Son of damned PKI revisits his bitter past

JP/20/AIDIT

Son of demonized PKI leader recalls bitter past

M. Taufiqurrahman The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

For good or ill, 1965 has very special meaning for Ilham Aidit, son of doomed Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) leader Dipa Nusantara (D.N.) Aidit.

It is so special that the last four digits of his cellular phone number are 65, repeated.

Indeed, 1965 marked a grave turning point in the life of Ilham's family and, more than anything, it was a time when he had to confront the powers that be when he was barely six years old.

It was on the night of Sept. 30, 1965, that Ilham was parted from Dipa just as he began to appreciate the father-and-son bond.

After that night, Ilham and his two brothers had to live on the run for years before living largely in relative obscurity.

Ilham had to live that way because his father had been accused -- according to official historians of the New Order regime -- of masterminding an aborted coup that led to the assassination of some pro-Western military generals.

He could not forget the last moment when the old Aidit put him to bed late on Sept. 30, before the then PKI leader was taken to Halim Perdanakusuma airbase in East Jakarta by a group of men in military fatigues.

"The men asked my father to go with them to Halim, because then president Sukarno was also there. My father heeded the summons," Ilham told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

It was Aidit's presence in Halim, together with Sukarno that was later used to confirm his involvement in the coup, known locally as Pemberontakan 30 September (the 30th Sept. Rebellion).

Aidit's role in the coup was later immortalized in the New Order government-sponsored film that depicted him as a demonic figure.

Staying up late on Sept. 30 with his father, however, provided Ilham with enough evidence to counter a widely held view about his father's possible involvement in the coup.

Coup involvement disputed

"My father was not ready to go that night and even had an argument with my mother about his decision finally to do so," Ilham said, adding that his father had planned to work in his room as usual that night.

Ilham said that prior to his departure to Halim, Aidit entertained a guest, whom he considered an unimportant figure.

"He chatted until late at night with PKI youth wing (CGMI) chairman Hardoyo. If he was in charge of the coup he would surely have asked Hardoyo, someone of no great significance, to leave earlier in the evening," he said.

According to Ilham, in the months leading to the coup, his father led a normal life and barely hinted that he planned something big, such as taking power from Sukarno.

With the PKI then becoming the official scapegoat for the coup, the military launched an offensive against members of the communist party and its affiliates and Aidit's family become one of the primary targets in a nationwide witch-hunt.

Given the dire emergency, two days after the coup, Ilham's mother, Sutanti, fled Jakarta after she had introduced her three children to a relative in Manggarai, Central Jakarta, who would look after them for some time until security improved.

Ilham later found out that his mother was apprehended on Oct. 3 and jailed in Bukit Duri penitentiary, Tangerang.

A more heartbreaking revelation was soon to come.

Late in November, Ilham learned that his father was arrested in Boyolali, a city in the heart of Central Java, and later executed without proper trial.

"From that moment on, we did not hold out much hope that our family would ever reunite," Ilham said, with tears brimming in the corner of his eyes.

When the dust finally settled, the three Aidit children relocated to Bandung, where they lived with distant relatives until 1976.

During the period, Ilham lived in relative security, the only disruption being his regular fights with school bullies who continually taunted him about his father.

However, a bullying incident, committed by a group of men in uniform, almost claimed his life. "I was playing marbles with my friends when one member of the group pointed a gun at my head and was ready to pull the trigger. Suddenly, one of them said that I was too young to be executed."

The burden from the past proved to be more taxing for Ilham once he had enrolled at Parahyangan University (Unpar), Bandung, where he studied architecture.

During the university years, Ilham learned more about the predicament that had befallen his father and the bulk of his followers.

"I was angry, knowing that my father and millions of his followers has been treated unfairly. They were killed without proper trial and some of them were banished into a gulag-like prison," he said.

To seek solace from a world that appeared to be closing in on him, Ilham joined a mountaineering club that trained him to climb almost every high mountain in Java.

He was also active in several student organizations, something that prevented him from graduating quickly from university.

Discrimination and harassment

To prove that discrimination against PKI-related family members still existed, soon after graduating from Unpar in 1987, Ilham applied for a position at the West Java provincial administration office in Bandung, using a bogus birth certificate.

"Most of my friends were invited for a preliminary test, but my application was put aside; it taught me a lesson that the tentacles of the intelligence agency managed to track us down, despite our efforts to conceal our past," he said.

The intelligence community continued to spy on Ilham even as he led an ordinary life in Jakarta.

Every morning from his office in Tomang, West Jakarta, to any location where Ilham inspected the construction of buildings that he had designed, a van always followed him and remained on standby when he worked at any given location.

However, being on the intelligence watch list was not Ilham's primary reason when he decided to relocate to Bali in mid-1996.

"I was so fed up with traffic congestion in the capital. There was once a time that I got home at 11 p.m. because the Kebon Jeruk toll road was blocked by an overturned trailer truck. The next morning I decided to sell my house and move to Bali," he said.

Living on the run for years has also endowed Ilham the ability to sense impending danger.

His decision to move to Bali was made only months before the July 27 riot, a major political conflagration that also heralded the downfall of the Soeharto regime.

He could easily have been implicated in the riot that was blamed on the People's Democratic Party (PRD), a small political party accused by the New Order government of being the resurrection of the dormant communist movement.

Ilham, who was born 44 years ago in Moscow, said that he also felt at home in Bali, not only because his wife and two daughters were there, but also because the resort island suffered the greatest in the aftermath of the attempted coup.

"Bali lost the greatest proportion of its population in the aftermath. I therefore started a movement, immediately after Soeharto's downfall, to demand the rehabilitation of the names of those who had been victimized, including that of my father," he said.