On this day, 48 years ago, a group of military killed several army generals in an unsuccessful coup d'état. The New Order regime, under recently-appointed President Soeharto, backed by US intelligence CIA, quickly blamed the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) for the coup.
Since then hundreds of thousands of officials and civilians allegedly linked with the party had been murdered by the military and other Indonesians; many of them did not stand trial at all.
Throughout the three-decade-long New Order, a documentary propaganda depicting the so-called treacherous PKI must be broadcast by all TV stations every 30 September.
Further, because PKI top officials had close relationship with China, all Chinese ethnic minorities were banned from expressing their language and culture in public. Even Chinese names should be changed to Indonesian-sounded ones (like mine: my surname "Surianto" sounds Javanese). As a result, nowhere on Java would you find Java-born Chinese speaking Chinese as mother tongue.
1965-66 was part of our nation's dark past. And don't ever think that I'd admire Soeharto and wish for Indonesia's 'golden age' under his rule. To me, he was a sheer criminal.
Posted on Facebook on 30 September 2013.
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