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No apology forthcoming as 50th anniversary of anti-communist massacre looms
Jakarta Globe - September 23, 2015
Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung said on Tuesday that any talk of President Joko Widodo preparing to issue an apology on the anniversary of the event that triggered the massacre was not true.
"This issue about the apology and whatever was never discussed at any cabinet meeting," Pramono told reporters at the State Palace in Jakarta.
He added the president was focused on "more pressing matters," including tackling slowing economic growth. "So the point is that that's not in his thoughts right now," Pramono said.
Speculation about an official apology for the 1965-66 military-led massacre of suspected members and sympathizers of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) has mounted since Joko's inaugural state-of-the-nation address last month, in which he called for national reconciliation to put to rest past rights abuses.
Justice Minister Yasonna Laoly later that month confirmed that the government was working on formulating an apology, but did not say when it would be issued. He also stressed that it would not be directed solely at the victims of the PKI purge, but also at those killed or otherwise affected by a litany of rights abuses carried out by the state since then.
Proponents of an apology had expected it to be delivered on Sept. 30, the anniversary of a purported coup attempt blamed by the military on the PKI.
Historians have since rubbished that narrative, saying the PKI was framed for the alleged coup attempt so that the military, led by Gen. Suharto, could justify seizing power from then-president Sukarno.
In the purge of suspected PKI sympathizers that followed – led by the Army and abetted by militias including the youth wing of Nahdlatul Ulama, today the country's biggest Islamic organization – an estimated one million to three million people, mostly ethnic Chinese, were murdered and millions more detained as political prisoners.
NU and Muhammadiyah, Indonesia's second-biggest Islamic group, have denounced any attempt to apologize for the massacre, as have politicians from Suharto's Golkar Party and officials from the PPAD, the military's biggest veterans' association.
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