As Marching reveals, in the aftermath of the mass killing, General Soeharto, who dominated Indonesia for three decades, exploited every means to inflict a national climate of fear that made it perilous to openly discuss the pitiless destruction of so many lives. Relatives of victims were stigmatised for decades. Soeharto imposed this deep and pervasive silence by terrorising his political opponents and using the mass media to demonise the victims of the slaughter. The mass killing was metamorphosed into a holy war; perpetrators became national heroes.
This reticence has outlasted Soeharto and, as Marching emphasises, it is yet to be broken. It was not only inside Indonesia that a profound silence enfolded the memory of the slaughter. In 1965, both the United States and the UK secretly backed the Indonesian army’s onslaught on the PKI. At the height of the Cold War, they feared both the Communists and Indonesia’s unpredictable first president, Sukarno.
Given the immense scale of violence in Indonesia in 1965–1966, one cannot help but feel that these two books are still only scratching the surface. Both books indicate how difficult it is to dig deeper. Very few written documents of that time have come to light and both books have to depend on oral interviews to make sense of the events. The survivors in East Java and many other provinces have not felt free to speak; living in villages and urban neighbourhoods, they have been surrounded by the families of perpetrators who committed the violence. An ex-political prisoner who is an important source for both authors, the former journalist Oei Him Hwie, has been quite vocal; he established a library in Surabaya that is open to the public. But as I know from my discussions with him over the years, he has to be cautious. Like all ex-political prisoners, he lives under the constant watchful eye of the army, which has personnel stationed in command posts throughout the country to police the civil society. One of the functions of what the army calls its Territorial Command is to sustain the old propaganda about the PKI and prevent stories about the 1965–1966 massacres from becoming common knowledge. The authors must be commended for their courage in forging ahead with historical research in such an inhospitable environment.
Indonesia: A Nation’s Silent Slaughter
The Indonesian genocide of 1965 has been smothered in silence for half a century.
Christopher Hale
Finally, the stories of the victims’ children and grandchildren constitute a major part of this publication. Some of them witnessed directly the murder of their parents, were born in prison, or grew up like orphans in families that were not their own. Their life stories are moving accounts of a life-long search for reliable information on what happened to their (grand)parents, the personal struggle against the taboos and the silence within their families, and the professional and social discrimination many of them experienced as offspring of former ‘communists’.
To conclude, this book is a rich and fascinating account of first-hand experience with the anti-communist mass killings and their devastating long-term impact on Indonesian society that were exacerbated by the comprehensive propaganda campaigns and strategies of silencing under Suharto’s dictatorship. The book is not only excellent material for generally interested readers, but also a rich primary source for students and lecturers who want to dive deeper into the abyss of 20th century anti-communist violence, mass persecutions, and patriarchal restoration.
The End of Silence (Review) by Clemens Six
But this book is more than the author’s demonstrable commitment to ‘ending the silence’: it reveals her own entanglement in ‘the events of 1965’ as the daughter of a 1965 victim. As much as anything else, then, the book is autobiographical. Not only because the nineteen individuals included in it tell their own life stories, but because, taken as a whole, it describes the journey the author herself made relatively
recently along the road to ending the silence within her own family. Soe Tjen not only places herself in the mix of those voices, but in the brief paragraphs that introduce and conclude each speaker’s narrative we are given an insight into the personal threads, the web of experiential connections, that link herto each of the speakers and many of the speakers to each other.
Review: Ending the silence – JOOST COTE
The author argues that the powerful in Indonesia (which still includes perpetrators and their cronies), by sustaining fear, have turned the victims and families into their agents in maintaining the silence, while themselves remaining demonised and stigmatised.
Marching hopes this collection of victims’ accounts will help prevent the destruction of memories of 1965-1966. Her closing words reflect exactly my own estimation of her work: “This book has given the space for the survivors and their families to challenge the chronic stigma maintained by the perpetrators and their cronies: it is time to end the silence.”
End of Silence: the 1965 Genocide in Indonesia – Asia Pacific Focus Review 2017.
How coulAs Marching reveals, in the aftermath of the mass killing, General Soeharto, who dominated Indonesia for three decades, exploited every means to inflict a national climate of fear that made it perilous to openly discuss the pitiless destruction of so many lives. Relatives of victims were stigmatised for decades. Soeharto imposed this deep and pervasive silence by terrorising his political opponents and using the mass media to demonise the victims of the slaughter. The mass killing was metamorphosed into a holy war; perpetrators became national heroes.
This reticence has outlasted Soeharto and, as Marching emphasises, it is yet to be broken. It was not only inside Indonesia that a profound silence enfolded the memory of the slaughter. In 1965, both the United States and the UK secretly backed the Indonesian army’s onslaught on the PKI. At the height of the Cold War, they feared both the Communists and Indonesia’s unpredictable first president, Sukarno.
Given the immense scale of violence in Indonesia in 1965–1966, one cannot help but feel that these two books are still only scratching the surface. Both books indicate how difficult it is to dig deeper. Very few written documents of that time have come to light and both books have to depend on oral interviews to make sense of the events. The survivors in East Java and many other provinces have not felt free to speak; living in villages and urban neighbourhoods, they have been surrounded by the families of perpetrators who committed the violence. An ex-political prisoner who is an important source for both authors, the former journalist Oei Him Hwie, has been quite vocal; he established a library in Surabaya that is open to the public. But as I know from my discussions with him over the years, he has to be cautious. Like all ex-political prisoners, he lives under the constant watchful eye of the army, which has personnel stationed in command posts throughout the country to police the civil society. One of the functions of what the army calls its Territorial Command is to sustain the old propaganda about the PKI and prevent stories about the 1965–1966 massacres from becoming common knowledge. The authors must be commended for their courage in forging ahead with historical research in such an inhospitable environment.
