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'Genocide denial with a smile': Indonesian govt possess evidence of massacres says researcher
ABC News - April 22, 2016
It's long been estimated that the coup led by general Suharto was associated with the deaths of around half a million people – carried out on the pretext of eliminating the communist party.
As we reported last night, Minister Luhut Panjaitan even cast doubt on the existence of mass graves, and challenged the media to find them.
Well Jess Melvin completed her PhD at Melbourne University on the mass killings in one corner of Indonesia, Aceh.
She unearthed a trove of solid documentary evidence, not only that the killings took place, but that the order came right from the top. Now at Yale University, Dr Melvin gave me her reaction to the Minister's statement.
Jess Melvin: Genocide denial with a smile – we have the appearance of wanting to come to terms with the past. A fulfilment of the promises of the (inaudible) government to deal with human rights abuses.
But in full, if we actually listen to what they're saying, they're not only denying what happened but, in fact, justifying what happened. They're saying from the start that there will be no apology for what happened, in fact, that no they think it was the right thing to do.
Mark Colvin: They say there's no evidence and nobody's ever found any mass graves. What evidence is there?
Jess Melvin: Well the Indonesian government for some years now have been at work. The Komnas HAM, the national human rights commission, has been at work compiling evidence of the genocide.
They've produced an 800 page report which details what happened, they spoke to many victims and they've also been compiling the official documents that exist from this time and yet they refuse to release this report because of its damning nature.
Mark Colvin: To look in more granular detail if you like, your research was in Aceh and you managed to get some remarkable documents. If you look at those documents, what do they show about how it actually worked on the ground?
Jess Melvin: Well they show a very clear chain of command from Jakarta, from Suharto, to the Indonesia military commander in Sumatra, Mokoginta, to the provincial military commander in Aceh and (name in audible) and presumably the other provincial military commanders at that time.
And then going down again to the district and inter-district military command, (inaudible) lots of fighting. There were meetings held to co-ordinate the genocide, and not only within the military leadership but between the military leadership and civilian leadership, to coordinate what was happening.
We must remember that genocide is a massive undertaking for a nation; it's a nationwide campaign that requires full mobilisation and utilisation of everything that the state has to be able to pull this sort of campaign off.
And I would say that there was no level of either the Indonesian military or government that was not aware of what was going on at that time.
Mark Colvin: So to be clear for those who may not be familiar with exactly what was going on at the time, you're saying that you have a document chain that goes right from the town level, right up to general Suharto, who was the leader of the group that toppled Sukarno, who was the leader at the time – and Suharto then went on to rule Indonesia for the next few decades.
Jess Melvin: That's correct. And if fact, not only do we have orders where the military comes out and says, it is mandatory for our civilians to assist the military to completely annihilate the Indonesian communist party, or those associated with them, but there's also documentary evidence showing the military and the government supporting the creation of the death squads at the local level that implemented the killings.
The creation of these death squads and then records of them being handed out guns to do these killings; these were American and British machine guns and the bullets that they were given to implement the killings on the ground.
Mark Colvin: When we talk about it as a genocide, it was not just a political genocide, it spread out to the extent that in some cases, for instance, the Chinese community was automatically assumed to be aligned with the communist party and so it became and ethnic as well as political genocide?
Jess Melvin: Yes, and, but when you say a political genocide, this went beyond the simple members of a political organisation – which by the way had been perfectly legal up until the morning of the 1st of October 1965.
There was a conscious strategy of not only capturing and murdering members of this organisation, but also their entire families, including their children. This was done in very systematic ways.
Mark Colvin: So it was guilt by association?
Jess Melvin: Yes, that's correct. In fact, there's some places in rural areas where they would go through and wipe out PKI villages. Yes, very much so guilt by association. This is something that affected everyone.
If you weren't directly involved in this, either as a perpetrator or as a victim, you would have witnessed what was going on. And this is the story that we hear from people when we go into Indonesia and ask them about their experience during this time.
Mark Colvin: Dr Jess Melvin of Melbourne University, now at Yale.
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2016/s4448857.htm.
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