Looking into the massacres of Indonesia's past

[TomSea]

Looking into the massacres of Indonesia's past

Indonesia has decided to investigate one of the darkest chapters of its own history. In 1965 at least 500,000 people died in organised killings of suspected communist sympathisers. But, as BBC Indonesian's Rebecca Henschke reports, the new investigation into that bloody time is re-opening old wounds.
A mass grave in the middle of a forest

There is a spot in the middle of a teak forest, the ground covered with leaves, on the outskirts of Pati in Central Java. Radim, a thin farmer in his 70s, describes what happened here one night in 1965.

"They came on carts pulled by cows...their hands were tied together with rope. They were forced to kneel, then shot in the back by soldiers and kicked into mass graves."

The violence was unleashed after communists were accused of killing six generals in an attempted coup. It was the peak of the Cold War and a power battle between communists, the military and Islamic groups was in full swing.

The army and local militia went on an anti-Communist rampage, killing, it is estimated, at least half-a-million and up to three million people within a year.

Read More At: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36431837

The 1982 movie with Mel Gibson, "The Year of Living Dangeorus" was about that time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Year_of_Living_Dangerously_%28film%29

And more on the events:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_killings_of_1965%E2%80%9366

[goatprairie]

From sources I read some years after the massacres a great deal of was due to the hatred between the local Indonesians and the ethnic Chinese who were seen as dominating too much of the economy. The Chinese didn't have a chance.  Undoubtedly, most of the people murdered had no political clout. It was just an excuse for the head murderers in the gov. to kill a lot of Chinese. The movie "The Year Of Living Dangerously" was something about the killings.