Night of the Communists?

From whatever side one looks at it, by any measure the chain of events that was set in motion by what happened around Oct. 1, 1965, constitutes a human tragedy so huge it deserves to be remembered.

But what was it precisely that happened? Unfortunately -- and oddly -- many of the details of what actually transpired during those fateful hours between midnight on Sept. 30 and daybreak on Oct. 1 all of 38 years ago still remain in the dark.

A "white book" issued by the State Secretariat as late as 1994 -- 29 years after the event -- tells us that what has since become known as the G30S affair was in effect a failed coup instigated by the now outlawed Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).

After years of patient plotting, which included attempting to subvert other political parties as well as the powerful military, the communists decided that the time was ripe for the party to make a grab for power by first eliminating the top leadership of the Indonesian Army.

Ostensibly, rumors that President Sukarno was seriously ill and that he was being treated by a team of Chinese communist doctors helped convince the PKI leadership that any further delay would be fatal to their plans and that the party had to act quickly.

So, in the small hours of Oct. 1, 1965, a number of snatch squads of soldiers sympathetic to the plotters set out in trucks towards the homes of a number of marked Army generals to carry out their job of abducting the generals and thereby paralyze the army leadership.

Those who resisted were executed on the spot. The others were forcibly taken to Lubang Buaya, which belonged to the Air Force but which was being used by communist women volunteers training to fight in Sukarno's confrontation with Malaysia. There, according to official Army accounts, the military officers were tortured to death by mocking communist women cadres.

Six generals of the Army and one junior officer, a young lieutenant, were killed. Their bodies were thrown into an unused well from which they were later retrieved by Navy frogmen in full diving gear. As a consequence, grizzly stories made the rounds of the flesh having been stripped from the victims bodies by knives and eyeballs having been pried out of their sockets.

That, in a nutshell, is the established version familiar to all who lived and worked, or grew up and went to school, in Indonesia from the late 1960s well into the 1990s. A new era of reform has since started and demands are growing not only for basic civil rights and justice to be restored, but for history to be rectified. Historical assertions, so carefully constructed by New Order ideologues and historians, are currently being questioned.

It is tempting to believe that in the climate of democratic reform that has dawned after 38 years of authoritarian rule, Indonesians have become more capable of seeing historic events in a more humane perspective.

Yet, millions of Indonesians continue to live in the shadow of that dark period in their country's history when the harboring of any kind of leftist ideology was officially considered a crime. And worse, this perception of crime is even now being extended to include all those who are in any way related to the "PKI."

For all these citizens who continue to be stigmatized for wrongs they never committed, the options and opportunities for work and social activity remain limited. They are denied certain jobs and they may find it difficult even to tie the knot in marriage with the partners of their choice.

But solace may be coming, in part if not in full, if plans to set up a truth and reconciliation commission materialize so that the conflicts of the past can be settled once and for all and the nation can continue on its course of building a better future.

For such a commission to be effective, however, the moral courage is required on the part of all those who were involved in serious crimes against humanity to openly acknowledge their past misdeeds. Unless they want the remnants of unresolved conflicts to continue hanging like a sinister shadow over this nation, that is what is needed.