Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
Indonesian communists played a crucial role in developing national consciousness among workers and peasants, against Dutch colonial rule. After the bloody repression of the Indonesian left in the 1960s, Suharto’s regime wrote the left out of the history books.
Review of Communication against (…)
History, literature, and imagination come together in the life and works of Pramoedya Ananta Toer. He not only wrote literature, but also explored history and used words to revive the past that was deliberately deleted.
In the Buru Tetralogy (Quartet) he processed the results of his (…)
The momentum of commemorating the 100th anniversary of Pramoedya Ananta Toer today, February 6, 2025, must be a momentum to ensure that the state no longer imprisons citizens simply for producing works or speaking out peacefully as Pram once experienced.
From the perspective of human rights (…)
Yolanda Agne, Jakarta — A number of parties have protested the proposal to award the title of national hero on the second President of the Republic of Indonesia, Suharto, which was announced by People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) Speaker and Golkar Party politician Bambang Soesatyo at a (…)
Tria Sutrisna, Ihsanuddin, Jakarta — The People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) has officially revoked Provisional People’s Consultative Assembly Decree (TAP MPRS) Number 33/1967 on the Revocation of Executive Powers from President Sukarno
This was done by the handing over of an official (…)
“I was born on 17th December, 1943 during the Pacific War,” Soe Hok Gie (史福義) began in his journal entry on Mar. 4, 1957. A rant followed.
“Today is the day when vengeance starts to petrify,” he continued. That day, he wrote about his geography exam score being deducted from 8 to 5. Believing (…)
Newly declassified papers show shocking role played by Britain in slaughter
A propaganda campaign orchestrated by Britain played a crucial part in one of the most brutal massacres of the postwar 20th century, shocking new evidence reveals.
British officials secretly deployed black (…)
A propaganda campaign orchestrated by Britain played a crucial part in one of the most brutal massacres of the postwar 20th century, shocking new evidence reveals.
British officials secretly deployed black propaganda in the 1960s to urge prominent Indonesians to “cut out” the “communist (…)
The US-backed Indonesian dictator Suharto was responsible for some of the twentieth century’s worst crimes. More than two decades after Suharto’s death, his regime’s brutal legacy is still holding back democracy in Indonesia.
Ghosts and Gramsci can help us understand contemporary Indonesian (…)
Review of The Jakarta Method Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade & the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World By Vincent Bevins New York: Public Affairs/Hatchett, 2020, $28 hardcover.
At the start of October 1965, a U.S.-aided and abetted military coup overthrew Indonesia’s left-leaning (…)
‘It was the worst when I was released. That’s the biggest prison I had to face’.
Martin Aleida recalls the moment he was released from prison at the end of 1966. The then twenty-two-year-old writer emerged from nearly a year behind bars to Jakarta unable to find his friends and comrades. His (…)
Falcon Picture is again producing a film based on a story taken from a novel by Indonesia foremost author Pramoedya Ananta Toer. This time, Falcon Pictures is working on a film titled “The Fugitive” (Perburuan).
The official poster for the film was launched on Wednesday June 26 in Jakarta. (…)
Review of Vannessa Hearman, Unmarked Graves: Death and Survival in the Anti-Communist Violence in East Java, Indonesia (National University of Singapore Press, 2018).
The Indonesian genocide was one of the great crimes of the twentieth century. Its victims were leftists who struggled against (…)
On 30th September 1965, a group of army officers and soldiers called the Thirtieth September Movement abducted and killed seven army officers, and disposed of their bodies in a disused well, at Lubang Buaya, on the outskirts of Jakarta. While predominantly a movement of progressive soldiers and (…)
Purba Wirastama, Jakarta — Two decades have passed but the whereabouts of poet-activists Wiji Thukul is still unknown after he disappeared mysteriously in 1998.
His two children, Fitri Nganthi Wani and Fajar Merah have tried to present anew the memory of the figure Wiji Thukul through their (…)
A new book proves that the Indonesian army was responsible for the systematic slaughter of leftists in the 1965–66 genocide — and that orders came directly from the top.
Jess Melvin’s new book, The Army and the Indonesian Genocide , has been rightly hailed as a breakthrough. Uncovering the (…)
The veteran Australian activist explains how he abandoned a diplomatic career to translate a banned Indonesian author into English, and why the works of Pramoedya Ananta Toer are still not taught in Indonesian schools
Many academics, intellectuals and Indonesian youth can speak fluently on the (…)
From 1965 to 1966, the Indonesian military and its allies massacred hundreds of thousands of Communists — often with the active aid of Western, democratic governments.
Review of Geoffrey B. Robinson, The Killing Season. A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965–66 (Princeton University (…)
In 1968, Suharto’s authoritarian New Order regime obliterated the Indonesian Communist Party’s efforts to rebuild after the 1965 massacre.
In Indonesia, 1968 was a year of defeat for the Left. A military operation, called the Trident (Trisula) Operation obliterated attempts by remnants of the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI) to organise resistance against Suharto’s authoritarian New Order regime from bases in southern rural East Java. The strongest base, in remote (...)
Recently declassified documents shed new light on the United States’ role in one of the largest slaughters of the 20th century, writes Jess Melvin, in an article for Melbourne University’s Indonesia at Melbourne blog.
There is much outrage in the United States that a foreign state might have (…)
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