For decades, Indonesia’s official national history was silent about the murders and incarceration of hundred thousands of people. Moving beyond that will require a new understanding of what happened.
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.
Non-state actors in Indonesia use violence and intimidation against a critical civil society as a means for the political and business elites to maintain wealth and power.
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.
The Ubud Writers and Readers Festival has cancelled events discussing the 1965 Indonesian massacres, after police threatened to revoke the festival permit.
Arguably Indonesia’s most significant leftist film director and theorist, Bachtiar Siagian, was among the millions who fell prey to the communist purge carried out between 1965 and 1966.
In a watershed moment for Indonesia’s history, the deadly 1965 anti-communist purge transformed Indonesia from an independent Asian nation in the midst of Cold War into a pro-Western country.
With eyes fixed on his television screen, Adi Rukun, the main character followed by documentary maker Joshua Oppenheimer in his new film, The Look Of Silence, seems to face a mirror that resurrects a nightmarish…
Next year it will be 50 years since a group of middle-ranking army officers abducted the top brass of the Indonesian army. They had planned to bring them before President Sukarno, as they had heard rumours…
The Indonesian army and civilian vigilantes killed at least half a million people between 1965 and 1968. Hundreds of thousands more were imprisoned without trial for long periods. Some were sent to remote…