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Indonesia rules out apology to victims at state-endorsed talks on 1965 massacres
Sydney Morning Herald - April 18, 2016
Luhut Panjaitan – one of President Joko Widodo's most trusted ministers – said the two-day symposium reflected the government's intention to resolve past human rights abuses.
The massacre of at least half a million people with suspected leftist leanings in 1965 and 1966 remains an intensely sensitive and controversial topic in Indonesia.
Last year an international writers' festival in Bali was forced to cancel sessions on the dark chapter in Indonesia's history, after officials warned the entire festival could be shut down if they went ahead.
"The process that brought us here today is not an easy one," Mr Panjaitan said. "We have to make peace with our past. But the government will not extend an apology."
Human rights advocates are hopeful the symposium will lead to a public hearing process, so Indonesians can hear firsthand accounts from survivors and descendants of victims.
"This is an essential element of an effective accountability process," said Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth. "Dozens of countries around the world have had truth commissions shed light on past atrocities, issues that are always difficult matters to address. Why not Indonesia?"
The 1965 pogroms were triggered by the assassination of six army generals on September 30, in a coup blamed on the now defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). An estimated 500,000 to one million people labelled "communists" were killed and hundreds of thousands were detained without trial.
The head of the symposium is Agus Widjojo, a retired army general whose father was one of the generals shot in 1965. He said the purpose of the symposium was reconciliation and not a court of justice to ascertain who was right and wrong.
In 2012 the Indonesian national human rights commission, Komnas HAM, recommended a criminal inquiry and the establishment of an ad hoc human rights court to try the perpetrators. This has not been followed up by the government on the grounds that many of the perpetrators have died, witnesses can't be found and the large amount of time that has passed.
Mr Agus said the symposium was different because all affected parties, including the military and survivors, had been invited. "This is the mental revolution our president is talking about," he said. "A mental revolution where we have to listen to the things we don't want to hear, where we we have to listen to things we regard as myth."
Many Indonesians were taught at school that communists were bloodthirsty atheists and that their defeat was pivotal to the survival of Indonesia.
The Indonesian national human rights commission has also written to the Obama administration, asking it to release classified documents relating to the killings. It has been alleged that the CIA provided names of alleged communists to the Indonesian government.
"We want to learn more about about the working-level involvement between the US government and the killers in 1965," said Mr Roth.
US ambassador Robert Blake said the US welcomed the state-sponsored dialogue to shed more light on 1965. "We have a process already where we routinely declassify documents after 25 years," he said. "In general the Obama administration is very committed to transparency and openness and I think a lot of these documents already have been released."
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