Son of demonized PKI leader recalls bitter past<\/p>\n
M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post\/Jakarta<\/p>\n
For good or ill, 1965 has very special meaning for Ilham
\nAidit, son of doomed Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) leader Dipa
\nNusantara (D.N.) Aidit.<\/p>\n
It is so special that the last four digits of his cellular
\nphone number are 65, repeated.<\/p>\n
Indeed, 1965 marked a grave turning point in the life of
\nIlham's family and, more than anything, it was a time when he had
\nto confront the powers that be when he was barely six years old.<\/p>\n
It was on the night of Sept. 30, 1965, that Ilham was parted
\nfrom Dipa just as he began to appreciate the father-and-son bond.<\/p>\n
After that night, Ilham and his two brothers had to live on
\nthe run for years before living largely in relative obscurity.<\/p>\n
Ilham had to live that way because his father had been accused
\n-- according to official historians of the New Order regime -- of
\nmasterminding an aborted coup that led to the assassination of
\nsome pro-Western military generals.<\/p>\n
He could not forget the last moment when the old Aidit put him
\nto bed late on Sept. 30, before the then PKI leader was taken to
\nHalim Perdanakusuma airbase in East Jakarta by a group of men in
\nmilitary fatigues.<\/p>\n
\"The men asked my father to go with them to Halim, because
\nthen president Sukarno was also there. My father heeded the
\nsummons,\" Ilham told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.<\/p>\n
It was Aidit's presence in Halim, together with Sukarno that
\nwas later used to confirm his involvement in the coup, known
\nlocally as Pemberontakan 30 September (the 30th Sept. Rebellion).<\/p>\n
Aidit's role in the coup was later immortalized in the New
\nOrder government-sponsored film that depicted him as a demonic
\nfigure.<\/p>\n
Staying up late on Sept. 30 with his father, however, provided
\nIlham with enough evidence to counter a widely held view about
\nhis father's possible involvement in the coup.<\/p>\n
Coup involvement disputed<\/p>\n
\"My father was not ready to go that night and even had an
\nargument with my mother about his decision finally to do so,\"
\nIlham said, adding that his father had planned to work in his
\nroom as usual that night.<\/p>\n
Ilham said that prior to his departure to Halim, Aidit
\nentertained a guest, whom he considered an unimportant figure.<\/p>\n
\"He chatted until late at night with PKI youth wing (CGMI)
\nchairman Hardoyo. If he was in charge of the coup he would surely
\nhave asked Hardoyo, someone of no great significance, to leave
\nearlier in the evening,\" he said.<\/p>\n
According to Ilham, in the months leading to the coup, his
\nfather led a normal life and barely hinted that he planned
\nsomething big, such as taking power from Sukarno.<\/p>\n
With the PKI then becoming the official scapegoat for the
\ncoup, the military launched an offensive against members of the
\ncommunist party and its affiliates and Aidit's family become one
\nof the primary targets in a nationwide witch-hunt.<\/p>\n
Given the dire emergency, two days after the coup, Ilham's
\nmother, Sutanti, fled Jakarta after she had introduced her three
\nchildren to a relative in Manggarai, Central Jakarta, who would
\nlook after them for some time until security improved.<\/p>\n
Ilham later found out that his mother was apprehended on Oct.
\n3 and jailed in Bukit Duri penitentiary, Tangerang.<\/p>\n
A more heartbreaking revelation was soon to come.<\/p>\n
Late in November, Ilham learned that his father was arrested
\nin Boyolali, a city in the heart of Central Java, and later
\nexecuted without proper trial.<\/p>\n
\"From that moment on, we did not hold out much hope that our
\nfamily would ever reunite,\" Ilham said, with tears brimming in
\nthe corner of his eyes.<\/p>\n
When the dust finally settled, the three Aidit children
\nrelocated to Bandung, where they lived with distant relatives
\nuntil 1976.<\/p>\n
During the period, Ilham lived in relative security, the only
\ndisruption being his regular fights with school bullies who
\ncontinually taunted him about his father.<\/p>\n
However, a bullying incident, committed by a group of men in
\nuniform, almost claimed his life. \"I was playing marbles with my
\nfriends when one member of the group pointed a gun at my head and
\nwas ready to pull the trigger. Suddenly, one of them said that I
\nwas too young to be executed.\"<\/p>\n
The burden from the past proved to be more taxing for Ilham
\nonce he had enrolled at Parahyangan University (Unpar), Bandung,
\nwhere he studied architecture.<\/p>\n
During the university years, Ilham learned more about the
\npredicament that had befallen his father and the bulk of his
\nfollowers.<\/p>\n
\"I was angry, knowing that my father and millions of his
\nfollowers has been treated unfairly. They were killed without
\nproper trial and some of them were banished into a gulag-like
\nprison,\" he said.<\/p>\n
To seek solace from a world that appeared to be closing in on
\nhim, Ilham joined a mountaineering club that trained him to climb
\nalmost every high mountain in Java.<\/p>\n
He was also active in several student organizations, something
\nthat prevented him from graduating quickly from university.<\/p>\n
Discrimination and harassment<\/p>\n
To prove that discrimination against PKI-related family
\nmembers still existed, soon after graduating from Unpar in 1987,
\nIlham applied for a position at the West Java provincial
\nadministration office in Bandung, using a bogus birth
\ncertificate.<\/p>\n
\"Most of my friends were invited for a preliminary test, but
\nmy application was put aside; it taught me a lesson that the
\ntentacles of the intelligence agency managed to track us down,
\ndespite our efforts to conceal our past,\" he said.<\/p>\n
The intelligence community continued to spy on Ilham even as
\nhe led an ordinary life in Jakarta.<\/p>\n
Every morning from his office in Tomang, West Jakarta, to any
\nlocation where Ilham inspected the construction of buildings that
\nhe had designed, a van always followed him and remained on
\nstandby when he worked at any given location.<\/p>\n
However, being on the intelligence watch list was not Ilham's
\nprimary reason when he decided to relocate to Bali in mid-1996.<\/p>\n
\"I was so fed up with traffic congestion in the capital. There
\nwas once a time that I got home at 11 p.m. because the Kebon
\nJeruk toll road was blocked by an overturned trailer truck. The
\nnext morning I decided to sell my house and move to Bali,\" he
\nsaid.<\/p>\n
Living on the run for years has also endowed Ilham the ability
\nto sense impending danger.<\/p>\n
His decision to move to Bali was made only months before the
\nJuly 27 riot, a major political conflagration that also heralded
\nthe downfall of the Soeharto regime.<\/p>\n
He could easily have been implicated in the riot that was
\nblamed on the People's Democratic Party (PRD), a small political
\nparty accused by the New Order government of being the
\nresurrection of the dormant communist movement.<\/p>\n
Ilham, who was born 44 years ago in Moscow, said that he also
\nfelt at home in Bali, not only because his wife and two daughters
\nwere there, but also because the resort island suffered the
\ngreatest in the aftermath of the attempted coup.<\/p>\n
\"Bali lost the greatest proportion of its population in the
\naftermath. I therefore started a movement, immediately after
\nSoeharto's downfall, to demand the rehabilitation of the names of
\nthose who had been victimized, including that of my father,\" he
\nsaid.<\/p>",
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