tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/the-act-of-killing-8675/articles
The Act of Killing – The Conversation
2016-09-30T06:58:00Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/66338
2016-09-30T06:58:00Z
2016-09-30T06:58:00Z
Backgrounder: what we know about Indonesia’s 1965 ‘anti-communist’ purge
<p>International audiences were introduced to Indonesia’s 1965-66 massacre of “communists” by the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2375605/awards?ref_=tt_awd">multi award-winning</a> 2012 documentary <a href="http://theactofkilling.com/">The Act of Killing</a>. While the details of what happened remain buried in the depths of time, here’s what we do know. </p>
<p>On September 30 1965, a group of left-wing soldiers calling themselves the <a href="https://global.britannica.com/event/September-30th-Movement">September 30th Movement</a> abducted six army generals and a first officer from their homes. A couple of hours later, the movement made a radio announcement that they had taken action to protect the country’s inaugural president, Sukarno, from right-wing generals who they claimed were planning a coup.</p>
<p>Reacting to the vacuum in the army high command, Major General Suharto took the army leadership. He cajoled and intimidated the movement’s troops in central Jakarta to surrender without much of a fight, and then stormed the movement’s headquarters at the Halim Airforce base. </p>
<p>In less than 48 hours, Suharto had roundly defeated the 30th September Movement. At about the same time, the abductees’ bodies were found in an old well in an area known as Lubang Buaya (Crocodile Hole) in east Jakarta. </p>
<p>The army accused the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) of being behind the movement, and of aiming to overthrow the government. This triggered the largest anti-communist purge and mass killings in modern-day Indonesia. Thousands of Indonesians suffered from years of incarceration and torture under the New Order, the regime built by Suharto when he became president in 1967. </p>
<h2>An orgy of violence</h2>
<p>After taking control of the situation, as well as media outlets, <a href="https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/3938.htm">Suharto launched an operation to destroy the PKI</a> and its followers. He dispatched the army’s Special Forces unit to arrest, imprison and kill Indonesians suspected of being members of the communist party. </p>
<p>On the third week of October 1965, an orgy of violence — including arrests, torture and murder — began in Central Java, followed by East Java in November, and continued in December to the island of Bali. </p>
<p>Similar efforts took place in other parts of Indonesia, but mostly on a smaller scale. <a href="https://works.bepress.com/robert_cribb/2/">Between 200,000 to 800,000 Indonesians</a> are thought to have been killed during the anti-communist purge. Many more were imprisoned, exiled, discriminated against and stigmatised. </p>
<p>Under the New Order regime that Suharto subsequently created, former political prisoners had their ID cards marked. And their children were not allowed to enter civil service or the military. </p>
<p>The PKI was indeed destroyed. And the country’s inaugural president, Sukarno was gradually removed from power as the army became the dominant political power in Indonesia. Suharto became de facto president by March 1966 and was appointed acting president by the parliament a year later. </p>
<p>From 1966 to 1998, the pro-Western Suharto dictatorship ruled supreme and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/State-Terrorism-Political-Identity-Indonesia/dp/041537152X">suppressed memory of the massacre</a>. </p>
<h2>Power struggle</h2>
<p>The bloody events of 1965 did not happen suddenly; both domestic and international factors were involved. </p>
<p>Locally, there had been increasing tension among Indonesia’s political elites since <a href="http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.cow/indoneln0001&div=1&src=home">the country’s first general election in 1955</a> (after its declaration of independence in 1945). Out of the approximately 30 political parties that participated, the PKI was one of the major winners, coming fourth in election results.</p>
<p>This PKI gain dismayed and worried many members of the political establishment, especially anti-communist politicians, and the right-wing army leadership. </p>
<p>By the mid-1960s, this situation had created something of a “political triangle” in which three different parties wanted to take control of the country’s leadership: the elected President Sukarno, the PKI and the army. </p>
<p>What happened in 1965 can been seen as the climax of the tension that been building up since the first general election of the Indonesian republic.</p>
<h2>The global stage</h2>
<p>Internationally, Indonesia was something of a front for the Cold War. Both the United States and the Soviet Union were interested in having the largest country in Southeast Asia in their <a href="http://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations/AAI3049945/">sphere of influence</a>, especially as Indonesia is quite rich in natural resources. </p>
<p>In this sense, the 1965 destruction of the PKI and Western nations’ support for General Suharto’s New Order government can be seen as part of efforts to prevent Indonesia from joining the Soviets. </p>
<p>After Suharto came to power in 1967, only the government’s side of the story was allowed in describing the events of 1965. Even though only a handful of PKI leadership were involved in the kidnapping, the New Order regime painted the murders of the army generals in 1965 as an attempted communist take over.</p>