Indonesia: A Nation’s Silent Slaughter
The Indonesian genocide of 1965 has been smothered in silence for half a century.
Christopher Hale
Finally, the stories of the victims’ children and grandchildren constitute a major part of this publication. Some of them witnessed directly the murder of their parents, were born in prison, or grew up like orphans in families that were not their own. Their life stories are moving accounts of a life-long search for reliable information on what happened to their (grand)parents, the personal struggle against the taboos and the silence within their families, and the professional and social discrimination many of them experienced as offspring of former ‘communists’.
To conclude, this book is a rich and fascinating account of first-hand experience with the anti-communist mass killings and their devastating long-term impact on Indonesian society that were exacerbated by the comprehensive propaganda campaigns and strategies of silencing under Suharto’s dictatorship. The book is not only excellent material for generally interested readers, but also a rich primary source for students and lecturers who want to dive deeper into the abyss of 20th century anti-communist violence, mass persecutions, and patriarchal restoration.
The End of Silence (Review) by Clemens Six
But this book is more than the author’s demonstrable commitment to ‘ending the silence’: it reveals her own entanglement in ‘the events of 1965’ as the daughter of a 1965 victim. As much as anything else, then, the book is autobiographical. Not only because the nineteen individuals included in it tell their own life stories, but because, taken as a whole, it describes the journey the author herself made relatively
recently along the road to ending the silence within her own family. Soe Tjen not only places herself in the mix of those voices, but in the brief paragraphs that introduce and conclude each speaker’s narrative we are given an insight into the personal threads, the web of experiential connections, that link herto each of the speakers and many of the speakers to each other.
Review: Ending the silence – JOOST COTE
The author argues that the powerful in Indonesia (which still includes perpetrators and their cronies), by sustaining fear, have turned the victims and families into their agents in maintaining the silence, while themselves remaining demonised and stigmatised.
Marching hopes this collection of victims’ accounts will help prevent the destruction of memories of 1965-1966. Her closing words reflect exactly my own estimation of her work: “This book has given the space for the survivors and their families to challenge the chronic stigma maintained by the perpetrators and their cronies: it is time to end the
silence.”
End of Silence: the 1965 Genocide in Indonesia – Asia Pacific Focus Review 2017.
How could one better commemorate the victims of the human rights violations of 1965/66 and the years after (up till now), than by reading their accounts that have been gathered over the last few years by Soe Tjen Marching. The book has been structured according to the distance from the factual abuses in 1965: the oral history by victims themselves, their wives, their children and finally even their grandchildren. That makes very clear that the violations still continue in third generation taboo and discrimination.
The End of Silence – Martha Meijer
Soe Tjen Marching’s compilation of personal accounts stands out against comparable publications of its kind in that she carefully deconstructs the hegemonic narrative that pervaded the New Order period under President Suharto from 1966 to 1998. The concept of fear and the analytical tracing of the mutation of fear succinctly reveal how survivors came to perceive of themselves as offenders rather than victims. The book is a most recommendable piece for readers who are not yet familiar with the massacre of 1965 as well as for those who have already studied the tragedy. The personal accounts render the traumatic incidents an intimate sharing of emotions, but above this personal level, Marching’s distinct analytical approach is a masterful study that indeed symbolises an End of Silence.
Soe Tjen Marching: The End of Silence. Accounts of the 1965 Genocide in Indonesia – Claudia Derichs
d one better commemorate the victims of the human rights violations of 1965/66 and the years after (up till now), than by reading their accounts that have been gathered over the last few years by Soe Tjen Marching. The book has been structured according to the distance from the factual abuses in 1965: the oral history by victims themselves, their wives, their children and finally even their grandchildren. That makes very clear that the violations still continue in third generation taboo and discrimination.
The End of Silence – Martha Meijer
Soe Tjen Marching’s compilation of personal accounts stands out against comparable publications of its kind in that she carefully deconstructs the hegemonic narrative that pervaded the New Order period under President Suharto from 1966 to 1998. The concept of fear and the analytical tracing of the mutation of fear succinctly reveal how survivors came to perceive of themselves as offenders rather than victims. The book is a most recommendable piece for readers who are not yet familiar with the massacre of 1965 as well as for those who have already studied the tragedy. The personal accounts render the traumatic incidents an intimate sharing of emotions, but above this personal level, Marching’s distinct analytical approach is a masterful study that indeed symbolises an End of Silence.
Soe Tjen Marching: The End of Silence. Accounts of the 1965 Genocide in Indonesia – Claudia Derichs
Video Soe Tjen Book Launch by POUK pouk
Tuesday, June 6 2017Stanford House, 65 High St, Oxford OX1 4EL
Silencing the left: anticommunist extermination in the Global South was recorded with Vincent Bevins (Journalist) and Dr Soe Tjen Marching (SOAS) on the 31st of October 2020
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Daftar Isi Perpustakaan Genosida 1965-1966
Road to Justice : State Crimes after Oct 1st 1965 (Jakartanicus)
Perpustakaan Online Genosida 1965-1966 