HISTORY, MEMORY, AND THE

“1965 INCIDENT” IN INDONESIA

Mary S. Zurbuchen

With the events of 1998 that climaxed in the stunning

moment of President Suharto’s resignation, Indonesia embarked on a transi-
tion from a tenacious authoritarianism. These changes have prompted re-
examination of assumptions and tenets that have shaped the state, its laws and
institutions, and the experience of being a citizen. They have also spurred
calls for justice and retribution for persistent patterns of violence. Suharto’s
New Order is the only government that most Indonesians alive today have
ever known, and its passing has sparked notable interest in reviewing and
assessing earlier chapters in the national story. This retrospective moment
has not been systematic, and there are indications that it may not be sustained
under the administration of President Megawati Sukarnoputri.1 Nonetheless,
public discourse continues to spotlight key actors and events from the past,
including some that have long been hidden, suppressed, or unmentionable.
Among these topics, the killings of 1965–66 are a particularly difficult and
dark subject. In this essay, I will discuss some of the recent representations
of this particular element of the collective past and offer some thoughts on
how “1965” figures in contemporary public discourse, in social and private

Mary S. Zurbuchen is Visiting Professor and Acting Director of the

Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Asian Survey, 42:4, pp. 564–582. ISSN: 0004–4687
Ó 2002 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Send Requests for Permission to Reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California
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1. Such a view was hinted at in a July 2001 speech by the current vice president, Hamzah
Haz, who stated that Indonesians should not continue attacking the legacy of the New Order—
the army-dominated system Suharto put in place after the ouster of President Sukarno’s “Old
Order”—as the former contained both positive and negative aspects, and had kept Indonesia
from becoming a communist state. However, responding to strong international pressure, the
current government has opened Indonesia’s new ad hoc Human Rights Tribunal, which in March
2002 began to try 19 police, military, and civilian militia members accused of crimes against
humanity during the violent reaction to East Timor’s independence vote in 1999.

564
 MARY S. ZURBUCHEN 565
memory, and in efforts to bring a new national consensus and governance
arrangements into being.2
For those unfamiliar with the story of 1965–66 and its tragic aftermath, I
will not attempt a detailed recapitulation here, as a number of important ac-
counts are readily available.3 To sketch the essentials, polarization between
left and right in Indonesia came to a head on the night of September 30, 1965,
when six senior generals and a lieutenant were kidnapped and murdered as
part of an attempt to establish a governing “revolutionary council.” This
coup, carried out by military officers, was quickly countered by other ele-
ments in the armed forces under the direction of General Suharto. Subse-
quently, then-President Sukarno was marginalized and stripped of power, as
popular antipathy toward the left, especially toward the huge Indonesian
Communist Party (PKI, Partai Komunis Indonesia), was roused and manipu-
lated by the military. A tidal wave of violence—with citizens killing other
citizens—washed over several areas of the country for more than five
months. In addition to hundreds of thousands of killings, many thousands of
people were variously tortured, detained, and imprisoned without trial, some
for over a decade, while countless others suffered exile, stigmatization, ha-
rassment, ostracism, and abrogation of civil rights that endure until the pre-
sent.
To date there exists no single accepted and authoritative account of the
“30th September Movement” (usually referenced with the acronym G-30-S)

2. This paper uses the term “1965” to encompass not only the mass violence of late 1965 and
early 1966 but also the legacy of political imprisonment, purges, and suppression of the left, as
well as the stigmatization of millions of ordinary citizens in political, social, and cultural life.
Much of the material and observations on which this paper is based were gathered while I served
as representative for the Ford Foundation in its Jakarta office, but the views expressed here are
my own. I am grateful to many individuals inside and outside Indonesia who shared their views
and experiences with me, and to Foundation colleagues Anthony Romero and Alex Wilde, who
encouraged my interest in this subject. Learning about the field of transitional truth-seeking was
inspired and assisted by Priscilla Hayner, Paul van Zyl, Douglass Cassel, and Alex Boraine.
3. Estimates of the numbers killed during the months of terror immediately following the
September 30, 1965, events range from 100,000 to 1 million. See Robert Cribb, ed., The Indone-
sia Killings, 1965–1966: Studies from Java and Bali (Clayton, Victoria, Australia: Monash Pa-
pers on Southeast Asia, no. 21, 1990); Benedict Anderson and Ruth McVey, A Preliminary
Analysis of the October 1, 1965, Coup in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project,
Interim Report Series, 1971); Robert Hefner, Civil Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2000); Adam Schwarz, A Nation in Waiting: Indonesia in the 1990s (Boulder: Westview Press,
1994); and Geoffrey Robinson, The Dark Side of Paradise (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1995). Indonesian media are now quick to publish new documentation concerning the mass
violence, as was seen in 2001 with detailed accounts of the release (and attempted withdrawal) of
a volume of the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States series concerning
the U.S. government’s knowledge and actions during the 1965 events. See “Merajut Kepingan
Dokumen Kasus G30S” [Assembling fragments of the G-30-S case documents], Tempo
(Jakarta), October 7, 2001.
 566 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 4, JULY/AUGUST 2002