<p>The government was <a href="https://www.amazon.com/State-Terrorism-Political-Identity-Indonesia/dp/041537152X">silent on the massacre</a> of suspected communists and their sympathisers that followed. And any other version of events was disallowed; former political prisoners were not permitted to tell their stories, and anyone who tried to give a different version of events was <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/10/29/dispatches-censorship-back-indonesia">pressured or threatened by the government</a>. </p>
<p>Only after President Suharto resigned in 1998 following student protests triggered by the <a href="http://www.wright.edu/%7Etdung/asiancrisis-hill.htm">1997 Asian financial crisis</a> were Indonesians free to talk about what actually happened. Unfortunately, that freedom did not last very long. </p>
<p>Forces connected to Suharto have re-emerged and <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2016/06/behind-indonesias-red-scare/">dominated public discourse on the events of 1965 and 1966</a>. These included several radical anti-communist groups and military or police groups that had benefited from the Suharto government. They often attack forums that discuss topics related to the 1965 events and display anti-communist banners in public places. </p>
<p>Moves to suppress stories deviating from the New Order’s narratives are taking place to this day. To counter them, a growing number of young Indonesians are holding forums on 1965 events despite the risk of being attacked. They also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/30/it-is-50-years-since-the-indonesian-genocide-of-1965-but-we-cannot-look-away">publish writings on 1965-related issues</a> in the media and through the internet. </p>
<p>These young people are standing up in the belief that in order for the country to heal the wounds opened by this traumatic event and move forward as a true democracy, it must acknowledge its dark history, however painful.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66338/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Baskara T. Wardaya does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
While the details of exactly what happened during Indonesia’s 1965-66 massacre of ‘communists’ remain buried in the depths of time, here’s what we do know.
Baskara T. Wardaya, Lecturer in History, and director of PUSDEMA (Center for Democracy and Human Rights Studies), Universitas Sanata Dharma
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/54321
2016-02-25T00:48:48Z
2016-02-25T00:48:48Z
The Look of Silence and prequels bring Indonesia’s dark legacy of 1965 killings into the light
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112835/original/image-20160225-14489-12faceb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2000%2C1125&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Adi Rukun questions Commander Amir Siahaan, one of the death squad leaders responsible for his brother’s death during the Indonesian genocide, in Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary The Look of Silence. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Drafthouse Films and Participant Media.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A series of Oscar-nominated documentaries on the aftermath of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-indonesias-1965-1966-anti-communist-purge-remade-a-nation-and-the-world-48243">the 1965 massacres</a> in present-day Indonesia attempts to change the way we remember the history of global right-wing political violence. </p>
<p>Before <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-look-of-silence-and-indonesias-dark-mirror-34005">The Look of Silence</a>, nominated for an Oscar to be announced this Sunday, and its prequel <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-act-of-killing-oscar-nod-lifts-the-lid-on-indonesias-dark-past-22163">The Act of Killing (2012), which was nominated in 2014</a>, the 1965 massacres of leftists by the Indonesian army and civilian militias had been one of the world’s bloodiest yet least talked about episodes of political violence. </p>
<p>We may be familiar with <a href="http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/resources/collections/truth_commissions/Chile90-Report/Chile90-Report.pdf">the bloody overthrow of Chilean socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973 by General Pinochet</a> as a famous example of oppression against the left. But few know that the anti-communist pogrom in Indonesia eight years earlier helped inspire the coup. Pinochet even named his takeover plan <em>Operación Yakarta</em>. </p>
<p>The documentaries of Joshua Oppenheimer and an anonymous Indonesian co-director show how the 1965 events shaped Indonesia’s history, bringing to light the country’s experience as part of a global narrative.</p>
<p>To grasp the big picture, viewers should watch The Look of Silence as part of a trilogy, starting with The Globalisation Tapes (2003), followed by The Act of Killing. </p>
<h2>Decolonisation sabotaged</h2>
<p><a href="http://thelookofsilence.com/">The Look of Silence</a> follows <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/13/movies/adi-rukun-neither-silent-nor-intimidated.html?_r=0">Adi Rukun</a>, an optometrist whose brother was killed in the US-backed anti-communist massacre before he was born. He confronts the perpetrators, members of civilian militias who see themselves as patriots, about their complicity. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aA_ZHAs4M9k?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Look of Silence trailer.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s prequel, <a href="http://theactofkilling.com/awards_distinctions/">the Bafta-winning documentary Act of Killing</a>, shocked viewers with boastful killers re-enacting how they murdered their victims in 1965. </p>
