Why I was scared of being caught 'red-handed'

To 'X': I hope you will not read this, because now you live far from me, and it may hurt you. But I have to disclose the truth about why I broke off the relationship we had as teenagers.

We were so young and naive, vowing to stay together no matter what. Then, I told you to find another man. Remember how shocked you were, and how you asked, "What is wrong with me?" I could never reply honestly -- like I said, it would have been too painful for both of us.

Now I can tell you the truth: I heard rumors that your father had been a member of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), and I knew then that staying with you would have been equivalent to a death sentence. Not only for me, but for my civil-servant father and my siblings in their careers.

"There are so many girls. Are you blind?" my mother moaned.

My second girlfriend also had problems. I heard that her father had been fired from his job because he was a fluent speaker of the language of a communist country in Eastern Europe. You see, he had been a sailor when he was young. Later, I knew both of you were victims of slander, but by then it was too late.

Until Soeharto's fall in 1998, treatment of alleged PKI members, their families, even their grandchildren, was horrendous and unrelenting -- they were pariahs in their own country. Nearly all doors were closed to them, and they were forever under the watchful eye of the government's security apparatus.

Today, in the month of September, is a good time to confess and face up to what we -- individually and as a society -- have done. This is our country's "anti-communism" month, in which, for more than 30 years, we zealously denounced the "reds".

Every Sept. 30, we were required to lower our flags to half- staff and watch the tedious government film, telling its version of the events of that fateful day in 1965, when the PKI allegedly tried to overthrow the government.

Of course, in this country, where important government documents can disappear without a trace, and "semua bisa diatur" (everything can be taken care of), it's still a mystery.

I was just a kid in 1965, living with my family in a small plantation town in North Sumatra, but we all witnessed the bloodbath. "The PKI can go to hell," my elementary school teacher said.

I would see swollen corpses clogging the river, youths (where are they now?) dragging alleged PKI members through the streets, past their horrified wives and children.

Now, I admit that I hated some of them; they had threatened to kill my father because he was a Catholic schoolteacher. And their children had also taunted us. But when the shoe was on the other foot, we joined in trampling all over them.

Revenge is sweet.

"You're PKI!" was magic, the ultimate put-down. Life was tough after the attempted coup. Many of the alleged PKI families moved away, desperate to start anew (we got their toys, and the belongings they had to leave behind). Of course, the long arm of Soeharto's internal security system kept track of them like some Orwellian nightmare made real.

The fact that I had been on the "right" side came to me many years later, when I was assigned to cover the presidential palace for a foreign media organization and had to be "screened".

I was interrogated by an Army captain, who smiled broadly when I gave the required, desired answers. PKI? Eliminate the bastards from the face of the earth. Soeharto? A hero for being able to overcome the PKI threat and for all his selfless hard work.

Political opponents? Why, aren't they one and the same with PKI?

I passed with flying colors.

"And by working for foreign media, you can also work in espionage, too," the captain told me.

"Nothing can change my love for my country," I sniffed back, itching to get my salary raise for making the grade.

So, that is my story. I didn't want a red in my bed, or in my family, because of the problems it would bring with it. In my defense, I was not alone; we all did it, all of us too afraid and craven and self-interested to stand up and say, "Stop" as they dragged someone else off to be butchered.

I apologize to you, even as I hope you will not read this article. And I hope you got the man that you deserved, who loved and cared for you for who you were, not the vicious, discriminatory label put on you.

-- Kornelius Purba