and its aftermath, and a number of key incidents and the roles of particular
actors remain mysterious. There are five different scenarios that can be dis-
tilled from the literature on 1965: first, the killing of the generals was en-
tirely conceived and carried out by the PKI and its sympathizers; second, the
“attempted coup” was the result of an internal armed forces struggle; third,
General Suharto was the coup’s actual instigator, or he at least influenced,
manipulated and distorted the killing of the generals for his own ends; fourth,
President Sukarno allowed or encouraged disaffected officers to act against
others said to be part of a secret “Council of Generals”; and fifth, foreign
intelligence operations were involved in an attempt to oust the left-leaning
Sukarno from his influential role in Indonesia and among Third World na-
tions. Some accounts combine more than one of these scenarios.
Within Indonesia, however, a singular official version of 1965 events has
been promoted almost without deviation. Indonesian citizens have been
taught through pervasive government rhetoric and symbolism, as well as
through the narrow school curriculum, that the Indonesian Communist Party
alone was responsible for the murder of the generals, and thus was a traitor-
ous force that needed to be completely eliminated at all levels of society.
Within the tightly controlled domestic discourse about 1965, and under a se-
curity apparatus that has been ruthless toward dissenting viewpoints, most
Indonesians have lived in conditions of willed amnesia or fearful silence con-
cerning G-30-S and PKI.
Foreigners such as myself who have lived in Indonesia have frequently
experienced reluctance and circumlocution from friends or colleagues when
asked about what happened in 1965. International scholars have found it
difficult to do fieldwork and write openly about the subject because of a
restrictive system for obtaining research permits and out of fear of endanger-
ing their respondents. Nonetheless, the killings and repression (the post-coup
massacre in which the political left was eliminated, followed by many years
of stigmatization and lustration of persons connected to the PKI) have echoed
down the years—the proverbial sounds of silence—as a motif and emblem of
the New Order. Any discussion of these events in the present must start from
the understanding that this is a difficult topic to voice, and that many Indone-
sians directly and indirectly affected by the terror have been unable or reluc-
tant to share their memories with neighbors or even close relatives. Even
those not involved in the events of 1965–66 have been compelled to demon-
strate ideological “cleanness” in accord with the anti-communist national
consensus, and also as a condition of their acceptance into education, profes-
sions, or public service. It is difficult to estimate the numbers of citizens
compelled to conceal personal memories of, or links to, G-30-S, and who
have been silenced and intimidated within the enduring, pervasive social re-
gime that followed.
 MARY S. ZURBUCHEN 567
Acknowledgment in the Public Sphere
The approaching end of the New Order was clearly signaled by the erosion of
Suharto’s power during the economic crisis and student demonstrations of
1997–98. These events were accompanied by a change in the public weather,
as the wind of reformasi (reform) blew open the doors of the Indonesian
media, stirring ideas and opinions in a manner not seen for many years.
Some of this shift was due to a diminished fear of censorship, while ground-
breaking changes in the media—the live broadcast of television news direct
from location, and the advent of unscripted talk shows such as Wimar Witoe-
lar’s widely popular “Perspective”—also produced new public space. As a
result, analysis of 1965, including the themes of the PKI, mass killings, de-
tention, and victimization, began to re-enter public and official discourse.
I would like to note a distinction here between “1965” as a factual category
in the social and political history of Indonesia and the “1965” that has long
appeared in New Order discourse as a trope signifying threat, betrayal, and
anti-nationalism. Ariel Heryanto has written about the latter “1965,” which
he refers to as the “discursive phantom of the Communist threat.”4 In his
article “Where Communism Never Dies,” Heryanto examines the ways in
which Suharto’s regime continued into the 1990s to conjure the specter of
communist subversion to elicit mass obedience and how the “reproductions”
of this communism penetrated popular culture in ways quite disconnected
from real communists or actual killings. In the absence of stable or coherent
truth about the events of 1965, Heryanto argues, the regime was allowed
great creativity in producing the semblance of communist threat. This con-
tributed to the “hyper-reality” of a political life in which, for instance, every
five years, citizens mobilized for exuberant campaign parades in election ritu-
als where everyone already knew who would emerge the winner.
This triggering of traumatic memory through simulacra was effective in
discouraging or neutralizing potential opposition throughout the New Order
period. Thus, when the fledgling neo-left Partai Rakyat Demokratik (PRD,
the People’s Democratic Party) emerged in the mid-1990s, the bahaya laten
(latent danger) of a revived PKI was easily evoked. Of course, Indonesian
intellectuals and political scientists were quick to point to post-Berlin Wall
Europe and the former Soviet Union to argue that communism in Indonesia
was not a credible bogey any longer. Free-flowing information and images
from the globalized media thus began to have a demystifying effect on the

4. Ariel Heryanto, “Where Communism Never Dies,” International Journal of Cultural Stud-
ies 2:2 (August 1999), pp. 147–77.
 568 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 4, JULY/AUGUST 2002

prevailing discourse about what many Indonesians refer to as peristiwa enam

lima (the ’65 incident).5
Another change that helped reframe public attitudes toward 1965 came
from the growing international human rights campaign. Beginning in the
1980s and growing stronger through the 1990s, courageous individuals and
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) documented and criticized numerous
incidents of extrajudicial killing, detention and disappearance, repression of
legitimate protest, and so forth. Groundbreaking work in this field was un-
dertaken by human rights lawyer Yap Thiam Hien, as well as the leading
independent group Lembaga Bantuan Hukum (Legal Aid Foundation) under
such notable figures as Adnan Buyung Nasution and Todong Mulya Lubis.
Their advocacy of fundamental human rights (HAM, hak asasi manusia) in-
directly contextualized the violence and detentions after G-30-S as part of the
New Order’s record of rights violations. In the second half of the 1990s, this
argument became more explicit among activists such as Moenir, founder of
KONTRAS (Commission for the Missing and Victims of Violence), whose
work on political disappearances was driven by patterns of human rights
abuse that originated in the New Order’s violent beginnings.
Among cultural figures who contributed substantially to changing percep-
tions was the leading writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Each time his books
were officially banned, the public was reminded of the legacy of political
imprisonment, and of the existence of numerous people with the “ET” desig-
nation for “ex-political prisoner,” on their identity cards.6 Each time interna-
tional recognition was accorded to Pramoedya, it became harder to suppress
his literary achievement. By the time he received the prestigious Ramon
Magsaysay award in 1995, Pramoedya was already a hero to Indonesia’s
alienated students, some of whom were arrested and imprisoned for possess-
ing and promoting his writing. The award launched a bitter polemic in cul-
tural circles about the permissibility of acknowledging Indonesia’s intel-
lectual left; a byproduct of that debate was renewed in discussion about the
PKI’s cultural wing LEKRA (Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat, League of Peo-
ple’s Culture) in which Pramoedya had been important prior to 1965. By late