<p>But The Act of Killing was not Oppenheimer’s first film on the effects of the 1965 violence. He had touched on them in <a href="http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-globalization-tapes/">The Globalisation Tapes</a>. </p>
<p>Largely incorporating 1960s agitprop style, it depicts the struggle of workers in a Belgian-owned plantation in North Sumatra, Indonesia. Some of them are descendants of 1965 victims. Their stories reveal the impact of forced economic globalisation on their livelihood. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Xo2OOIMkYOE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Globalisation Tapes.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Oppenheimer may not have intended to frame his works as a trilogy. But through these three films he provides a picture of the long-term impact of a sabotaged decolonisation. From the first instalment to the next, he embarks on tackling the issue of a global political economy and shifts to local and more personalised problems. </p>
<h2>Historical references</h2>
<p>Some critics debated whether <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/23/act-of-killing-dont-give-oscar-snuff-movie-indonesia">The Act of Killing is exploitation cinema</a>. Some argue it is an <a href="http://www.themalaymailonline.com/what-you-think/article/the-act-of-killing-and-the-ethics-of-documentary-film-making-badrul-hisham">orientalist picture about the atrocities</a>, attributing the carnage to the presupposed “Asiatic nature” of the killers. </p>
<p>Some view the lack of historical context in The Look of Silence and The Act of Killing as overlooking the complicity of Indonesian military and Western countries. </p>
<p>The films do, however, bring historical context to the viewers.</p>
<p>Oppenheimer had chosen the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Cinema">direct cinema approach</a> that focuses more on the here-and-now, limiting explicit historical description that fully describes the relationship between the armed forces and the civilian killers. He chose this approach to show that legacies of the 1965 violence remain in the present. </p>
<p>However, the films embody the sense of the past within different characters, expressed through their speech and gestures.</p>
<p>Oppenheimer also presents obvious Cold War references in his films. In The Look of Silence, Adi Rukun is exposed to NBC-produced newsreel from 1967 that relates Sukarno’s overthrow.</p>
<p>The film thus interrogates Western collaborators in the same way it interrogates the Indonesian killers. It shows viewers how the West spoke grandiosely of their anti-communism and their role in the slaughter. </p>
<p>The NBC narrator Ted Yates says: “Indonesia has a fabulous potential wealth and natural resources. Goodyear Sumatran rubber empire is an example. The rubber workers’ union was communist-run. So, after the coup many of them were killed or imprisoned. Some of the survivors – you see them here – still work the rubber plantation, but this time as prisoners and at gunpoint.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112702/original/image-20160224-16459-tcjv5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112702/original/image-20160224-16459-tcjv5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112702/original/image-20160224-16459-tcjv5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112702/original/image-20160224-16459-tcjv5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112702/original/image-20160224-16459-tcjv5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112702/original/image-20160224-16459-tcjv5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112702/original/image-20160224-16459-tcjv5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Adi Rukun watches footage of interviews conducted by Joshua Oppenheimer with perpetrators of the 1965-66 Indonesian genocide in The Look of Silence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Drafthouse Films and Participant Media</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The NBC footage, uncompromising in its demonisation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukarno">Sukarno</a> and the Communist Party, shows plantation workers literally marching at army gunpoint. </p>
<h2>Anti-communism remains a force</h2>
<p>Oppenheimer’s team has effectively use several online platforms to promote the films and organise screenings by sending free copies of the films to hundreds of communities.</p>
<p>The public response to the documentaries has triggered screenings of related films. Between 2000 and 2011, at least 25 films (shorts, documentaries, features) have been made about the subject. <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=VdZ1BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA102&lpg=PA102&dq=Lexy+Rambadeta+Mass+Graves&source=bl&ots=BpoHvZ2gQ4&sig=6kjacjwslSaYrInrt_EHCxweMCA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZ8NuG0JHLAhVme6YKHU3tAy4Q6AEINDAE#v=onepage&q=Lexy%20Rambadeta%20Mass%20Graves&f=false">Lexy Rambadetta’s Mass Grave</a> (2001), for instance, deals with resistance from communities to families wishing to provide proper reburial for victims. </p>
<p>The increasing production of 1965-themed films shows that Indonesians are speaking up about the murders. Some screenings are banned by authorities and attacked by right-wing mass organisations. This also suggests violent legacies of the 1965 killings live on. </p>
