Son of demonized PKI leader recalls bitter past

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.