5. I have adopted the “1965 incident” terminology in the title of this essay because of its
ubiquitous use in Indonesia, where it is a relatively neutral and inclusive term referencing the
events of September 30th, the violence that ensued, as well as the general conditions of intimida-
tion that prevailed. The actual killings following on G-30-S took place into the early months of
1966 and sporadically thereafter in some regions.
6. Eks tahanan politik, eks tapol, or ET, means ‘ex-political prisoner’; numerous controls and
regulations enabled identification and surveillance of these individuals and their families by in-
telligence agencies and local officials. While the government now issues identity cards to former
prisoners without the ET code, these have expiry dates and must be renewed, while ordinary
citizens have cards that are valid for their lifetimes (Hardoyo, personal communication, April
2002).
 MARY S. ZURBUCHEN 569
1998, Pramoedya’s name was frequently in the public ear, and the new edi-
tion of his long-banned book on the ethnic Chinese, Hoakiau di Indonesia
[Overseas Chinese in Indonesia], was the occasion of a high-profile seminar
and book-launching that raised the issue of stigmatization—whether of con-
troversial writers or minority ethnic groups—to renewed prominence.7
At the midpoint of the 1990s, press treatment of peristiwa enam lima was
still cautious, elliptical, and gave little space for suggestion of alternative
viewpoints.8 This period began to see the publication of several books on
1965, including memoirs by parliamentarian Manai Sophiaan and former
Sukarno minister Oei Tjoe Tat. Both were banned, as the government pro-
duced its own “white book” reiterating the official version of 1965 events in
which the PKI’S Special Bureau, a clandestine political arm, played the cen-
tral role.9 A watershed work was published by the Institute for Studies on the
Free Flow of Information (ISAI, Institut Arus Informasi Indonesia). Its
Bayang-Bayang PKI [Shadows of the PKI] countered the government’s
stance through extensive compilation of foreign reporting and existing evi-
dence.10 It too was banned, but like the memoirs, was widely circulated in-
formally. Other books followed, and thus by the time of Suharto’s
resignation, public perceptions were shifting and the long-impermeable aura
of taboo around “the 1965 incident” had started to dissolve.
With the reinvigoration of the media in 1998, a flood of commentary, re-
flection, and zealous criticism of the New Order poured forth. Newspapers
and weeklies published interviews with witnesses to 1965 who had long been
silent. The pages of the prominent weekly Tempo featured former Colonel
Abdul Latief, a key figure in the events on September 30, 1965, who was
finally released from prison in 1998; A. M. Hanafi, the Sukarno-appointed

7. “Surat Pramoedya Buat Chen Xiaru” [Pramoedya’s letter to Chen Xiaru], Tempo, October
12, 1998.
8. For instance, a feature article in the major daily Kompas looked at the livelihoods of res-
idents on Buru island, in whose prison camps 10,000 ETs had been exiled; the article claimed
that by dint of hard work, Buru islanders hoped to rid their home of its “black” reputation as
home to members of the outlawed PKI. See “Pulau Buru Mengubah Citra Eks Tapol” [Buru
changes political prisoner image], Kompas, May 10, 1994.
9. See “Gerakan 30 September: Pemberontakan Partai Komunis Indonesia, Latar Belakang,
Aksi, dan Penumpasannya” [The 30th September movement: Insurrection of the Indonesian
Communist Party, its background, actions and eradication] (Jakarta: State Secretariat of the Re-
public of Indonesia, 1994); Kehormatan Bagi yang Berhak [Rightful honor] (photocopy, 1994);
Memoar Oei Tjoe Tat, Pembantu Presiden Soekarno [The memoir of Oei Tjoe Tat, assistant to
President Sukarno], ed. Pramudya Ananta Toer and Stanley Adi Prasetyo (Jakarta: Hasta Mitra,
1995).
10. This independent media institute, founded by prominent journalist Goenawan Mohamad,
is just one of a number of groups bringing out a stream of factual reporting on incidents of
violence and human rights violations all over Indonesia. Bayang-Bayang PKI was published by
ISAI in Jakarta in 1995.
 570 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 4, JULY/AUGUST 2002

ambassador to Cuba from 1963–66, long in political exile; Wisnu Djajeng-

minardo, the Air Force commandant at Halim Perdanakusumah Air Base, the
location of many of the events on September 30 and immediately after; and
former Chief Justice Soegih Arto, who presided over corruption trials in the
early days of the New Order.11 The now-defunct newsweekly D&R pub-
lished a series of critical reports in September and October 1998 on the fate
of former President Sukarno and the suspicious circumstances of Suharto’s
rise to power.12
This reportage contributed to growing uncertainty about New Order offi-
cial history and its anti-communist truisms and shed new light on long-sup-
pressed social and intellectual leaders. For instance, a biography of politician
and educator Siauw Giok Tjhan, a cabinet minister under Sukarno imprisoned
for 10 years by Suharto, illustrated the contributions of ethnic Chinese citi-
zens beyond their stereotyped role as key players in business conglomer-
ates.13 Books by Carmel Budiardjo and Sulami portrayed the circumstances
of leftist women and political prisoners, helping to discredit powerful New
Order propaganda about paganism, sadism, and sexual violence on the night
of September 30.14 In addition, Saskia Wieringa’s analysis of how images of
violence by women were exploited by the media in 1965 (to propagate the
notion that the left should be eliminated by violent means) was published in
Indonesia,15 while Indonesian academics Hermawan Sulistyo and Iwan
Gardono Sudjatmiko produced dissertations on the 1965 killings that further
eroded official history.16

