Justice for 'G30S' detainees

Justice for 'G30S' detainees

The National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) has asked
the President to approve the establishment of a truth and
reconciliation commission. Based on a law enacted by the House of
Representatives last year, the deadline for the setting up of
this 21-member Truth and Reconciliation Commission is next month.
The commission will be tasked with settling past human rights
abuses by state institutions.

Komnas HAM chairman Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara said after a
meeting with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono last week that
the government was set to meet the deadline. One critical item on
the new commission's agenda will be to rehabilitate, compensate
and restore the political rights of former members of the
Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), as well as others who were
simply accused of being members or supporters of the PKI.

Last October, only a month before he was sworn in as
president, Susilo put reconciliation with PKI ex-detainees on top
of his agenda. Tens of thousands of former members, activists,
sympathizers and associates of the PKI, outlawed by Soeharto's
New Order dictatorship, were sent to prison camps across the
country, including the notorious Buru Island, an island more than
twice the size of Bali in the Maluku archipelago. Most of the
prisoners lived in gulag-like conditions and were never put on
trial.

The mass incarceration followed the infamous 1965 pogrom in
which more than half-a-million Indonesians believed to have links
with the party were killed, after an alleged coup d'etat on Sept.
30 of that year was blamed on the PKI. The tragedy, dubbed G30S
by the Army, catapulted General Soeharto into power, with the
tacit support and assistance of the West against the backdrop of
the Cold War. The mass killing that occurred after the alleged
coup attempt has been cited as among the worst of the 20th
century. What really happened on that fateful night of Sept. 30
remains a mystery. Following Soeharto's downfall in 1998, there
has been mounting pressure to completely reevaluate the official
version of events surrounding this black historical episode.

Komnas HAM is not alone in urging the government to clear the
way for reconciliation with former detainees, 40 years after the
events. Two other key institutions, the Supreme Council and the
Attorney General's Office, have also tabled the same proposal. It
is interesting to note that it was the Attorney General's Office
that set up the so-called Buru Island Resettlement Executor Body
in late 1960s at the behest of the now-defunct Internal Security
Agency that was headed by Soeharto himself.

G30S remains a dark, dirty secret that haunts the nation's
psyche to this very day. Past attempts to cast light on the
events have proceeded at a snail's pace. Reconciliation attempts
with former detainees have been obstinately resisted from certain
sectors, in particular the military and bureaucracy who
constituted the backbone of the New Order regime.

In 1999, about a year after Soeharto fell from grace, the
House passed a law allowing former political prisoners to vote,
however retained the ban on their right to be elected to
legislatures. In 2001, President Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur) made
an official apology for the discrimination against former members
of the PKI, its affiliates and their families. Gus Dur, however,
failed in his attempt to revoke the People's Consultative
Assembly decree that bans Marxism/Leninism.

The situation as it stands now is most unsatisfactory, even a
touch bizarre. An Indonesian President has apologized, but it is
still not clear what really happened on that fateful night of
Sept. 30, 1965. It is also not clear who was in the wrong, or who
actually committed a crime; the PKI, or the Army. Did the former
detainees commit crimes? Perhaps, perhaps not. They were never
put on trial.

In the same vein, the government can only compensate someone
if it is clear that they did something wrong. Restoring a persons
political rights implies that one party was in the right and
another in the wrong. Making this judgment will be the immediate
challenge for the truth and reconciliation commission.

Complicating the issue is that all the former detainees are
aging. The youngest detainees at the time, say 18 years old in
1965, are 58 years old today. By the time they are rehabilitated,
most of them will have come to the last years of their lives.

In the end, the government will probably offer almost nothing
to former G30S detainees. More urgent, therefore, is to stop the
on-going discrimination against former detainees and their
relatives. These relatives are younger people who have had to
live with mindless prejudice for far too long.

The "clean environment" purge by the New Order regime in the
years after 1965 systematically persecuted the children and
relatives of G30S detainees. The New Order regime had a peculiar
belief in hereditary sin. Relatives of detainees were forced to
quit their jobs, denied their pensions, stripped of all benefits,
had their land and houses confiscated, were expelled from schools
or universities, and were denied the opportunity to express their
creativity through the arts.

President Susilo will serve the nation very well if the truth
commission can live up to its name; that is, to unveil the truth.