<p>Influential members of the armed forces still retain links to militia groups notorious for their street violence. The anti-communist narrative – “they wage war on us”, “they corrupt the youth”, “we have no choice but to kill them or be killed” – can be found in many different translations, being handy to dismiss minority groups such as Ahmadis and Shiites, and having featured in recent attacks on members of the Gafatar religious cult and <a href="https://theconversation.com/onslaughts-against-gays-and-lesbians-challenge-indonesias-lgbt-rights-movement-54639">LGBT people</a>. </p>
<h2>Duty to truth</h2>
<p>Oppenheimer’s trilogy challenges us to take on a different kind of engagement with past atrocities. That means casting a light on more and more perpetrators, some of whom live next door. </p>
<p>The military and its street proxies aside, the 1965 massacre involved sections of religious leaders, artists and intellectuals. </p>
<p>When the state keeps silent and wants us to be silent about its unpleasant past, the duty to expose past collaborators is ultimately left to us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54321/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Windu Jusuf does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Oscar nominated documentary The Look of Silence follows an optometrist whose brother was killed in Indonesia’s 1965 massacre. But to understand the bigger picture, viewers should watch its prequels.
Windu Jusuf, Lecturer of Film Studies, Binus University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/42975
2015-06-09T14:52:02Z
2015-06-09T14:52:02Z
Act of Killing sequel The Look of Silence unearths deeper truths about Indonesia’s violent past
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84345/original/image-20150609-10739-1bdoynx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Getting away with murder.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dogwoof</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Joshua Oppenheimer’s acclaimed film, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-act-of-killing-oscar-nod-lifts-the-lid-on-indonesias-dark-past-22163">The Act of Killing</a>, and its sequel The Look of Silence are about getting away with murder.</p>
<p>In 1965, the Indonesian military seized power and launched a nationwide massacre of the left. Much of the dirty work was delegated to death squads and Muslim militias, ordinary citizens as well as shock troops. The victims were party activists, intellectuals, artists, unionised workers and illiterate sharecroppers. In a few months, <a href="http://www.massviolence.org/the-indonesian-killings-of-1965-1966">roughly one million</a> people died, eight times the combined death toll of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But unlike the victims of aerial bombing, Indonesians fell to individual acts of murder, messy and sadistic. These films consider the performance and the legacy, the small print of organised slaughter.</p>
<p>Oppenheimer ignores the wider context of post-colonial, Cold War politics to concentrate on local operations in North Sumatra – a sideshow to the pogroms of Java and Bali but similar in their meticulous brutality. It’s a risky move, but close focus better reveals the intimacy of the killings, the self-vindication of perpetrators and, in the second film, the tragic predicament of victims’ families. </p>
<p>For survivors there was no consoling reckoning, no <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/nuremberg-trials">Nuremberg trials</a> or <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">Truth and Reconciliation</a>. Half a century of propaganda has buried the truth. During the early years of New Order rule, when the best of Indonesia died, the nation learned not to think – or to think only what was ordered. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84346/original/image-20150609-10672-1v4w6gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84346/original/image-20150609-10672-1v4w6gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84346/original/image-20150609-10672-1v4w6gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84346/original/image-20150609-10672-1v4w6gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84346/original/image-20150609-10672-1v4w6gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84346/original/image-20150609-10672-1v4w6gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84346/original/image-20150609-10672-1v4w6gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Being taught the national myth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dogwoof</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Look of Silence</h2>
<p>One scene in the new film shows a teacher drilling his class in the national myth of military salvation from the godless, eye-gouging communists. As the lies drip from his mouth, the camera scans the shocked faces of pupils (the film is a study of faces and emotions), then pauses on one squirming child. His uncle – as we learn – had been one of the victims. </p>
<p>We follow the boy’s father, a rural optician, as he tours the district, visiting dusty backyards to test rheumy eyes and quiz ageing customers about their past. One toothless veteran, glaring through optometrist goggles (rimmed in red and white, the national colours), explains the executioner’s procedure: the correct angle for the machete blow, the prescription for downing “one or two glasses” of the victim’s blood to avoid going crazy. The startling conflation of close-up violence and moral myopia – the ultra-nationalist optic – becomes a leitmotif of the film; the begoggled, bloodthirsty Gorgon its most memorable image. </p>