11. The four interviews cited appeared on October 12, 1998, December 19, 1999, June 20,
1999, and July 4, 1999, respectively. For more on the historical testimony of Colonel Latief, see
excerpts from his book on 1965, along with an interview and commentary by Benedict Anderson
in Tempo, April 16, 2000.
12. See 1998 D&R cover stories in the issues of September 26, “Bung Karno: Poisoned?”;
October 3, “Soeharto, the PKI and the CIA”; October 10, “Dewi Soekarno: ‘Soeharto Lied’ ”;
and October 24, “The ‘Missing’ Medical Notes: Bung Karno’s Last Days” (my translations).
13. Siauw Tiong Djin, Siauw Giok Tjhan [Siauw Giok Tjhan] (Jakarta: Hasta Mitra, 1999).
14. Budiardjo, a director of the London-based human-rights group TAPOL, wrote about the
lives of “tapol,” political prisoners, in Bertahan Hidup di Gulag Indonesia [Surviving in Indone-
sia’s gulag] and visited the country in 2000 after long being considered persona non grata. Su-
lami was a senior officer of the women’s organization GERWANI, Gerakan Wanita Indonesia
[Indonesian women’s movement]. After release from prison, she wrote Perempuan: Kebenaran
dan Penjara [Women: Truth and prison]. Sulami has been a popular speaker at NGO forums
and conferences, and she co-founded the advocacy group YPKP, or Yayasan Penelitian Korban
Pembunuhan 1965–1966 [Research Institute on the Victims of 1965–66 Killings].
15. Penghancuran Gerakan Perempuan di Indonesia [The destruction of the Indonesian wo-
men’s movement] (Jakarta: Garba Budaya and Kalyanamitra, 1999).
16. Sulistyo’s dissertation was published as Palu Arit di Ladang Tebu [Hammer and sickle in
the sugar fields] (Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, 2000).
 MARY S. ZURBUCHEN 571
Within two years of Suharto’s resignation, these and many other accounts
were widely available.17 It would have seemed unlikely before the second
half of 1998 that publishers could bring out novels set in 1965, such as those
recently published by former Harian Rakyat journalist Martin Aleida, and ex-
political prisoner Putu Oka Sukanta, without being hit with a ban.18 Mean-
while, Pramoedya’s works were sought out even though the formal ban on his
work was never lifted. As a result of the openness in print and broadcast
media, “1965” began to be perceived as part of the roster of wrongs commit-
ted by the former regime and part of the past that needed rectification. With
public antipathy toward the former president growing, some Indonesians be-
gan to question the official versions of 1965 with which they had grown up.19
Once he became president in October 1999, Abdurrahman Wahid (popu-
larly referred to as Gus Dur) quickly set a new tone and raised the ante in the
political stakes around the truths of 1965. Wahid had long been an advocate
of free speech and human rights; soon after his inauguration he invited
Pramoedya Ananta Toer to the presidential palace, stating that he was an
admirer of the writer’s historical fiction and seeking Pramoedya’s advice on
Wahid’s plans to revitalize Indonesia’s maritime culture.20 In a speech on
International Human Rights Day, December 10, 1999, Wahid invited all In-
donesians living as political exiles to return. On a stopover in Europe in early
2000, he met with a group of Indonesian political exiles in Paris and asked
government ministers to take steps to restore the civil rights of former detain-
ees and exiles.21 These actions spurred heightened attention to the conditions
of the detainees and their families, and led to calls for revocation of onerous

17. Other titles include Plot TNI AD-Barat di Balik Tragedi ’65 [Behind the 1965 tragedy:
The army and the west’s plot] (Jakarta: TAPOL, MIK and Solidamor, 2000); Menyingkap Kabut
Halim 1965 [Lifting the fog over Halim Airbase, 1965] (Jakarta: Sinar Harapan, 1999); Gerakan
30 September: Antara Fakta dan Rekayasa [The 30th September movement: Between fact and
manipulation] (Yogyakarta: Center for Information Analysis, 1999); GESTAPU: Matinya para
Jeneral dan Peran CIA [The 30th September movement: Deaths of the generals and the role of
the CIA] (Yogyakarta: Cermin, 1999).
18. Martin Aleida, Layang-layang itu tak lagi mengepak tinggi-tinggi [The kites no longer fly
high] (Emansipasi-Damar Warga, 1999). Sukanta’s book is Merajut Harkat [Repairing dignity]
(Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar, 1999).
19. The newsweekly D&R published a report on efforts in “historical revision” in its edition
of May 10–15, 1999. See also Tempo’s issue of October 3, 1999, for a survey of New Order
historical claims and alternative interpretations: “Gerakan 30 September 1965: Tragedi Bertirai
Kabut” [The movement of 30th September 1965: Tragedy in a fog of uncertainty].
20. “Gus Dur Merindukan Kejayaan Majapahit” [Gus Dur’s nostalgia for the glory of
Majapahit], in the weekly Gamma, November 14, 1999.
21. As reported in the lead story in Gamma, “Pulanglah Si Anak Hilang” [The lost child
returns], January 9, 2000. See also “Govt. Puts Out Welcome Mat for Political Exiles,” Jakarta
Post (in English), January 30, 2000.
 572 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 4, JULY/AUGUST 2002

regulations mandating control and surveillance of “ET” individuals.22

Wahid’s next move came during an appearance on the morning television
talk show Secangkir Kopi [A cup of coffee] on March 14, 2000, when he
referred to killings of alleged communists committed by elements of his mass
organization Nahdlatul Ulama (NU, Council of Scholars). The president reg-
istered his apology for such actions and encouraged citizens to “open up” the
history of 1965 and other incidents of human rights abuses.23 These presi-
dential forays into the hazardous minefield of G-30-S official history were
duly noted, but Wahid’s next effort was both unexpected and hugely contro-
versial. In calling for a revocation of the ban on Marxism-Leninism, known
as Decree No. 25 of 1966 of the People’s Consultative Assembly, he struck at
the heart of the weakening specter of communism in Indonesia through an
attempt to demystify an ever-present yet relentlessly suppressed bogey, and
in doing so challenged the foundation of the New Order itself.24
Wahid argued that the ban was unconstitutional in limiting freedom of
thought and expression and Indonesia needed to liberate itself from what ana-
lyst Kusnanto Anggoro has called the “chains of fetishism” that had led to
abuse of the state apparatus as a tool of political repression.25 But Wahid
miscalculated the extent of the public’s readiness, and was unable to convey
the democratic conceptual framework of his proposal. A burst of strong criti-
cism exploded around him, as uneasy local religious leaders cited dangers of
atheism or of the rebirth of the PKI as a legal party. Rivals from within the
reform movement, including People’s Consultative Assembly chair Amien
Rais, saw Wahid as overreaching his powers and quickly moved to block any
parliamentary debate over the proposed revocation. Student groups criticized
the president for sparking anxiety among the people, and anti-communist
demonstrations erupted in Jakarta and other cities in early April 2000. Anti-
left vigilante and Muslim groups made their opposition known by descending
on the presidential palace as well as threatening an advocacy group working
on behalf of 1965 victims.

