Sixty Years on from the 1965 Indonesian Genocide

Members of the PKI's youth branch are transported under guard | Associated Press

Annie Pohlman writes for a special issue of Inside Indonesia, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the 1965-1966 genocide, where an estimated 500,000 people were murdered for their real or perceived support of the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI).

This special issue of Inside Indonesia commemorates the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the 1965–1966 genocide, when an estimated half a million men, women and children were murdered for their real or perceived support of the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI). The contributors to this special issue are all members of an international team that has come together to record the testimonies and archives of survivors and eyewitnesses to the genocide before it is too late. The youngest survivors were children in 1965; there are only a few years left in which to record their life stories. Called the Indonesia Trauma Testimony Project (ITTP), this team aims to preserve these testimonial materials in perpetuity, as an enduring record of this dark chapter in Indonesian and world history.

The materials that the ITTP seeks to preserve are the collections of testimonies and documentation amassed by survivor communities after the New Order regime fell in 1998—held by aging custodians, often in secret—and which now face imminent loss, with some critical collections already destroyed (through environmental damage and poor preservation, some having been destroyed by family members too afraid to retain them). Without intervention, most of these surviving materials will be lost within the coming decade.

This urgent project involves the work of Indonesian and international researchers, seven regional fieldwork teams spread across Indonesia, a team of transcribers, a team of archivists, an advisory board, and the input and support of more than 20 survivor groups and human rights NGOs. The articles in this special issue, we hope, will give readers insight into the joys and challenges of the ITTP’s work; our aim with this special issue was to explain how the project is working, to highlight some of the findings, and to showcase some of the work of our outstanding team of dedicated researchers. Specific details of locations and activities have been excluded in the interest of maintaining the safety and security of the workers while the project is underway.