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<p>No need for euphemism or apologetics, the killers are proud of their crimes, happy to oblige with a re-enactment. And when, with due caution, the optician Adi professes his wish to confront his uncle’s killers, they are unashamed to threaten, secure in the backing of the fascist state. (The Act of Killing has a chilling scene in which Indonesia’s vice-president, Jusuf Kalla, delivers a speech extolling thuggery to a jamboree of blackshirted gangsters.) The brazen swagger and the accusing gaze that reflects it give the film its moral and emotional punch. Its argument is less about the capacity for evil – thugs are thugs – than about injustice and impunity. </p>
<h2>More than terror</h2>
<p>Indonesia’s silent trauma, its moral paralysis, recalls Franco’s Spain and post-Stalinist Russia. But what guarantees impunity in this case is more than terror or a pact of forgetting. It’s something to do with deviance and conformity, an enigma unconsidered by Oppenheimer.</p>
<p>In 1992, in the dog days of the Suharto dictatorship, I boarded for a year with a widow whose husband, a schoolmaster, had commanded a death squad in the villages around Banyuwangi, East Java. Knowing both killers and survivors, hearing commentary from all sides, I was struck by a generalised approval for his actions, a grudging respect among non-aligned villagers and – but for an aesthetic shiver – an indifference to the victims’ fate.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84347/original/image-20150609-10675-pk8ys7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84347/original/image-20150609-10675-pk8ys7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84347/original/image-20150609-10675-pk8ys7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84347/original/image-20150609-10675-pk8ys7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84347/original/image-20150609-10675-pk8ys7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84347/original/image-20150609-10675-pk8ys7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84347/original/image-20150609-10675-pk8ys7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The courageous optician Adi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dogwoof</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Java, the dissident, the deviant and the witch are equated as “figures of the left, the sinister”. Internal enemies, they are equally deserving of savage treatment. Propaganda relies on this demonisation; repeated ad nauseam it becomes fact. From a few ex-killers it was possible to elicit regrets (never guilt), but I couldn’t overturn the shibboleths of 50 years. </p>
<p>What can a film like this hope to achieve? The unblinking confrontation with the past, embodied in the questing – and very brave – optician, makes for riveting viewing. That piercing, painful gaze is unforgettable. The reunion, at the end, of his mother with a friend of her dead son, a fellow survivor, is a moment of overwhelming cathartic grief and profound emotional truth. And truth, of different kinds, is what both of these films set out to explore and what Indonesia, if it is ever to regenerate, will need to address.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84348/original/image-20150609-10675-78ei5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84348/original/image-20150609-10675-78ei5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84348/original/image-20150609-10675-78ei5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84348/original/image-20150609-10675-78ei5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84348/original/image-20150609-10675-78ei5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84348/original/image-20150609-10675-78ei5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84348/original/image-20150609-10675-78ei5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Adi’s mother.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dogwoof</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Many truths</h2>
<p>A scene halfway through Act of Killing shows its anti-hero, a rakish dandy with the improbable name of Anwar Congo, reviewing an earlier scene in which he demonstrates how he garrotted his victims: more efficient and cleaner than a knife. He shakes his grizzled head at the video monitor. “No, that was wrong,” he says, frowning sagely; “it was a mistake”. His sidekick, a piggish man with a black mane and a Buddha belly, grunts sympathetically. The audience is primed for a moment of insight, perhaps of remorse. “I wouldn’t have worn white trousers for a massacre,” explains Anwar, pointing at the screen. “There I’m dressed for a picnic. When I went out killing it had to be black.”</p>
<p>Anwar’s concern for the truth, or what he sees as the truth, is very important in a film about the deaths of a million people, a film which makes of its killer-stars – or star killers – co-directors. The staging and costumes have to be right, just like in the gangster movies Anwar admires, death imitating art. </p>
<p>The Look of Silence eschews its predecessor’s gory glamour and unearths deeper truths. It offers a harder message for modern Indonesia. The Gorgon challenges the optician: “Your questions are deeper than Joshua’s, I don’t like them”. But someone sometime will have to answer them. Truth, accountability, justice, reparation: The Act of Killing <a href="http://www.insideindonesia.org/truth-takes-a-while-justice-even-longer">sparked a national discussion</a> that has still barely started. The Look of Silence – with film credits mostly to Anonymous – takes the necessary second step.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42975/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Beatty does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Look of Silence eschews its predecessor’s gory glamour and offers a harder message for modern Indonesia.
