MONDAY, 01 OCTOBER, 2012 | 14:17 WIB

Executioners from a Dark Year

http://en.tempo.co/read/news/2012/10/01/055433019/Executioners-from-a-Dark-Year

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: A policy to eliminate members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and their sympathizers ignited a wave of killings which raged in Java and Bali, which later spread to other areas. Executioners appeared. In the name of personal revenge, religious belief, or duty to the state, these executioners swung the sword on those labeled as being PKI members. They bodies were thrown into ravines, rivers and caves. Why did the perpetrators not feel guilty for doing this? Among these perpetrators was a ticket clipper at a movie theatre in Medan. In the documentary film The Act of Killing (Jagal) by American director Joshua Oppenheimer, which was screened at the Toronto Festival Film last September, this ticker clipper openly admitted to sadistically slaughtering members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in Medan from 1965-1966. Imitating the characters he saw in American gangster films, he used a special technique to cut the throats of those he accused of being PKI members so that their blood would not spill all over the floor. He had a joyful personality. He was known to be a good dancer. This fan of Elvis Presley and James Dean said he often killed while doing the cha-cha. I happily killed PKI members, he said. In one scene, along with his fellow executioners in 1965, he was seen riding in a convertible down the streets of Medan. They were reminiscing at the places where they had killed among them a stretch of road where he killed many Chinese residents. Whenever I met a Chinese person, I immediately stabbed them ." The admission of an honest hooligan named Anwar Congo in this film which will likely be shown by the National Human Rights Commission in Jakarta this October, could make anyone dumbfounded. There is an element of heroism. Anwar give the impression that he is the savior of the people. According to one version it is said that nearly a million PKI followers were killed after 1965. This is a serious human rights violation. Anwar was only one of the perpetrators. In other areas there were many other Anwars. This time Tempo attempts to see the events of 1965 from the perspective of the executioners. We do not have any intention to expose any shame or to corner the perpetrators. Indonesian politics at that time were very complex. Before the September tragedy, the conflict between PKI and other political parties had heated up. PKI, which felt it had the upper hand, pressured residents who were not on board with them. When the situation was reversed, the overflow of retaliation was uncontrollable. The killings were approved of by the elder social and religious figures. The period from 1965-1966 cannot be judged with todays norms and values. Going over the dark history of Indonesia during that time can only be done by taking the social, political and economic context of that time into consideration. However, we also now how asymmetrical information about the 1965 tragedy is. At that time, all of the newspapers were controlled by the military. The public was indoctrinated by news that the Communists were the enemy of the state, and identical with atheism. The military spread lists of PKI members who were to be eliminated. The military protected the perpetrators, and even supplied them with weapons. In some places some inmates were released to hunt down the enemy of the state. This led the executioners to feel that their actions were ap propriate. History repeats itself, both here and in other places. In Israel, Adolph Eichmann, who was ever in charge of a Nazi concentration camp, was put on trial. He perpetrated the massacre of hundreds of Jews. He felt he was not guilty because he felt it was a national duty. German philosopher Hannah Arendt, who watched the trial in 1963, wrote the famous book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report of the Banality of Evil. Arendt saw that executors like Eichmann were not schizophrenics or psychopaths, but ordinary citizens who felt their actions were alright because it was justified by the state. Arendt called this phenomenon acute shallowness. TEMPO ****