22. The infamous Ministerial Instruction no. 32 of 1981, titled “Guidance and Monitoring of
Former Political Detainees and Prisoners of G30S/PKI,” restricts the livelihoods, movements,
and social interactions of such individuals. See “Activists and the government overlook ex-
political detainees,” Jakarta Post, March 18, 2000; and “Aturan-aturan tentang ‘Bersih Lingkun-
gan’ Harus Dicabut” [Regulations on ‘clean political environment’ must be revoked] in Kompas,
March 15, 2000.
23. See “Gus Dur: Sejak Dulu Sudah Minta Maaf” [Gus Dur: Been apologizing a long time],
ibid., March 15, 2000.
24. In 1966, one of the Tri Tuntutan Rakyat or Tritura [Three demands of the people] was the
banning of the PKI and its ideology; Suharto consolidated his power by supporting and then
acceding to the Tritura demonstrations.
25. “PKI: Opening a New Chapter, Without Closing Book,” in the Jakarta Post, March 30,
2000.
 MARY S. ZURBUCHEN 573
The public process of coming to terms with the legacies of 1965 thus lost
its earlier focus on recovering history and was readily subsumed within fa-
miliar polarizations: left vs. right, communism vs. Islam. This tendency still
threatens to overshadow, and may preclude, a deeper dialogue on the implica-
tions of the violence stemming from 1965 for the country’s emerging democ-
racy. What began with those killings continues to plague Indonesia today in
acts of vigilantism, mob violence, and terrorism by clandestinely organized
groups. Intolerance of political opposition is a feature of present-day dis-
course just as in the past, and the capacity to resolve differences on the basis
of values of civility and tolerance appears as fragile today as in 1965. The
phantom of communist revival was invoked in early 2001 by Akbar
Tandjung, the parliamentary Speaker and leader of Golkar, the former ruling
party, in the form of accusations against the small, neo-left PRD party. In
Indonesia’s major cities, anti-PKI sentiment appeared in banners and graffiti,
as witnessed in a sign hung above a Jakarta highway in August 2001 reading
“PRD + DEKRIT = PKI.” 26

The Path of Formal Truth-Seeking

According to those close to President Wahid, his controversial proposal to
revoke the ban on communist teachings sprang from a spirit of reconciliation
that acknowledged the sufferings inflicted by 1965 and its aftermath.27 Even
before Abdurrahman Wahid became Indonesia’s fourth president, however,
calls were heard for official action to investigate and rectify the wrongdoings
of the Suharto years, including massive state corruption and legal and human
rights abuses. Former President B. J. Habibie helped establish investigative
commissions on rights issues during his brief tenure in 1998–99, including
the Joint Fact-Finding Team (Tim Gabungan Pencari Fakta) set up to look
into the killings, riots, and rapes of May 1998 in Jakarta, as well as a National
Human Rights Commission inquiry into military operations in Aceh. In the
months following Suharto’s resignation, there was a widespread sense that
the reform agenda must include uncovering the entire legacy of New Order
abuse of power, including 1965. An August 12, 1998, Jakarta Post editorial,
“Truth and Reconciliation,” predicted that it would be “only a matter of time
before people who felt the brunt of the government’s wrath for their links,
direct or otherwise, to the outlawed communist movement in Indonesia, be-
gin to demand restitution.”

26. Dekrit [decree] refers to the controversial declaration of emergency by former President
Wahid issued on July 23, 2001, which triggered his removal by the People’s Consultative As-
sembly.
27. See the remarks of Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab, cited in “Communism Protected by
Constitution: Gus Dur,” in the Jakarta Post, April 13, 2000.
 574 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 4, JULY/AUGUST 2002

In that atmosphere of social conflict, restiveness in the provinces, and pub-

lic suspicion of government, such calls for official truth-seeking efforts were
frequently linked to an agenda of national reconciliation. A leading military
spokesperson at the time, General Agum Gumelar, cited the need for a na-
tional dialogue, or rembug nasional. The Jakarta Social Institute, a local non-
governmental group associated with the Volunteer Team for Humanity (Tim
Relawan Kemanusiaan), which itself conducted community-level investiga-
tions into the events of May 1998, issued a “reflections” paper at the end of
the year that mentioned the need for a Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) model
for Indonesia. Earlier in the year, senior and respected public figures such as
Emil Salim had called for truth and reconciliation efforts in a national work-
shop on human rights. However, statements from NGOs and officials alike
lacked specifics about how such commissions might work, and which sorts of
“truth” needed to be clarified or acknowledged.
A more concrete proposal for an “Independent Truth Commission for Na-
tional Reconciliation” (Komisi Independen Pencari Kebenaran untuk Rekon-
siliasi Nasional) appeared in January 1999—the product of none other than
Abdurrahman Wahid. Called by its acronym KINKONAS, this would have
been a non-official commission comprising leading Indonesian as well as
prominent international figures. Its terms of reference were to “find, and ac-
knowledge, the truth regarding major issues and incidents, such as the issues
of East Timor, Irian Jaya and Aceh, with the purpose of formulating ways to
resolve these issues and allow Indonesians to learn from the past so that simi-
lar mistakes would be avoided in the future.”28 The possibility of including
the events of 1965 among the range of issues for KINKONAS to consider
was not precluded. Then-President Habibie and the military were cool to-
ward both the agenda and the international composition of KINKONAS,
however, and Wahid’s own growing status as a possible presidential alterna-
tive in 1999 overtook his initiative: in the end, KINKONAS was never real-
ized.
When Wahid became president in October 1999, Indonesia had been badly
bruised by the international exposure and criticism of the August-September
violence by anti-independence militias in the former province of East Timor.
Expectations in some segments of the public were that the government would
proceed with a transitional justice agenda, that human rights prosecutions
should and would occur, and that a long-awaited opportunity was open to
present the truth about wanton military-supported excesses in Timor and
other regions of the country.

