Blaming the indonesian army for more than 500.000 people killed

I started fieldwork on pesantren, the Muslim boarding schools, in March 1970. During one year of field work, I often talked about being Dutch, of the colonizing nation until the 1940s (although I myself was born in 1942). I never asked about the more recent dramatic period of Indonesia in 1965-6 when probably more than half a million people were killed, suspected or accused or being sympatetic to Communism. Also in the period 1981-8 when teaching at the Islamic Universities of Jakarta and Yogyakarta this dark period seldom was touched upon. Of course, nearly daily there was mention of people who could not become government official, would not be accepted as student of state universities, because in some way related to those terlibat G30S/PKI. Only in 1996 I asked Abdurrahman, in 1986 the translator of my dissertation and for long a close colleague, about his experience in that period. He was a member of the Muslim student organization HMI and they were during a period of several months brought by military trucks to villages. With some 30 students they had to ask in villages who had become member of organizations affiliated to the Communist Party. In the early evening these people would be arrested and during the night executed, killed. The military men urged the students also to be active in the killing. Abdurrahman (no family name, only after his PhD he sometimes used the additional Widyakusuma or 'flower of kownledge') did not join himself  the killing. Some of his fellow students did and they still suffered from nightmare, because of these terrible experiences.

 Only in the 1990s more and more was published about this ferocious time of massacre. A major book was published recently by Geoffrey Robinson as a monument for the probably more than 500.000 victims. In a book of 429 pages many aspects are described: the early history of Indonesian democracy, the growing tensions in the early 1960s, economic decline, the deadlock in parliament and Sukarno as the revolutionary dictator, balancing between various parties. There was an alleged coup of 30 September 1965, when six generals, the absolute top of the army, were killed, probably by accident, and probably in an effort to prevent a coup by generals of the army. Also in this book not all questions about this coup of Untung are answered. What should be prevented, however, happened, albeit slowly; Suharto took over the absolute power step by step and the army orchestrated the annihilation of the Communist Party and whatever was connected with it. It was not a master-plan, it happened step by step, not in all regions identical: first in Aceh, very little in West Java (because the local military commander 'did not like the killings', most brutally in Central and East Java and Bali, between October 1965 until January 1966. In Flores only in April 1966. Many people have given a major role to unrest under the population as if it was a movement from below. Some even blaim the USA and the UK for the anti/Communist actions. But in many pages and clear series of stories and arguments, Robinson again and again puts the blame for all this exclusively to the army. It was not a massacre with religious motivation or based on racial prejudice, but a political process of cleansing region after region the whole nation. Not something like the genocide of the Jews in Europe, but something like what happened in Cambodia.
He questions also the legal responsibility. Will there ever be truth and justice? After 1998 some initiatives have started to initiate a process of restoring the human rights of the victims. In April 2016 a national symposium was organized: Discussing the 1965 Tragedy. In November 2015, IPT, the International People's Tribunal came together in The Hague and some more initiatives were taken. The two movies by Joshua Oppenheimer are well known. But still much need to be done to bring more facts to the world and started a process of healing.
P. 382, note 28 mentions Magnis Suseno, 'a Jesuit scholar who was part of an ardent anticommunist youth group in Java in the 1960s, but now he has advocated a process of reconciliation'. Father Joop Beek is only mentioned in passing, with a new reference to Santamaria: 'Kamerad dalam Keyakinan: Pater Joop Beek SJ dan Jaringan BA Santamaria di Asia Tenggara',  (Harian Indoprogress, 29 September 1016. 1965 is not yet past only.