Justice for 'G30S' detainees<\/p>\n
The National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) has asked
\nthe President to approve the establishment of a truth and
\nreconciliation commission. Based on a law enacted by the House of
\nRepresentatives last year, the deadline for the setting up of
\nthis 21-member Truth and Reconciliation Commission is next month.
\nThe commission will be tasked with settling past human rights
\nabuses by state institutions.<\/p>\n
Komnas HAM chairman Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara said after a
\nmeeting with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono last week that
\nthe government was set to meet the deadline. One critical item on
\nthe new commission's agenda will be to rehabilitate, compensate
\nand restore the political rights of former members of the
\nIndonesian Communist Party (PKI), as well as others who were
\nsimply accused of being members or supporters of the PKI.<\/p>\n
Last October, only a month before he was sworn in as
\npresident, Susilo put reconciliation with PKI ex-detainees on top
\nof his agenda. Tens of thousands of former members, activists,
\nsympathizers and associates of the PKI, outlawed by Soeharto's
\nNew Order dictatorship, were sent to prison camps across the
\ncountry, including the notorious Buru Island, an island more than
\ntwice the size of Bali in the Maluku archipelago. Most of the
\nprisoners lived in gulag-like conditions and were never put on
\ntrial.<\/p>\n
The mass incarceration followed the infamous 1965 pogrom in
\nwhich more than half-a-million Indonesians believed to have links
\nwith the party were killed, after an alleged coup d'etat on Sept.
\n30 of that year was blamed on the PKI. The tragedy, dubbed G30S
\nby the Army, catapulted General Soeharto into power, with the
\ntacit support and assistance of the West against the backdrop of
\nthe Cold War. The mass killing that occurred after the alleged
\ncoup attempt has been cited as among the worst of the 20th
\ncentury. What really happened on that fateful night of Sept. 30
\nremains a mystery. Following Soeharto's downfall in 1998, there
\nhas been mounting pressure to completely reevaluate the official
\nversion of events surrounding this black historical episode.<\/p>\n
Komnas HAM is not alone in urging the government to clear the
\nway for reconciliation with former detainees, 40 years after the
\nevents. Two other key institutions, the Supreme Council and the
\nAttorney General's Office, have also tabled the same proposal. It
\nis interesting to note that it was the Attorney General's Office
\nthat set up the so-called Buru Island Resettlement Executor Body
\nin late 1960s at the behest of the now-defunct Internal Security
\nAgency that was headed by Soeharto himself.<\/p>\n
G30S remains a dark, dirty secret that haunts the nation's
\npsyche to this very day. Past attempts to cast light on the
\nevents have proceeded at a snail's pace. Reconciliation attempts
\nwith former detainees have been obstinately resisted from certain
\nsectors, in particular the military and bureaucracy who
\nconstituted the backbone of the New Order regime.<\/p>\n
In 1999, about a year after Soeharto fell from grace, the
\nHouse passed a law allowing former political prisoners to vote,
\nhowever retained the ban on their right to be elected to
\nlegislatures. In 2001, President Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur) made
\nan official apology for the discrimination against former members
\nof the PKI, its affiliates and their families. Gus Dur, however,
\nfailed in his attempt to revoke the People's Consultative
\nAssembly decree that bans Marxism\/Leninism.<\/p>\n
The situation as it stands now is most unsatisfactory, even a
\ntouch bizarre. An Indonesian President has apologized, but it is
\nstill not clear what really happened on that fateful night of
\nSept. 30, 1965. It is also not clear who was in the wrong, or who
\nactually committed a crime; the PKI, or the Army. Did the former
\ndetainees commit crimes? Perhaps, perhaps not. They were never
\nput on trial.<\/p>\n
In the same vein, the government can only compensate someone
\nif it is clear that they did something wrong. Restoring a persons
\npolitical rights implies that one party was in the right and
\nanother in the wrong. Making this judgment will be the immediate
\nchallenge for the truth and reconciliation commission.<\/p>\n
Complicating the issue is that all the former detainees are
\naging. The youngest detainees at the time, say 18 years old in
\n1965, are 58 years old today. By the time they are rehabilitated,
\nmost of them will have come to the last years of their lives.<\/p>\n
In the end, the government will probably offer almost nothing
\nto former G30S detainees. More urgent, therefore, is to stop the
\non-going discrimination against former detainees and their
\nrelatives. These relatives are younger people who have had to
\nlive with mindless prejudice for far too long.<\/p>\n
The "clean environment" purge by the New Order regime in the
\nyears after 1965 systematically persecuted the children and
\nrelatives of G30S detainees. The New Order regime had a peculiar
\nbelief in hereditary sin. Relatives of detainees were forced to
\nquit their jobs, denied their pensions, stripped of all benefits,
\nhad their land and houses confiscated, were expelled from schools
\nor universities, and were denied the opportunity to express their
\ncreativity through the arts.<\/p>\n
President Susilo will serve the nation very well if the truth
\ncommission can live up to its name; that is, to unveil the truth.<\/p>",
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