28. Excerpted from typescript document, “Independent Truth Commission for National Rec-
onciliation,” dated February 19, 1999 (n.p.).
 MARY S. ZURBUCHEN 575
There is not space in this discussion for details on legal and political de-
bates around Indonesia’s transitional justice efforts.29 In brief, a law to es-
tablish a Human Rights Court was drafted, debated in Parliament, and finally
passed in late 2000, following on the earlier Human Rights Law enacted in
1999. A bill to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission is still (in
mid-2002) in draft form. These pieces of legislation have involved nongov-
ernmental groups and rights activists on their drafting committees, public dis-
cussions, as well as parliamentary hearings on each bill. Legal rights
advocates have queried how far the government and the military are willing
to go in opening up the record of the past. Passage of the Human Rights
Court law, for instance, has been linked to Indonesia’s efforts to forestall any
action in the World Court to prosecute senior figures for war crimes in East
Timor. It is important to recognize that in these formal judicial processes, the
killings of 1965 figure as just one among many historical events that may
require investigation. Other cases of violence and patterns of repression by
the state on the roster include those in Tanjung Priok, Lampung, Aceh, Irian
Jaya, the “Malari” riots of 1974, the attack on PDI headquarters in 1996,
disappearances of activists in 1998, the Trisakti student deaths, and the
murders of labor organizer Marsinah and journalist Udin. There are advo-
cates and campaigners for each of these episodes and many others.
Despite the flurry of legislative activism, many Indonesians remain skepti-
cal about the government’s commitment to achieving justice and convinced
that courts, prosecutors, and judges are deeply corrupt and ineffective.30
There is only moderate optimism that a TRC could be effective, since the
public has witnessed many high-level governmental commissions that ap-
peared to accomplish little. Some human-rights activists argue against the
TRC concept, seeing it as a compromise with the New Order that might pre-
serve impunity and grant sweeping amnesty. In this view, the judicial pro-
cess is the only valid path toward justice. There is a marked absence of
voices that explain the tradeoffs between judicial and non-judicial forms of

29. As one example, there has been considerable controversy over the new Human Rights
Court law because of its non-retroactivity provision, which precludes prosecution under that law
for crimes committed before the statute existed (in accordance with international legal norms).
Parliament and the executive would need to recommend that special Ad-Hoc Human Rights
Tribunals be established for cases antedating the statute.
30. The hapless furor in 2001 over the hunt for Tommy Suharto (who disappeared after his
conviction and 18-month sentence for fraud were upheld), and the failure of all police efforts to
arrest him, was viewed by Indonesians as proof of high-level governmental weakness or collu-
sion. Now that Tommy has been arrested, and put on trial in March 2002 (accused of plotting
the murder of Justice Syaifudin Kartasasmita, who had found him guilty), the government hopes
to be seen both domestically and among international donors as responding to widespread public
demands for justice.
 576 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 4, JULY/AUGUST 2002

truth-seeking and argue for both elements to form part of Indonesia’s en-
deavor to deal with the legacy of New Order violence that began in 1965.
There is international experience supporting the proposition that a truth
commission process could address the atrocities of 1965 in a manner that
serves the dual objectives of historical understanding and justice in a transi-
tional Indonesia. Looking at the record of some 20 commissions empaneled
around the world, it is evident that truth commissions can establish an official
public record of lasting value.31 They can forge understanding of broad pat-
terns of abuse in a way that differs from a court’s focus on a limited number
of provable individual crimes and perpetrators. A truth commission can sug-
gest reforms in institutions and in laws to prevent recurrence of atrocities and
can recommend legal actions against perpetrators or reparations for victims.
And perhaps most crucially, truth commissions are a forum for society to
listen to the voices of victims themselves and acknowledge the reality of their
suffering. It is this latter dimension that is most often overlooked at elite
levels in Indonesia as the country comes to terms with its troubled past.
At this moment, the draft law for Indonesia’s Truth and Reconciliation
Commission would include the killings of 1965–66 within its mandate. Yet,
with the aging and death of many survivors and witnesses, special attention
needs to be given to how these events will be investigated and understood,
what kind of evidence is still available, and what protection and support of
potential witnesses might need to be provided. A truth commission would
need to define carefully the goals of revisiting 1965 and convince a doubtful
public that the commission represented a concern for all citizens’ rights and
was not simply a method for the government to launch political attacks on its
rivals (for example, on the former ruling party Golkar).
A truth commission looking into 1965 could prove especially valuable if it
defined its purpose as historical clarification, rather than limiting its mandate
to determining individual culpability or naming perpetrators. Through listen-
ing to people directly involved in and affected by violence and extralegal
acts, a commission could build a comprehensive picture of the extent of the
killings, their deep and abiding impact on Indonesian society, and the manner
in which they institutionalized and justified horrific violence. While it is
daunting to seek criminal prosecution through the difficult and costly effort
of building cases against crimes in the distant past, a commission could none-
theless acknowledge individual suffering and loss, help build a new shared
awareness, and perhaps address the collective, silenced memory that is at the
heart of this troubled legacy. The lessons learned in such a process could
well help Indonesia to, as the Jakarta Post put it, “come to terms with our

31. See Priscilla Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity (New
York: Routledge, 2001).
 MARY S. ZURBUCHEN 577
violent past . . . to uncover the truth surrounding what must rank as the
darkest page of the nation’s modern history.”32

