Ex-PKI detainees live in remote village

Rusman, Samarinda, East Kalimantan

Former soldier Oentoeng Soejanto, 65, never imagined that his love for acting would lead him to spend nearly half his life in a village designated for ex-prisoners accused of being members of the outlawed Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI).

Oentoeng was among 175 people political detainees who upon their release in 1977, were told to relocate to a remote and isolated village deep in the forests of East Kalimantan.

The village, which remains poor and isolated, is referred to by locals as the "PKI village".

However, residents of the village prefer to call it by its proper name: Argosari, which means "place of exile".

Before settling in Argosari, Oentoeng, who suggested the village's name, spent 10 years in legal limbo, moving from one prison to another, without ever being formally convicted for any specific crime.

For nearly forty years now, he has continued to deny that he was ever involved with the PKI. Instead, he maintained that he was accused of being a PKI member because of his life-long involvement in ludruk, a traditional form of theater.

The PKI was accused of masterminding the failed bloody coup on Sept. 30, 1965, which was accompanied by the killing of several army generals. Former authoritarian president Soeharto rose to power after the failed coup, whose government sent thousands of PKI members and their relatives to prison without trial. Forty years after the incident, the current government is now facing strong public pressure to fully restore the civil and political rights of people accused of being linked to PKI.

Oentoeng said that at the time of the incident, referred to by historians as the September 30 Movement, he was a second corporal with the army stationed in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, far away from the 1965 alleged coup attempt, which took place in Jakarta.

He said that his only "mistake" was to have continued to take leading acting roles in ludruk even when he was in the army, which eventually led to his arrest in 1968, three years after the alleged coup attempt.

In the aftermath of the September 30 Movement, those involved in traditional arts, such as ludruk, were rounded-up because of their alleged connections with the pro-communist People's Cultural Institute (Lekra). Hundreds of thousands of Indonesian citizens were also detained because of their alleged connections with the PKI.

"Not one of the plays I acted in was about violence," said Oentoeng, who once in jail was forced into admitting that he was a PKI member.

"I don't bear a grudge, but deep inside my heart I still feel a lasting pain," he said.

Oentoeng's pain is shared by Kasran, 81, another resident of Argosari, which is located in the district of Samboja.

The grandfather of 31 grandchildren, often gazes blankly into the woods from his simple dwelling, remembering with bitterness his two years in jail because he was accused of being a communist sympathizer.

The farmer was among the first migrants to Samboja, relocating from his birthplace in Cilacap, West Java, to seek a better life.

"I was only a poor farmer, trying to have a better life, and then bad luck came," he said.

Following the events of 1965, he was put in jail because he was accused of being a member of the Indonesian Farmers' Front (BTI), an organization linked to the PKI. Once released, he was forced to relocate to Argosari.

He said that what capped his suffering was when his children were forced to quit school due to the constant taunting and harassment from their classmates.

"My children were called 'PKI children' and 'children of a murderer'. When in fact I don't know anything about the murders of the generals," he said.

Most residents of Argosari, like Kasran, are poor self- sustaining farmers who live in houses made out of wood from trees they have felled themselves. Because of their poverty, residents are forced to share their harvest, cooking their food in a communal kitchen.

Mbah Gusti, 85, a village elder, said that although a lot Argosari residents lived in poor health and abject conditions, they were able to take it in their stride because of the hardship they have experienced.

"I am now accustomed to life's tortures. I suffered for years while in detention," he said. "The current pain is nothing compared to those times."