The need for justice in Indonesia, 39 years on

The need for justice in Indonesia, 39 years on

Carmel Budiardjo, London

Thirty-nine years ago, on Oct. 1, 1965, an event occurred that
was to trigger an earth-shattering upheaval in Indonesia. On that
day, seven army officers were kidnapped and gunned down. The
details of that incident are well known in Indonesia and have
formed an essential part of the history taught in schools and
solemnly commemorated every year in the media.

However, little attention has been paid to the far more
horrific events that followed. As the authors of a book
published recently say, the murder of the Army officers 'takes
pride of place over and above the mass arrests and killings as
the nation's major tragedy. Linking social memory with
monuments, museums, ceremonies and books is done in such a way as
to remind people of the Sept. 30 abortive coup attempt or G-30-S
(as the incident is officially known) while forgetting what
happened afterwards.'

Within days of the seven assassinations, the Indonesian Army
initiated a purge, with the help of some misguided political
groups, which led to the arrest and imprisonment of tens of
thousands of people, members of youth and women's organizations,
peasants' organizations and trade unions, and members of the
Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), accused (but never formally
charged) of being involved, directly or indirectly, in the so-
called G-30-S movement. Still worse, for six months from the end
of October 1965, hundreds of thousands of people were seized from
their homes and done to death along the roads and highways, and
in the forests of Central and East Java, in Bali and elsewhere.
Their bodies were secretly interred or simply thrown into rivers.

While the killings were still in progress, in November 1965,
President Sukarno dispatched a team of investigators to the worst
hit areas to investigate the scale of the catastrophe. Before the
end of the year, the team came up with a figure of 78,000 people
killed, knowing full well that this was way below the true
magnitude of the massacres. According to some observers at the
time, the true figure was likely to be ten times as much.

When I was arrested in September 1968, the total number of
political prisoners was thought to be around 70,000 though the
Soeharto government refused to provide any figures. I was
immediately plunged into a terrifying world, haunted by the
screams of people under interrogation every night, being with
women who had been stripped naked to humiliate them and force
confessions out of them. I saw men dangling from trees by their
wrists, their bodies covered with newly inflicted injuries.

Being English by birth, I was spared the agony of being
personally tortured. I was luckier too than most of the women
with whom I shared months and years behind bars because it
appears that the government feared that my continued imprisonment
would be an embarrassment. At the instigation of my family in
London and with the help of the World Council of Churches, I was
released after three years of incarceration and ordered to leave
the country.

My late husband was far less fortunate. He spent altogether
twelve years in detention before being released without charge.
Yet he too could thank his lucky stars that he was not banished
to the notorious island of Buru where at least 10,000 male
political prisoners, facing barbaric conditions and starvation,
were held for up to ten years.

In those days, Indonesia was top of the league for Amnesty
International, as the country with more uncharged and untried
political prisoners than any other country in the world.

My own banishment to the UK proved to be a blessing in
disguise as it gave me the opportunity to campaign for those I
had left behind. Even today, more than thirty years on, the
images of the women I shared cells with are still powerful. Some
were members of the women's organization Gerwani, while others
were young girls forced to make false confessions about
mutilating the bodies of the assassinated generals (which they
later retracted in court after spending more than six years in
prison). They also included the wives of PKI leaders held for no
other reason than that, as well as women seized off the streets
while selling things in the local market for no other reason than
allegedly being the chair of a local Gerwani branch.

I vividly remember my doctor friend, the late Sumiarsih, who
was accused of giving medical treatment to young men and women
who were arrested in a location outside Jakarta that became
known as 'Lubang Buaya', where the bodies of the generals had
been taken. Like so many other women with whom I spent years in
detention, Sumiarsih, who was dubbed the 'Lubang Buaya doctor' by
her captors, was banished to Plantungan, a remote camp for women
political prisoners in Central Java, and held without trial till
the mid 1970s.

Now that Indonesia has achieved something approaching a
democratic state, is it not time for these events to be
thoroughly investigated and those responsible for the tragedy to
be brought to book? The recent decision to set up a Truth and
Reconciliation Commission hardly seems the right way forward to
deal with such a huge catastrophe. But if this paves the way for
victims to come forward and talk about their experiences, to
identify the men who maltreated or tortured them, this could be a
start towards healing the wounds buried in the hearts of so many
Indonesians, the survivors, the relatives of those who were
killed or who disappeared, and the offspring of the victims.

Featuring prominently over the tragedy was Soeharto, whose
role in these events should form a central part of these
investigations. With Pinochet in Chile now facing the prospect of
court proceedings for his years of tyranny, and Saddam Hussein
now under arrest in Baghdad and likely to go on trial, why is it
that Soeharto is being allowed to live a charmed existence,
enjoying the proceeds of his family's allegedly ill-gotten
wealth?

It is my firm conviction that Indonesia's claim to be a
democracy can never be really legitimate as long as this stain on
its history is not removed by honest and frank investigations.

The writer is director of TAPOL, the Indonesian Human Rights
Campaign, based in London