The mass violence which engulfed Indonesia from October 1965 was genocidal in nature.
The estimated 500,000–1,000,000 men, women and children who were killed during this mass violence died primarily because of their membership within a socio-political group; a group that was defined by the perpetrators of this violence as anyone deemed to be either a member of, or otherwise affiliated with, the PKI (Partai Komunis Indonesia, Indonesian Communist Party) . These killings, which occurred at the height of the Cold War in Southeast Asia, were systematic in nature. They were led and coordinated by the Indonesian military leadership, with the intention of physically destroying the PKI as a political force and facilitating the military’s rise to power.
Arguably, the Indonesian killings are the clearest case of genocide against a socio-political group in the twentieth century. These killings are not, however, generally understood as a case of genocide . The reason for this exclusion is twofold. First, the Indonesian killings have not, until recently, been understood as a case of state-sponsored violence . Instead, the killings have been explained as a result of spontaneous violence which arose out of Indonesian society as an organic response to the alleged evils of Communism . This interpretation, which was originally posited by the Indonesian military (Farid, 2005; Melvin, 2014; Roosa, 2016), was adopted by the United States, United Kingdom and Australian governments and mainstream media in these countries (Simpson, 2008; Tanter, 2013). This denial of military agency behind the killings was often accompanied by open support for the brutal military regime which came to power on the back of the killings , General Suharto ’s “New Order” (1965 –1998). Suharto , Time magazine infamously declared in July 1966, was “the West’s Best News for years in Asia”. This interpretation was rarely critically questioned by the few Indonesia scholars in these countries who discussed the violence in the decades to follow (Crouch, 1978; Sundhaussen, 1982). Indeed, until very recently it was a matter of serious scholarly contention as to whether or not the military had ordered the killings as part of a national, centralized campaign (see, for example, Cribb, 2002).
Second, the Indonesian killings, when they have been recognized as the result of deliberate state policy, are not generally considered to meet the legal definition of genocide , as laid down in the 1948 United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (“Genocide Convention”). This is because of the identity of those who were persecuted. Within both the international legal community and the field of comparative genocide studies, the term genocide has generally only applied when considering attempts to wipe out ethnic, racial, national or religious groups. This has led to a situation in which scholarly discussion about whether or not the Indonesian killings constitute a case of genocide has focused almost exclusively on semantic debates related to the identity of its victims . As a result, some Indonesia and genocide scholars have concluded the Indonesian killings do not “in legal terms” constitute a case of genocide , specifically because the killings were “political” and not based on ethnic, racial or religious bias (Gellately & Kiernan, 2003, pp. 46–47; see also Cribb & Coppel, 2009). 1 This interpretation is at odds with certain legal scholars who argue there is no legal or moral justification for excluding political groups from protection under the Genocide Convention (van Schaack, 1997; Weiss-Wendt, 2005).
Building on the pioneering work of Robert Cribb , who was amongst the first scholars to investigate the killings in greater detail, this volume seeks to reposition current understandings of the Indonesian killings within the field of comparative genocide studies. In doing so, it draws on work particularly from younger scholars of Indonesia that represents a new wave in the study of the killings. This new generation has grown up outside the shadow of the Cold War ; a distance that has allowed a new, less ideologically charged, perspective of events. Indeed, key early studies in this new wave of scholarship have been critical not only of official Indonesian propaganda accounts that have sought to justify the violence (McGregor, 2007; Roosa, 2006), but of the role of the US and its allies in encouraging and facilitating this violence (Simpson, 2008; Wardaya, 2008). They have also uncovered new evidence of the specific patterns in the violence across different regions of Indonesia (Ahmad, 2008; Kammen & McGregor, 2012).
This new generation of scholars has also been inspired by and directly benefited from the new democratic space that has opened up in Indonesia since the fall of Suharto ’s New Order regime in 1998. Survivors of the killings are today more free to speak openly about their experiences and this has enabled previously unthinkable interactions between survivors, researchers and human rights activists. Indeed, a key motivation of this new generation of scholars has been to capture the stories of survivors as this older generation ages before their experiences are lost. Through the use of oral history methods in particular, scholars and activists have sought to record and draw meanings from the stories of survivors (examples of which include: Hutabarat, 2012; Kolimon, Wetangterah, & Campbell-Nelson, 2015; Roosa, Ratih, & Farid, 2004; Sukanta, 2013; Wieringa , 2002).
More recently, perpetrators have also begun to offer accounts of how they participated in the killings and at whose direction. These accounts build on the success of Joshua Oppenheimer ’s first award-winning film on the topic of the genocide , The Act of Killing (2012), which features the self-incriminating testimony of former death squad leaders who actively participated in the killings in Medan, North Sumatra . This documentary in turn spurred a leading Indonesian popular publication, Tempo, to run a special edition of the magazine dedicated to perpetrator accounts (Tim Laporan Khusus Tempo, 2013). These accounts have made it increasingly difficult for the Indonesian state to continue to deny military agency behind the killings (see also, Kurniawan, 2013). The recent discovery of previously classified internal documents produced by the Indonesian military and government during the time of the genocide , meanwhile, has driven the final nail into the myth of military non-agency behind the killings (Melvin, 2014). These documents prove, using the military’s own words, that the genocide was perpetrated as a deliberate nationwide campaign intended to destroy an entire human group, the Communist party and its supporters.
This new evidence and more open accounts from survivors and perpetrators have enabled this emerging generation of scholars to extend on previous studies emphasizing the regional dimensions of the killings. These scholars have built on these earlier studies to examine more systematic patterns in the violence across the archipelago, as well as to examine how Indonesians have lived with the legacies of the genocide . They have also led to a fundamental reassessment of what is now “knowable” about the Indonesian killings (Roosa, 2013). Of the two major “unresolved problems” identified by Robert Cribb in 2002 as gaps in scholarly understandings of the events of 1965 –1966—namely the question of agency behind the killings and the number of victims killed—only the second question can today be regarded as “unresolved” (Cribb, 2002). Coupled with renewed attempts within Indonesia to seek justice for victims of the killings (see Evanty & Pohlman, this volume; Wahyuningroem, this volume), there is reason to believe that the next few years wi...