call him or her a communist - meaning that we thought the
person was evil. That is how brainwashed I was.
In elementary school every year on September 30,
teachers would ask us to watch a three-and-a-half hour long government
sponsored film about how the Communist Party had planned to topple the
government. The film showed how, on one day in 1965, the PKI had kidnapped
seven top military men in the middle of the night, killed one of them in front
of his wife and children, and brought the others to a rubber plantation, where
they tortured and mutilated them. Throughout it all, they were singing, dancing
and shouting "Kill! Kill! Kill!". Then they threw the dead bodies
into a well.
Many of the scenes in that film were too violent for
elementary school students to watch. But I guess the aim was to brainwash the
younger generation, to imprint the most gruesome parts of that film onto our
brains so that whenever we heard of the PKI we thought of evil. And, for a long
time, it worked.
I grew up not understanding what actually happened in
1965; I did not know that maybe up to three million people had been killed
because they were accused of being involved in the PKI. If my parents or grandparents
knew about it, they never spoke of it.
After watching The Act of Killing I felt we should
make our own story about the killings. I talked to victims, executioners,
witnesses and investigators to find out more about what actually happened. And
the more I talked to people, the more gruesome the picture that formed in my
head.
After the military accused the PKI of being behind the
murder of the seven military men, PKI members all over Indonesia were hunted
down, put in prison without trial, tortured or killed. Civilians and students
from religious boarding schools were used as executioners. And the military
released some of the most violent criminals from prisons and ordered them to
carry out executions. Hundreds of dead bodies were found floating in rivers
every day.
The situation was so chaotic that a person could
easily be accused of being a PKI member simply because someone did not like
them. Killings even happened between family members.
Ndoren is an old man who does not know his real age.
He has only two teeth left, but smiles a lot. He told us he was an executioner.
We went with him to Luweng Tikus, or the Rat hole as local people call it - the
location where soldiers forced him to kill more than 40 people, some of whom he
knew personally.
In front of the 42 metre deep hole he told us his
story, continuously warning us not to go any closer. The alleged communists
were brought in by the military after walking in the dark for hours, with their
hands tied. They were lined up in front of the hole. Then, one by one, Ndoren
hit each of them on the back of the head with a crowbar and threw them into the
hole. He said they hardly struggled, as if they had already accepted that they
were going to die.
The stench from the hole was so bad that villagers far
away could not bear it. The hole was covered until 2002 when human rights
activists opened it up and found human bones and skulls inside.
After Suharto's downfall 14 years ago, people
cautiously started to speak out. Victims and human rights organisations asked
the government to at least apologise for what happened. Nearly 50 years after
the events of those years, the National Commission for Human Rights conducted a
four-year long investigation into the case and concluded that crimes against
humanity were committed and that the military was responsible.
Still nothing much changed. I am happy that elementary
school students no longer have to watch the same propaganda film we were forced
to endure. But Indonesia's 'killing fields' remain absent from the history
books. The communists are still considered devil-like in the eyes of many
Indonesians and grandchildren of Communist Party members still do not want to
admit to this in public. There are still those who prefer not to talk about
what happened in 1965. Why open up old wounds, they say. Let us keep it buried.
But there are also many Indonesians, like myself, who
want to know what really happened. What is it that has divided our country for
so long? Did the PKI really plan a coup and kill those army generals, even
though their position was so strong at the time? What was it that made my
fellow Indonesians so willing to kill one another that they would even execute
family members?
I am happy that they have partially excavated Luweng
Tikus and found the skeletons. But many others remain scattered across
Indonesia. And we have a long way to go before we have all the answers we
deserve. I believe that if we want to learn from the past we must know the
truth about our history.
Al Jazeera
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