| Home > South-East Asia >> Indonesia | |
Activist: US must declassify files on 1965 massacre
Jakarta Globe - September 30, 2015
Human Rights Watch Indonesian researcher Andreas Harsono said that he will tour the United States until early November along with US Senator Tom Udall and filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer, who has produced two acclaimed documentaries – "The Act of Killing" and "The Look of Silence" – on the subject, to put pressure on the US government to declassify the files. These documents have only been partially released in the last two decades.
"There are three agencies whose documents have not yet been fully declassified: the State Department, the CIA and Pentagon," Andreas told the Jakarta Globe.
"The US government has been reluctant to open the documents because it doesn't want to upset ties with Indonesia, particularly since the US military has many cooperations with its Indonesian counterpart."
In a letter to the Washington Post in 1990, Robert J. Martens, who from 1963 to 1966 was a political officer at the United States Embassy in Jakarta, admitted to having provided a list of 5,000 names to the Indonesian military.
Everyone in the list, leaders of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and its wings in national, provincial down to village levels, is believed to have been killed by the military.
Andreas hoped that declassification of the files will put more pressure on Indonesia to set up a human rights tribunal into the matter. It is estimated that between 500,000 and one million people were killed between 1965 and 1966, with at least a million more imprisoned without due process, tortured, raped or sent to labor camps.
"It is important because conditions back home in Indonesia are not so good and there are attempts to hide the facts and preserve the impunity that the perpetrators have enjoyed," he said.
President Joko Widodo took office in 2014 with high public hopes that he would address past human rights cases, something his predecessors failed to do.
But Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung said last week that any talks of President Joko Widodo preparing to issue an apology on the anniversary of the event that triggered the massacre was not true, adding that the president was focused on "more pressing matters."
Andreas said Joko is reluctant to upset those involved in or benefited from the massacre, noting that they are still in power and retain massive influence in Indonesian politics.
The Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, two of the biggest Islamic groups in Indonesia, have denounced any attempts to apologize for the massacre, as have politicians from former president Suharto's Golkar Party and officials from the PPAD, the military's biggest veterans' association.
"Indonesia is the only country that has not reconciled with its own past," Andreas said, adding that it is important for Joko to keep his words in bringing those responsible to justice.
"This is impunity in the grandest of scale. Because of what happened and the impunity they enjoy, history repeats itself, albeit on a smaller scale," he continued, citing that years of impunity has emboldened security officials and those in power to commit more atrocities during Suharto's 32-year-rule.
Indonesia's Attorney General's Office has said it would work to resolve past human rights cases, including the 1965 massacre, but said that it would emphasize more on reconciliation instead of prosecution, something human rights groups – both local and international – have denounced. "There can never be reconciliation without justice. There can never be reconciliation without the truth," Andreas said.
Source: http://jakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/activist-us-must-declassify-files-1965-massacre/.
See also:
 |