Setting history straight

Setting history straight

Many Indonesians may think it a waste of time and energy,
especially during the economic and social crisis, for the nation
to dwell on a controversy which has been considered settled for
more than three decades. After all, what happened in and around
Jakarta during those critical hours on Oct. 1, 1965, is by now
fairly well-known to most Indonesians.

But is it? At least up to May 21 of last year -- which is the
date when a groundswell of reformist sentiment forced Soeharto to
relinquish his position as president of Indonesia -- the
following chain of events was the authorized description.

Late on the night of Sept. 30, 1965, leaders and activists
from the subsequently outlawed Indonesian Communist Party (PKI)
were busy putting the final touches to a plot to take over from
then president Sukarno. The presumed objective was to preempt a
military coup d'etat which the Communists led by rightist Army
generals.

In the early hours of Oct. 1, the Communist Party was ready to
strike. Hit squads in military trucks fanned out across the city
in search of the targeted victims: six top Army generals who the
PKI regarded as the most dangerous enemies of the Party. Before
dawn, virtually the entire top Army leadership was wiped out. The
victims were either killed while resisting capture at their homes
or cruelly executed in a macabre ceremony at Lubang Buaya, a
hamlet on the fringes of the Halim Perdanakusumah Air Force Base.

That, in essence, is the official account of the "G30S-PKI"
affair, which a whole generation of school children and students
have been made to memorize for the past 34 years. To ensure that
the guilt of the Communist Party and its "Old Order" supporters
was not lost on the rest of the population, over the past three
decades a succession of governments employed every form of
propaganda at their disposal to make sure that the official
version of the affair was unchallenged.

With history in a certain sense being a record of a people's
collective memory, this version could of course be regarded as
being generally acceptable. However, in the current reform era
objections to the official line have emerged.

First, a number of released political prisoners, who had for
years languished in detention for their alleged roles in the
affair, have vowed to publish their own "correct" versions of the
event to rehabilitate their good name and to "put history
straight".

Several retired Air Force officers are now presenting their
own version of the infamous events at Lubang Buaya. The Air Force
was stung by assertions that it was somehow involved in the coup
because of the use of its Lubang Buaya training base by the PKI
plotters and Sukarno's presence at Halim Air Force Base during
the most critical hours of the affair.

In a newly published book titled Lifting the Haze over Halim,
1965, the ex-officers denied any Air Force involvement in the
coup. They cite rivalry between the Air Force and the Army at
that time as one of the reasons for distrust in the Air Force. As
for Sukarno's role in the affair, it is still a matter of debate
whether he was in any way involved or had any advance knowledge
of the putsch.

It may in conclusion be noted that in all the 54 years of its
history as an independent nation, Indonesia never experienced an
event with such far-reaching political implications as the 1965
coup. Given the many controversies that still surround the event
34 years after it happened, a revision of the current official
interpretation of the event seems necessary.

With that in mind, every piece of new information which
players and witnesses can supply must be welcomed. Beyond that,
it is the task of our historians to set history straight.