Our conscience
Our conscience
Indonesia must count as one of the few nations in the world
which can remain indifferent to the carnage that saw more than
half a million of their own people killed 30 years ago. The
regime of president Soeharto, through sinister social
engineering, managed to brainwash almost the entire nation into
regarding what happened in the mid-1960s as a historical
necessity. The line taken by the regime, and by most people in
the country today, is that the bloodshed which erupted in the
aftermath of the abortive coup in September 1965 was a price
worth paying in preventing the nation from falling into communist
hands. The economic progress which the regime brought about over
the next 30 years helped give further justification for the
holocaust.
It is fortunate, therefore, that there is still some sanity
among Indonesia's emerging leaders today who have not been
completely brainwashed. President Abdurrahman Wahid in a TV
interview on Tuesday gave the official green light to reopen the
case surrounding the September 30 Movement (G30S), as the 1965
attempted coup is officially referred to, and its tragic
aftermath. The President, in his previous role as chairman of the
Nahdlatul Ulama, has repeatedly apologized for the role that
members of his Muslim organization played in the carnage. Now he
is inviting the public to take the initiative to reopen the case
and help establish the truth about what really happened back
then.
While official history books briefly mention the carnage, not
surprisingly they refrain from giving the number of people
slaughtered. Vivid accounts of the bloodshed crop up in some
literature, including references to Bengawan Solo turning red
from the blood of the bodies dumped in the legendary Java river.
But these were horrible accounts that our already brainwashed
nation would rather forget, or worse still, distort. The death
toll, and fuller accounts of the bloodshed, can be found in
foreign literature. Their estimate of more than half a million
deaths have never been refuted by the authorities to this day.
The general public's acceptance of the tragedy in the mid-
1960s as a historical necessity also explains this nation's
penchant for violence today. Here is a regime which not only
condoned violence, but was founded upon violence, and sustained
its power for the next 30 years or so through violence. Almost
every major problem was solved by the regime in the only way it
knew how: the use of violence. Society soon picked up this habit,
and also began resorting to violence in resolving disputes. The
violent instances of unrest which erupted in East Timor, Aceh,
Ambon and North Maluku over the past year are not only legacies
of the Soeharto regime; they are symptoms of a sick society.
One of the biggest challenges facing this nation, now that it
is finally adhering to democracy, is to change society's violent
habits. It is a tall order indeed, but President Abdurrahman, who
was known first and foremost as a humanist well before becoming a
politician, has made the right start. He has now invited members
of the public to come to terms with our violent past, inviting
them to review the events around the G30S and its bloody
aftermath.
Society must now take up this challenge to uncover the truth
surrounding what must rank as the darkest page of the nation's
modern history. The goal is not to exact revenge, for we would
then all be guilty of complicity. In any case, there would be
little sense in prosecuting those most responsible. Most of them
have died and the few survivors, like Soeharto, are old and
sickly.
Society nevertheless has a duty to the victims of that tragic
episode and to their offspring, who have equally suffered
society's wrath simply because of their kinship. The ultimate aim
in reopening the G30S file, however, is to clear, once and for
all, our conscience of this collective guilt. Only then can we
get on with our lives without being haunted by our past misdeeds.