The Work of Personal Memory

Among the constraints to be overcome by any truth commission effort in
Indonesia would be the long-imposed suppression of individual memory.
Until very recently, a pervasive sense of fear and avoidance has held back
memories of 1965, and it has been rare for victims to voice their experiences.
As mentioned above, many survivors, perpetrators, and witnesses have held
their personal recollections in cautious silence. Given prolonged stigmatiza-
tion by the New Order,33 as well as continuing “anti-communist” polemics,34
one can understand the continued reluctance of eyewitnesses and victims to
come forward with their stories.
But with the end of the New Order, the opening of public discursive space
as discussed above, and the initiation of legal efforts to establish a new
human-rights regime in Indonesia, speaking about personal experience has in
some measure become less risky. This is in part because of the individuals
and groups who work on gaining recognition for victims. The publication of
Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s memoirs, which first appeared in Indonesian as
Nyanyi Sunyi Seorang Bisu [Silent song of the mute] and were edited in En-
glish under the title The Mute’s Soliloquy,35 and also his international book
tour in 1999, have been benchmarks in this effort. In 1999, Pramoedya, Su-
lami, and other former prisoners established the YPKP, which has gathered
information and testimonials in several regions. The Volunteer Team for Hu-
manity, similarly, works at the local level to document personal experiences,
with an agenda of promoting humanitarian ideals and rehabilitation for for-

32. “Our conscience,” Jakarta Post, March 17, 2000.

33. Two state institutions of ideological control, the Litsus [Special Investigations] and
Bakorstanas [Coordinating Agency for National Stability] were closed in March 2000; however,
regulations are still on the books that require former political prisoners to report to local authori-
ties regularly and restrict their employment opportunities and civil rights. In some parts of Indo-
nesia, these policies are still strictly applied.
34. In 2001, scattered actions by a variety of self-declared anti-communist groups occurred
regularly. In addition to scapegoating the neo-left PRD party, some groups such as the Gerakan
Pemuda Kabah (GPK, Kabah Youth Movement) harassed independent organizations working on
rehabilitation issues. In May, major bookstore chains were warned by the Aliansi Anti Komunis
[AAK, Anti-Communist Alliance] and other groups to remove “communist” titles from their
shelves or face vigilante raids on National Awakening Day (May 20). The threats prompted
many stores to remove popular books such as Pikiran Karl Marx [The thought of Karl Marx] by
Frans Magnis Soeseno. The AAK has been led by Timorese militia leader Enrico Guterres and
appears to be an eclectic mix of Muslim hardliners, allies of former President Suharto, and
nationalists opposed to the secession of East Timor (see “Threats Drive Books Underground,”
Los Angeles Times, May 13, 2001).
35. Edited by Willem Samuel (New York: Hyperion East, 1999).
 578 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 4, JULY/AUGUST 2002

mer prisoners and others suffering discrimination. The National Commission

on Violence Against Women (Komisi Nasional Anti Kekerasan Terhadap
Perempuan) works with independent groups on a program to build support
systems for victims and witness protection programs.
In all these efforts, students, members of faith communities, and local vol-
unteers are contributing to the creation of an environment where fear does
not entirely silence victims, including those of the 1965 events. This process
of validating personal history must evolve within each community, for in
many cases victims and perpetrators still live in proximity and are part of the
same social and cultural networks. In Bali, the scholars Degung Santikarma
and Leslie Dwyer are bringing an ethnographic perspective to these issues
through in-depth study in a village where large numbers of people were killed
in 1965–66. They seek to understand how village life, ritual cycles, and fam-
ily dynamics have absorbed and reflected the trauma and continuing secrets
of those times. For the Balinese, recovery and reconstitution of the bodies of
those murdered in 1965, and their consecration through the ritual cycle of
Balinese cremation, is a need painfully felt, decades after the event. San-
tikarma speaks of the desire for an embodiment of the past that moves be-
yond the conventions of language used to describe it. And while cultural
explanations may not be sufficient in accounting for the events of 1965, he
suggests, it is through cultural frameworks of meaning that such traumas
must be interpreted and resolved:
[T]he past, or historical memory, is not just a matter of active, intentional remem-
bering or forgetting. The past soaks into the ground of the present, saturating it
with meaning and shifting the landscape with its cultural and emotional weight. It
can be buried or even burned, but its ashes change the composition of the soil.36

For individuals who survived the trauma of 1965 and their children, the end-
ing of stigmatized status in their immediate surroundings—in the eyes of
family, community, and local authorities—may be a higher priority than
seeking validation through a public or national truth-seeking process. And
unless victims are empowered to tell their stories, a national truth commis-
sion would be a premature and flawed endeavor. This realization has moti-
vated independent organizations such as ELSAM (Lembaga Studi dan
Advokasi Masyarakat, Institute for Social Studies and Advocacy) to assist
local groups doing the work of truth-seeking through personal memory, in
hopes of building a broader consensus on the unacceptability of political vio-
lence. Such local endeavors often start simply, with gatherings of victims or
ex-prisoners who listen to each other’s stories. In some cases, victims of

36. Santikarma, “Landscapes of Emotion, Embodiment and Ritual: Post–1965 Balinese Cul-
ture,” paper presented at the Conference of the Society for Balinese Studies, Denpasar, Indone-
sia, July 11–13, 2000.
 MARY S. ZURBUCHEN 579
1965 violence have met with those with different experiences of rights viola-
tions—people, for example, from Tanjung Priok, or Lampung, or Aceh—and
the commonality of these personal histories has been explored. Karlina Lek-
sono, a scholar and activist who has spent much of the past several years
working to end violence, has written about the voicing of personal memory as
an essential element of any social healing or national reconciliation process:
When protracted and costly judicial processes are not likely, hearing the voices of
victims represents the minimal step in preventing continued political amnesia; at
the same time, it represents a process that allows peace with the past to be
achieved, giving renewed meaning to the values of peaceful co-existence.37

