This was done by the handing over of an official letter stating that the TAP MPRS is no longer valid by MPR Speaker Bambang Soesatyo (Bamsoet) to Bung Karno’s (Brother Sukarno’s) family on Monday September 9.

“Stating that the TAP MPRS Number 33/MPRS/1967 is no longer valid”, said Soesatyo on Monday.

With the revocation of the MPRS TAP, said Soesatyo, the accusation that Bung Karno betrayed of the state and supported the rebellion by the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) is not proven.

“Judicially the accusation has never been proven before a law or court, and contradicts Indonesia’s principles as a country based on law”, Soesatyo said.

According to Soesatyo, this move is a follow-up to MPR Decree Number 1/2003 to review the legal status of TAP MPRS Number 33/1967.

Furthermore, Soesatyo gave assurances that the MPR would socialise the revocation of TAP MPRS Number 33/1967 as an effort to restore Bung Karno’s good name.

“The leadership of the MPR of the Republic of Indonesia is committed to continuing to oversee the restoration of the good name Dr. (HC) Ir. Sukarno for [the sake of] fairness and legal uncertainty”, he concluded.

The handover of the decree revoking the TAP MPRS was done during a national gathering between the MPR Leadership and the 5^th president of the Republic of Indonesia, Megawati Sukarnoputri and Bung Karno’s extended family on Monday.

Megawati, Sukarno’s eldest daughter, attended along with her brothers Guruh Soekarnoputra and Guntur Soekarnoputra along with several other members of the Bung Karno family.

Notes:

On the night of September 30, 1965 a group of middle-ranking military officers known as the 30 September Movement (G30S) kidnapped six generals they accused of organising a coup against Indonesia’s leftist President Sukarno. For reasons that remain unclear, the six were killed and their bodies dumped in a well in South Jakarta. By blaming the incident on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), this provided the pretext for sections of the military, led by then Major General Suharto, to mount a bloody counter-revolution in which as many as 1 million communists and left-wing sympathisers were killed. Hundreds of thousands of others were imprisoned for years without trial. The official narrative that the PKI was behind the coup has long been debunked by independent historians as a cover for the military and Suharto to stage its own ouster of Sukarno.

Tria Sutrisna

Ihsanuddin

Translated by James Balowski

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