Studies on ’65 still trying to reveal truth Asvi Warman Adam  ;  A visiting research scholar at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University; The following is a summary of his paper presented at Waseda University, Tokyo, Jan. 17

JAKARTA POST, 27 Januari 2015

                                                                                                                                     

                                                

This year people will remember that half a century ago, in 1965, the Sept. 30 Movement (Gerakan 30 September or G30S) made a place in Indonesian history. For 50 years there have been various discourses on the coup, a failed attempt leading to a national tragedy. The first wave of narratives about G30S concerns who masterminded the movement. The Indonesian Army had PKI, the Communist Party of Indonesia, to blame. Published articles in the US said it was a matter of the army’s internal affairs. A book, 40 Hari Kegagalan “G30S”, 1 Oktober-10 November 1965 (40 Days of the failure of “G30S”, Oct. 1-Nov. 10, 1965) was published on Dec. 27, 1965, by the History Institute, Defense and Security Staff, in a project initiated by former military commander Gen. Nasution who assigned a number of historians from the University of Indonesia. It only took a month to complete. The book did not use the label “G30S/PKI” but mentioned the involvement of PKI in the coup. Two US scholars, Ben Anderson and Ruth McVey, who believed that the Army was involved, offered a different view. The report, later known as the “Cornell Paper”, alluded to in the Washington Post on March 5, 1966. Earlier in February 1966, a similar piece by Daniel Lev was published in Asian Survey. In 1967, Maj. Gen. Soewarto, the Army Staff and Command School (Seskoad) chief, went to the US to Rand Corporation, an agency incorporated after World War II as a watchdog for the US during the Cold War. It was supposed to conduct research on communism in many countries Guy Parker of the agency told Soewarto of the Cornell Paper and suggested writing a book to counter it. Soewarto sent to the US the historian Nugroho Notosusanto and Lt. Col. Ismail Saleh, a prosecutor for the extraordinary military tribunal where those convicted of the G30S were tried. With Parker’s help, Notosusanto and Saleh wrote The Coup Attempt of September 30 Movement in Indonesia. Included in the file was a post-mortem examination report, visum et repertum, of the bodies of the six generals murdered in the G30S. Ben Anderson, after reading the documentation, prepared an article that stirred a controversy. It was not true, as stated in the army’s newspaper that the eyes of the generals were gorged out and their genitals cut off. The second stream of the G30S narrative was part of the government’s campaign to plant its sole version of history. The six-volume National History of Indonesia was published in 1975 and the volume 6 edited by Nugroho Notosusanto legitimized the New Order regime’s rise to power. Notosusanto also initiated the production of Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI (G30S/PKI Treachery), a film by Arifin C. Noer in 1984. It was aired on national television on the evening of Sept. 30, every year. The day president Soeharto fell from power in May 1998 marked the third phase of the G30S narrative. Survivors started to speak up. Among the oral accounts of history, several caught public attention — 1965: Tahun yang Tidak Pernah Berakhir (1965: The Year that Never Ended), Menembus Tirai Asap (Coming Out of the Curtain of Smoke) and Menguak Kabut Halim (Unclouding Halim Mist). The country began to correct its history; I published a number of writings on this subject. The G30S narrative hit the fourth wave when John Roosa’s book, Dalih Pembunuhan Massal (Pretext for Mass Murder), was released in 2008. While previous debates had been on who was behind the 1965 coup d’état, now the focus shifted to who masterminded the mass killings of 1965. Roosa, in his book banned by the Attorney General’s Office, argued that G30S movement was a pretext for the mass killings. Communism was crushed to get the sympathy of the US and its allies, and this in turn brought in investments and loans to help Indonesia get its economy moving. On Dec.15, 1965, without president Sukarno’s permission, Gen. Soeharto flew by helicopter to Cipanas Palace. In the meeting chaired by deputy prime minister Chaerul Saleh, Soeharto talked about the Army’s objection to the move of nationalizing Caltex. The film Jagal (The Act of Killing) set up the milepost of the fifth wave of the G30S narrative. Years ago, survivors spoke about what happened, and now came the time for murderers to testify. A winner in different film festivals — Istanbul, Valenciennes, Warsaw and Barcelona — and best-film nominee at the Oscars, the movie has been for the last two years the center of attention in almost all scientific conferences hosted by observers of Indonesia in Australia, Asia, Europe and the US. Depicting the killings of individuals in North Sumatra after the G30S coup, Jagal deconstructed the narrative developed and intensively campaigned for during the New Order. The scholar Ariel Heryanto thought the movie “the most spectacular and politically most important production about Indonesia I have ever watched”. This new phase of the narrative reveals the significance of the international community on the G30S massacre. The post-G30S series of arrests, detentions and killings had to do with the efforts of putting Indonesia on the list of US allies to make the country eligible for economic aid from the West. People outside Indonesia challenged the New Order’s version of the G30S history by presenting an Oscar-nominee film played today in many countries. The international factors causing these events are not eliminated in history. Indonesian society wants the truth of history revealed even though there are parties preventing the revelation of different versions than that exposed by the New Order — among others because of their involvement in human rights violations of the past. ●