*IBRAHIM ISA*
*Friday, March 1, 2013**
------------------------*
To read the article by Andjarsari Paramaditha (Febr. 27th), published below
*IS A MUST FOR EVERYONE to know the Human Rights situation in Indonesia
today. *
** * ***
*
*The Act of Killing' Reopens Old, *
*Long-Buried Wounds in Indonesia **
Andjarsari Paramaditha | February 27, 2013* *
The Jakarta Globe, Sat, March 2, 2013 *
*
** * **
*"For Indonesians old enough to remember the genocide, the film makes it
impossible to continue denying what everybody in that generation already
knew. They are closer to the perpetrators than they like to believe,"
**Oppenheimer said. *
Bejo Untung was a 17-year-old Indonesian schoolboy when armed soldiers
came to his village in 1965, forcing him on the run for years until he
was caught, tortured and jailed.
A communist-led coup attempt had just failed, triggering a wave of
arrests and killings that ushered in more than three decades of rigid
anticommunist education and propaganda. The subject is still so
sensitive it is rarely broached in public.
But now a documentary, "The Act of Killing," made by Texan-born director
Joshua Oppenheimer, shines a light on that dark era, focusing on the
death squads and torture that seem like a myth to the majority of the
Indonesian population.
Oppenheimer came up with the idea for the film while working on a
different project in North Sumatra and found many relatives of the
Indonesians he was talking to had been killed or imprisoned between 1965
and 1966 for trying to form a union.
Most were too afraid to appear on camera to speak with him and suggested
he talk to the killers. He took their advice and was horrified by his
findings.
*
"I ... encountered the boastful and shocking way that the killers were
talking about what they did," said Oppenheimer in a telephone interview
from Denmark.
*
*"That was for me the beginning of the journey. I realized, my goodness,
how is it possible that the perpetrators of mass murder should talk
loudly and boastfully and with smiles and laughter." *
The film, which runs for nearly two hours and won two prizes at this
month's Berlin International Film Festival, re-enacts several murders
and features a member of a death squad.
*Death squads*
These death squads were operating systematically across Indonesia mostly
in the late 1960s. Estimates put as many as one million people dead in a
wave of violence after the aborted coup and purge of communists and
alleged sympathizers.
The main character in the film, Anwar Congo, was the one of the most
feared death squad leaders in the area around the city of Medan in Sumatra.
"I choke them to death, with steel wire around the neck," Congo says in
the film, demonstrating in front of the camera how it was done. "And
then pull it, sometimes with a pole. It's easier that way and less blood
to clean."
Premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in October 2012, "The Act of
Killing" took the Panorama Audience Award and the Ecumenical Jury Prize
at the recent 2013 Berlin International Film Festival but there have
been no official screenings in the country where it took place.
It has been shown in about 265 underground screenings, with secret
invitations sent to small groups, but there is the fear that police
might try to block the screenings. Still, some 10,000 have been to see it.
The National Police spokesman did not respond to questions asking
whether the officers would have tried to stop showings of the film.
Young Indonesians had long been taught that communism was sadistic and
evil and given no alternative view to that era.
Until 1998 and the end of the iron rule of Suharto, the leader who took
power shortly after the coup, viewing of a violent movie about how six
generals and an officer were killed in the coup attempt was compulsory
for schoolchildren.
*
Even last year an attempt by Indonesia's human rights commission to look
into the events surrounding the slaughter were effectively blocked by
the government. *
*"Baby rat was my favorite"*
Bejo Untung said the movie reflected accurately what happened to him and
many others.
Caught and imprisoned in 1970, Untung survived a year of torture -
beating and electrocution - in prison and then a camp of several hundred
men located in Central Jakarta. Three killed themselves while he was
there, while others disappeared and were feared to have been killed. He
spent eight years in jail without trial, including a stint of brutal
forced farm labor.
"Ten of us were forced to stay in a room which can only fit two," he
said of his time in one prison. "We slept like layered cake, my head
facing another inmate's toes so we could breathe while we slept."
Most of the protein in his diet came from "anything that moved" in the
fields, including frogs, rats, snakes and snails.
"My favorite was the baby rat, it's easy to swallow it alive," said Untung.
He learned to play guitar and piano and made his own instrument during
breaks. To learn English, he copied a dictionary word for word onto
cigarette papers.
It wasn't until 1979 that political prisoners were released, in order to
open the way for Indonesia to receive financial grants from the United
States and European nations.
Untung was a private music tutor until retiring and now heads YPKP 65,
an organization for victims of the brutality. For nearly six years, he
marched in front of the State Palace, the seat of Indonesian government,
every Thursday together with other human rights victims, demanding
resolution.
*
Now he and others want Indonesian history to be revised to reflect the
truth of that period. *
Hilmar Farid, a Jakarta-based historian at the University of Indonesia,
said this was a lesson - not to allow absolute power to take hold.
*"I doubt that the perpetrators will watch the movie and apologize ...
Political interest plays a big part. There is a need to have mass
consciousness, mass repentance if necessary." *
Oppenheimer said his film, which cost $1 million to make over five
years, gave young Indonesians a different chapter to their nation's history.
"From the history lessons in school, I only remember that they [the
communists] killed and oppressed people, that's it." said 23 year-old
graduate student Frederika Dapamanis after watching the movie. "I was
sad and ashamed."
There were also lessons for those older as well.
"For Indonesians old enough to remember the genocide, the film makes it
impossible to continue denying what everybody in that generation already
knew. They are closer to the perpetrators than they like to believe,"
Oppenheimer said.
"It's not because they're communist or Indonesian, but they are human
beings," he said. "The movie, that's a hurtful truth. Indonesia has to
speak out about this. The government has to apologize and the truth has
to come out." * * *
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