Andrew Beatty, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology , Brunel University London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/22163
2014-01-27T19:42:21Z
2014-01-27T19:42:21Z
The Act of Killing: Oscar nod lifts the lid on Indonesia’s dark past
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39704/original/gqjxkwhs-1390433918.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A still from the film, The Act of Killing.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">©2012 FINAL CUT FOR REAL APS, PIRAYA FILM AS AND NOVAYA ZEMLYA LTD</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Academy Award nominations rarely enter into the domain of politics, and certainly have not delved into Indonesian politics in the past. This year, however, is different.</p>
<p>US-British director Joshua Oppenheimer’s film The Act of Killing has already won numerous <a href="http://dogwoof.com/blog/post/dogwoof_films_win_at_cinema_eye_awards/17944">international awards</a> and has now been <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-act-of-killing-oscar-nomination-for-what-must-be-the-bravest-film-crew-of-the-year--but-no-one-knows-their-names-9073035.html">nominated</a> for an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.</p>
<p>The film has received <a href="http://moviecitynews.com/2014/01/the-top-tens-of-2013-155-lists-and-counting/">rave reviews</a> from film critics, as well as one off-beat (and frankly misleading and illogical) <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/07/slavoj-zizek-act-of-killing">paean</a> from Slovenian Marxist philosopher, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek">Slavoj Zizek</a>.</p>
<p>Confronting, controversial, The Act of Killing aims to explain the politics of the past in Indonesia. The documentary presents two connected aspects of Indonesia: the anti-communist killings of 1965-1969; and the role of gangsters in present-day politics.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tQhIRBxbchU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Troubled times</h2>
<p>In 1965, Indonesia was the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/12/world/cia-tie-asserted-in-indonesia-purge.html">front line of the Cold War</a>, with the largest communist party outside of the USSR and China, pitted against an alliance of the army and anti-communist political parties and civil society groups, including Muslim organisations.</p>
<p>A “coup” – actually an attempted purge by leftists against rightist generals – on September 30, 1965, resulted in a series of actions by military officers in which one of them, Suharto, took power.</p>
<p>Suharto initially led a military counter-action against what became known as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_September_Movement">30th September Movement</a>, the leftist military, by which the Communist Party of Indonesia was first made illegal, and then wiped out.</p>
<p>Finally Sukarno, the first president of Indonesia, was forced to surrender power to Suharto, who went on to rule for another three decades. Internationally, Suharto was hailed as the “saviour” of his country, <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/soehartos-unsung-legacy/2008/02/01/1201801032980.html">praise continued</a> by Australian leaders such as Paul Keating.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39727/original/syctz3fs-1390439914.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39727/original/syctz3fs-1390439914.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39727/original/syctz3fs-1390439914.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39727/original/syctz3fs-1390439914.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39727/original/syctz3fs-1390439914.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39727/original/syctz3fs-1390439914.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39727/original/syctz3fs-1390439914.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39727/original/syctz3fs-1390439914.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A painting of Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno (left) with his successor, Suharto (right).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Billy Simpson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The abolition of the Communist Party of Indonesia was carried out through the mass murder of members, affiliates, and anyone accused of being linked to communism. Conservatively estimated at 500,000, and probably more like 1 million, the number of those slaughtered included many by-standers.</p>
<h2>Meet the killers</h2>
<p>The Act of Killing, which centres on the stories of several men hired to murder communists during the purge, is often called “surreal”, especially because of the weirdness of some of the scenes of cross-dressing and kitsch Hollywood-recreations. </p>