For at least some communities of victims of 1965, having their stories lis-
tened to may be the beginning of justice. Furthermore, the silence and amne-
sia engendered by 1965 continues to affect not just the “losers” but also the
“winners” of that confrontation. This recognition enables a new empathy to
emerge between individuals shadowed by violence and guilt. In a moving
essay presented at a recent meeting of political exiles and other Indonesians
in Belgium, Nani Nurrachman-Soetojo, the daughter of one of the six gener-
als killed on September 30, 1965, spoke of personal memories, her ambiva-
lence toward the official cult that memorialized her father as a martyr, as well
as her own “moral responsibility for the future of [Indonesian] society with-
out a legacy of hatred and vengeance.”38

Conclusion
On March 25, 2001, in the village of Kaloran near Temanggung north of the
central Javanese cultural center of Yogyakarta, a ceremony was organized for
the reburial of the remains of more than 20 individuals killed during the vio-
lence of 1965–66. The remains had been exhumed from a mass grave in the
district of Wonosobo in January by the YPKP, and through testimony of a
living witness the remains were linked to a list of specific individuals known
to have been arrested together. The reburial was to be conducted with the
families of the slain in a multi-faith rite employing Islamic, Christian, and
Buddhist prayers. According to local and international media reports, the
ceremony was intended to “show respect for the fallen, whatever their alleged
political leanings, and to provoke more open discussion of what Indonesians

37. “Berdamai dangan Masa Lampau: Antara Menghukum dan Mengampuni” [At peace with
the past: Between judgement and forgiveness], unpublished paper presented at the Seminar on
Resolving Serious Human Rights Violations from the Past: Between Truth and Justice, organized
by ELSAM, Jakarta, April 11–12, 2000. The passage cited is my translation.
38. “Pergumulan Nalar dan Rasa: Rekoleksi Ingatan dan Refleksi Pengalaman atas Peristiwa
G30S/PKI” [The struggle of reason and emotion: Recollecting memory and reflecting experience
of the events of 30 September 1965], unpublished paper, September 2000.
 580 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 4, JULY/AUGUST 2002

did to each other in the 1960s in an effort to avoid such incidents in the
future.”39 Before the ceremony could start, however, a crowd of self-pro-
claimed Muslim anti-communists confronted the procession bearing the 1965
dead, seizing and breaking open coffins, and scattering the remains. Under
the rubric of Forum Ukuwah Islamiya Kaloran, the intruders declared that the
remains could not be interred in Temanggung, and called on a local legislator
to demand that YPKP be disbanded to prevent a revival of communism in
Indonesia. The burial ceremony’s main organizer, a former political prisoner,
was chased from his home and went into hiding.
In addition to underscoring the persistence of anti-PKI sentiment in Indo-
nesia, the Wonosobo case highlights the resistance within parts of the Muslim
community toward re-examination of the events of 1965–66. With Islamist
ideology on the rise in Indonesia, and the tendency for hard-line groups to
take aggressive postures against communist “revival,” efforts for reconcilia-
tion and rehabilitation on the national level must be seen as fragile at best.40
What happened in the village of Kaloran gives significance to all three
dimensions of the historical memory of 1965 discussed above. First, despite
efforts to open the history of 1965 to new scrutiny and analysis, public dis-
course on the topic is still dangerously polarized, with numerous non-formal,
fluid “alliances” and “youth movements” proclaiming an anti-PKI stance.41
Second, despite endeavors toward careful facilitation of community-based
approaches to reconciliation or commemoration, there was no mediating
agent on hand in the Kaloran incident to prevent terror and violence—a role
that might have been played by a credible national or regional truth commis-
sion body.
Third and finally, the Kaloran incident demonstrates the risks of evoking
personal memories of 1965. In this literal unburying of a past that many still
see fit to keep underground, unseen, and unspoken, Indonesian families
claimed their connections to named individuals through a public rite. Their
action asserted the legitimacy of personal memory in the face of official his-
tory. This claiming of the so-called communist dead as their own in fact runs
counter to the hesitancy, silence, and fear that still prevents millions of In-

39. South China Morning Post, March 27, 2001.

40. At least one effort underway within the NU mass organization seeks to mediate long-
standing tensions around the organization’s role in the violence of 1965–66. Under the rubric of
Syarikat (Association), NU activists are conducting research and forging dialogues between sur-
vivors and perpetrators.
41. In addition to the Kabah Youth Movement and the Anti-Communist Alliance, the Front
Anti-Komunis [Anti-Communist Front], which was inaugurated by National Assembly Speaker
Amien Rais, and the Corps of Indonesian Muslim Students Alumni (KAHMI), under former
official Fuad Bawazier, have registered strong opposition to the re-emergence of leftist political
thought in Indonesia. See “Fuad Warns of Resurgent Communism,” Jakarta Post, February 19,
2001.
 MARY S. ZURBUCHEN 581
donesians from acknowledging their own memories. The exhumation of the
Wonosobo mass grave is thus a profound challenge to the prevailing social
memory of 1965.
It is tempting to hope that through systematic examination of the “1965
incident” and its aftermath, Indonesia could engender a process of reconcilia-
tion and conflict resolution that would mitigate the continued violence and
new communalism being witnessed at present. In reality, however, a formal
process of truth-seeking may not lead to social healing. The pervasive hold
of the official mythology of the events of September 30, 1965, leaves scant
room for recognizing the experience of individual victims. In the post-
Suharto proliferation of laws and legislation on human rights, official investi-
gations, and national commissions on corruption and the judiciary, advocacy
for a concerted attempt to revisit the past must compete with many other
priorities in Indonesia’s reform agenda. Nonetheless, the voices of ordinary
citizens from all over the archipelago need to be given space in which to
make their essential contribution toward understanding and resolution of this
key episode in the Indonesian national story within local contexts. Most ur-
gently, eyewitnesses and actors in the events of 1965 are an aging and in-
creasingly small group, whose testimony needs to be preserved if the larger
questions about Indonesia’s 1965 mass killings and continuing patterns of
communal and political violence, and how to prevent their recurrence, are
ever to be answered.