The 9/30 tragedy

The 9/30 tragedy

Something horrible happened 40 years ago that changed the
course of Indonesia's history, unfortunately for the worse. But
while the circumstances surrounding the kidnapping and murder of
six Army generals on the night of Sept. 30, 1965, remain
shrouded in mystery, the effects of this tragic event are
unequivocal: it was a case of one tragedy leading to another, and
another, and another.

Whoever was responsible for the kidnappings and killings, and
whatever their motives -- both questions remain contentious to
this day among historians -- the events of that night, which
lasted until the early hours of Oct. 1, unleashed a killing spree
that went on for months, with the main targets, though by far not
the only targets, being suspected members and supporters of the
Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), which was blamed for the murder
of the generals.

If that was not enough of a tragedy, the nation saw the young
Army general Soeharto seize the presidency the following year,
ushering in an era of repression, brutality and corruption that
would last for the next three decades.

Soeharto was easily one of the most ruthless rulers of the
20th century, and his human rights record matches those of other
dictators of his era: the jailing of tens of thousands of people
without trial, the invasion of East Timor and the ensuing brutal
rule of the territory, the silencing of politicians, clerics and
students who disagreed with his policies, his brutal policies in
Aceh and Papua, to name but a few. Last week, more than seven
years after his removal from office, the National Commission on
Human Rights announced that 14 government critics who went
missing during Soeharto's rule had been murdered.

Soeharto's legacy goes beyond the atrocities he and his regime
committed. The militaristic and often brutal nature of our
political culture today, from the intolerance to the use of
violence to settle differences, is deeply rooted in Soeharto's
New Order, and it will likely require one or two generations to
undo this unfortunate legacy as the nation struggles to transform
itself into a democracy.

But the biggest tragedy for the nation is our own denial that
9/30 was a tragedy of horrific proportions. Soeharto used the
event to sanctify Pancasila, effectively turning the state
ideology into an instrument he could wield to justify his brutal
policies.

Officially, at least during the Soeharto years, the event was
marked on Oct. 1, thus confining the tragedy solely to the
killing of the six generals and, at least according to military
historians, to the abortive coup by the PKI. What happened
afterward was justified as a necessary evil, even a historical
necessity, although the killing spree was not openly recognized.

There was no mention in the military-dictated official history
books of the ensuing bloodshed, which according to international
human rights organizations left at least half a million people
dead. The precise figure will never be known precisely because we
as a nation pretend it never happened.

C. L. Sulzberger, writing in The New York Times from Jakarta
on April 13, 1966, compared the Indonesian killings with other
slaughters of the 20th century, including the Armenian massacres,
Stalin's starvation of the Kulaks, Hitler's Jewish genocide, the
Muslim-Hindu killings following India's partition and the purges
following China's turn to communism.

"Indonesia's bloody persecution of its communist rivals these
terrible events in both scale and savagery," Sulzberger wrote.

Four decades later the nation has not fully come to terms with
the reality of these events. We barely know the truth. We only
have the truth Soeharto's military wanted us to have. The worst
part is that most of us do not seem to want to know what
happened. We would rather bury this ugly past and forget it
entirely.

But here is the bad news: We can never bury the past. This
dark page in our history will continue to haunt us for as long as
we fail to get to the truth. As they say, only the truth shall
set us free.

More than seven years since Soeharto left the political stage,
surely the time has come for the nation to rewrite the history of
what happened on the night of Sept. 30, 1965. History is always
written from the perspective of the victors. Soeharto was the
winner of the power struggle in the mid-1960s, thus he had his
day. "His story", rather than history, ruled the day.

But as his legacy shows, there are no real winners here. The
entire nation suffered, and continues to suffer to this day.
There are only losers.