<p>Most surreal is Joshua Oppenheimer’s chief narrative device of getting one of the killers to re-enact his actions. The old killer has the help of members of his gang, a local branch of the Indonesian paramilitary organisation Pemuda Pancasila (the Five-Principles Youth).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39715/original/xv9nd2dv-1390437720.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39715/original/xv9nd2dv-1390437720.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39715/original/xv9nd2dv-1390437720.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39715/original/xv9nd2dv-1390437720.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39715/original/xv9nd2dv-1390437720.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39715/original/xv9nd2dv-1390437720.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39715/original/xv9nd2dv-1390437720.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39715/original/xv9nd2dv-1390437720.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this still from The Act of Killing, an ageing killer demonstrates his garrotting technique.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">©2012 FINAL CUT FOR REAL APS, PIRAYA FILM AS AND NOVAYA ZEMLYA LTD</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Pemuda Pancasila was founded in the 1960s as an anti-communist group in the north Sumatran city of Medan. Its success in carrying out the killings there led it to become a national paramilitary body, deployed by the regime of President Suharto as part of his dual approach of both terrorising the population and bringing development to the nation. The organisation runs on stand-over tactics and the supervision of local criminal activities, such as gambling.</p>
<p>Pemuda Pancasila survived the change of power when Suharto was forced out of office in 1998, and the film shows how well-placed Pemuda Pancasila is today.</p>
<p>In one scene, then Vice-President, Jusuf Kalla, addresses a gathering of the organisation held in Medan, praising them as representatives of the spirit of free enterprise in a play on their role as <em>preman</em>, the Indonesian word for gangster, but which, deriving from the Dutch <em>vrijman</em>, also means “free man”.</p>
<p>On one level, The Act of Killing is a portrayal of how deeply entrenched criminality is in the Indonesian ruling class, receiving support from politicians at all levels, and indeed serving as the provider of political representatives and leaders at regional and national levels.</p>
<p>As Oppenheimer <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323848804578610091596141774">says</a> of his film: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s about how a traumatic past remains alive in the present and continues to traumatise society and therefore enable corruption and a regime of fear.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39716/original/pvfmkhjy-1390437769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39716/original/pvfmkhjy-1390437769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39716/original/pvfmkhjy-1390437769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39716/original/pvfmkhjy-1390437769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39716/original/pvfmkhjy-1390437769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39716/original/pvfmkhjy-1390437769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39716/original/pvfmkhjy-1390437769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39716/original/pvfmkhjy-1390437769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A still from The Act of Killing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">©2012 FINAL CUT FOR REAL APS, PIRAYA FILM AS AND NOVAYA ZEMLYA LTD</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An open wound</h2>
<p>Is it any wonder that Indonesia has never come to terms with the mass killings that began in the latter months of 1965? Attempts at setting up a national reconciliation process were begun soon after the fall of Suharto in the late 90s, but only from one side. The initiative came from survivors from the left and from young people, often from religious groups, eager to sweep aside the dictator’s legacy. The military and those implicated in the killings have shown no reciprocal interest.</p>
<p>The attempts at reconciliation have been stymied from above. The current president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has declared that he does not want to dwell on the past. His declaration is hardly surprising, since his late father-in-law, General Sarwo Edhie, was one of the main organisers and leaders of the killings.</p>
<p>One of the most surprising aspects of The Act of Killing is that it does not explain the role of the military in leading the killings, even passing up the opportunity to focus on Sarwo Edhie when one Medan murderer points out the general’s picture on his wall.</p>
<p>This problem of representing responsibility for the killings leads to misunderstandings for viewers unfamiliar with Indonesian history.</p>
<p>Viewers such as Zizek who have not read up on the events come away with the idea that Pemuda Pancasila were responsible for killings outside Medan. In fact, the sites of the most intense killings were in East Java and Bali, where those responsible were the military, in conjunction with a Muslim body and militias from the Nationalist political party. </p>
