Learning from past mistakes

Learning from past mistakes

I don't claim to know for certain all the facts of history,
but am writing from personal experience.

I was a boy in 1964/1965, and even then my parents encouraged
me to read English-language books. Two of my favorite places were
the British Council, then located on Jl. Merdeka Barat, and the
USIS library on Jl. Veteran. They were great sources of learning
and a means to improve my English. I looked forward to visits
after school.

At the library entrances, I always noticed men dressed in
black, wearing red berets, carefully noting who came in and out.
Very intimidating people, they even stared suspiciously at
children like me. When I asked elders who they were, the answer
was: Pemuda Rakyat (People's Youth of the Indonesian Communist
Party).

Indonesia was then a very leftist nation and was waging war
against neocolonialists and imperialists (Nekolim), who had set
up the new state of Malaysia, supposedly to encircle our country.
In school, we were taught that we should become Manusia Indonesia
Baru (the New Indonesian Man), based on the "New Soviet Man"
concept in the USSR. The basis of foreign policy was "the
Jakarta-Phnom Penh-Hanoi-Peking-Pyongyang axis -- all being
militant anti-Western states.

I remember clearly riding on a bus with friends and passing
the burned-out bulk of the British Embassy, which had been set
ablaze by angry mobs, led by the same Pemuda Rakyat who strongly
supported the policy of "confrontation" with Malaysia. Great
Britain was considered our enemy's main sponsor, while America
was always referred to as "the U.S. imperialists" on TVRI. I
remember also hearing the news of a British housing compound near
Jl. Pakubuwono in Kebayoran Baru being ransacked by "progressive
revolutionaries".

On the Indonesian Communist Party's anniversary in 1965, I
remember being driven down Jl. Jendral Sudirman and seeing giant
hammers and sickles all along Jakarta's main thoroughfare. At
that time, anybody against the government's left-leaning policy
was labeled as having communisto-phobia. It was almost as if we
were already a Marxist republic.

It is now fashionable for the international media, especially
people unaware of what life was like in those days, to describe
the anticommunist feelings and violent backlash occurring in
1965/1967 as "an internal Indonesian Army matter, blamed on the
communists". To me, that is revisionist history -- the communists
were not entirely innocent. In fact, they were almost all-
powerful at the time. I believe the will of the Indonesian
majority -- most having a religion -- was to see the people known
to be atheists removed from positions of almost supreme power.

I must emphasize that I am not for the previous New Order.
During the former regime, there were severe abuses of power. I am
all for the reformists, provided Indonesia becomes a better
nation after this present crisis. But a return to the Sukarnoism
of 1964/1965 would be a big, costly mistake.

FARID BASKORO

Jakarta