<p>Zizek, in his review, also states the 1965 killings were primarily anti-Chinese. The killings were focussed on communists, but in Medan that included a left-wing organisation with chiefly Chinese membership, as well as an excuse for the Pemuda Pancasila to mobilise anti-Chinese racism for economic ends.</p>
<p>The Act of Killing arrived in Indonesia at the point at which activists were losing hope of anything being achieved. The national Human Rights Commission had just handed down a report on the killings, to have it rejected by the Attorney General on spurious grounds; Indonesia’s Constitutional Court had ruled that a truth and reconciliation commission was unlawful; and series of actions by both government and civil society groups had led to censorship of history books and the school curriculum.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39719/original/bbh3hvmy-1390438154.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39719/original/bbh3hvmy-1390438154.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39719/original/bbh3hvmy-1390438154.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39719/original/bbh3hvmy-1390438154.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39719/original/bbh3hvmy-1390438154.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39719/original/bbh3hvmy-1390438154.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39719/original/bbh3hvmy-1390438154.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39719/original/bbh3hvmy-1390438154.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A scene from The Act of Killing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">©2012 FINAL CUT FOR REAL APS, PIRAYA FILM AS AND NOVAYA ZEMLYA LTD</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The film was not the first outside-made film to focus on the killings. Anthropologist Rob Lemelson’s film <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/40_Years_of_Silence:_An_Indonesian_Tragedy">40 Years of Silence</a> movingly portrays the continued effects of the killings on the families of victims and former political prisoners.</p>
<p>The Act of Killing is more confronting than 40 Years of Silence because it focuses on the perpetrators, and through its portrayal of one, Anwar Congo, a not-too-bright, Hollywood-loving gangster, even <a href="http://www.undertheradarmag.com/interviews/director_joshua_oppenheimer_on_his_documentary_the_act_of_killing">crosses over the line</a> of sympathy with the killers.</p>
<h2>Official silence</h2>
<p>Indonesian government officials have tried to avoid discussion of The Act of Killing (and they haven’t made the mistake of banning it, as some promoters of the film mistakenly suggest). They were probably adopting the standard official procedure when faced with a major problem: ignore it and hope it will go away. The publicity led last week to one Presidential spokesman <a href="http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/indonesia-reacts-to-act-of-killing-academy-nomination/">complaining</a> that the film was bad for Indonesia’s image, and trying to use a “two wrongs make a right” logic of drawing attention to issues like oppression of Aborigines in Australia.</p>
<p>The Act of Killing’s primary role in Indonesia has been to stimulate debate. The many private (“guerrilla”) showings, and a special issue of the national magazine Tempo based on the film, have reopened discussions of events.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A still from the film.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">©2012 FINAL CUT FOR REAL APS, PIRAYA FILM AS AND NOVAYA ZEMLYA LTD</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The reactions of Indonesian audiences have been varied. According to some reports, the experimental nature of the narrative, the length, and the surrealistic imagery has left mass audiences cold. Ariel Heryanto, a leading Indonesian cultural studies scholar, has already <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eNP6BnCWN8">commented</a> on this lack of strong reaction. As one Indonesian commentator observed to me, the film was not really made for Indonesian audiences.</p>
<p>Regardless of the content – and the film does have ethical and representational flaws – the main impact of the film is its symbolic value in Indonesia. The Act of Killing shows that the legacy of the mass murders of 1965 should not just go away. The killings need to be confronted as part of a conversation that is both national and international.</p>
<p>The Academy Awards have already made a contribution to such a conversation.</p>
<p><br>
See <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/oscars-2014">further Oscars 2014 coverage</a> on The Conversation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22163/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrian Vickers receives Australian Research Council grants, and has received funding from the Getty Foundation.</span></em></p>
Academy Award nominations rarely enter into the domain of politics, and certainly have not delved into Indonesian politics in the past. This year, however, is different. US-British director Joshua Oppenheimer’s…
Adrian Vickers, Professor of Southeast Asian Studies, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.