This collection of essays by Indonesian and foreign contributors offers new and highly original analyses of the mass violence in Indonesia which began in 1965 and its aftermath. Fifty years on from one the largest genocides of the twentieth century, they probe the causes, dynamics and legacies of this violence through the use of a wide range of sources and different scholarly lenses. Chapter 12 of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

The International People’s Tribunal addressed the many forms of violence during the period of the massacres of 1965–1966 in Indonesia. It was held in The Hague, The Netherlands, in November 2015, to commemorate fifty years since the killings began. The Tribunal, as a people’s court, holds no jurisdiction and was an attempt to achieve symbolic justice for the crimes of 1965. This book offers new and previously unpublished insights into the types of crimes committed in the 1965 genocide and how these crimes were prosecuted at the International People’s Tribunal for 1965. Divided thematically, each chapter analyses a different crime – enslavement, sexual violence, torture – perpetrated during the Indonesian killings. The contributions consider either general patterns across Indonesia or a particular region of the archipelago. The book reflects on how crimes were charged at the International People’s Tribunal for 1965 and focuses on questions relating to the place of people’s tribunals in truth-seeking and justice claims, and the prospective for transitional justice in contemporary Indonesia. Positioning the events in Indonesia in 1965 within the broader scope of comparative genocide studies, the book is an original and timely contribution to knowledge about the dynamics of the Indonesian killings. It will be of interest to academics in the field of Asian studies, in particular Southeast Asia, Genocide Studies, Criminology and Criminal Justice and Transitional Justice Studies.

Document concerning the history of the 1965 abortive coup, G.30.S. and the rising of the New Order in Indonesia; includes speeches, military statements, presidential decree, etc.

For the past half century, the Indonesian military has depicted the 1965-66 killings, which resulted in the murder of approximately one million unarmed civilians, as the outcome of a spontaneous uprising. This formulation not only denied military agency behind the killings, it also denied that the killings could ever be understood as a centralised, nation-wide campaign. Using documents from the former Indonesian Intelligence Agency’s archives in Banda Aceh this book shatters the Indonesian government’s official propaganda account of the mass killings and proves the military’s agency behind those events. This book tells the story of the 3,000 pages of top-secret documents that comprise the Indonesian genocide files. Drawing upon these orders and records, along with the previously unheard stories of 70 survivors, perpetrators, and other eyewitness of the genocide in Aceh province it reconstructs, for the first time, a detailed narrative of the killings using the military’s own accounts of these events. This book makes the case that the 1965-66 killings can be understood as a case of genocide, as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention. The first book to reconstruct a detailed narrative of the genocide using the army’s own records of these events, it will be of interest to students and academics in the field of Southeast Asian Studies, History, Politics, the Cold War, Political Violence and Comparative Genocide.

The Indonesian massacres of 1965-1966 claimed the lives of an estimated half a million men, women and children. Histories of this period of mass violence in Indonesia’s past have focused almost exclusively on top-level political and military actors, their roles in the violence, and their movements and mobilization of perpetrators. Based on extensive interviews with women survivors of the massacres and detention camps, this book provides the first in-depth analysis of sexualised forms of violence perpetrated against women and girl victims during this period. It looks at the stories of individual women caught up in the massacres and mass arrests, focusing on their testimonies and their experiences of violence and survival. The book aims not only to redress the lack of scholarly attention but also to provide significant new analysis on the gendered and gendering effects of sexual violence against women and girls in situations of genocidal violence.

In Indonesia, the events of 1st October 1965 were followed by a campaign to annihilate the Communist Party and its alleged sympathisers. It resulted in the murder of an estimate of one million people – a genocide that counts as one of the largest mass murders after WWII – and the incarceration of another million, many of them for a decade or more without any legal process. This drive was justified and enabled by a propaganda campaign in which communists were painted as atheist, hypersexual, amoral and intent to destroy the nation. To date, the effects of this campaign are still felt, and the victims are denied the right of association and freedom of speech. This book presents the history of the genocide and propaganda campaign and the process towards the International People’s Tribunal on 1965 crimes against humanity in Indonesia (IPT 1965), which was held in November 2015 in The Hague, The Netherlands. The authors, an Indonesian Human Rights lawyer and a Dutch academic examine this unique event, which for the first time brings these crimes before an international court, and its verdict. They single out the campaign of hate propaganda as it provided the incitement to kill so many Indonesians and why this propaganda campaign is effective to this day. The first book on this topic, it fills a significant gap in Asian Studies and Genocide Studies.

Introduction to 65 is a 2021 Indian film by director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat. The movie is set in the year 1965, a significant period in the history of India when the country was fighting a war with Pakistan. It follows the story of Subedar Joginder Singh and his battalion of soldiers, who are posted at the border to protect their country. This film attempts to bring to light the courage and bravery of the Indian soldiers who fought in this war. The movie stars Gippy Grewal in the lead role of Subedar Joginder Singh, and he is supported by a talented ensemble cast. The film is a tribute to the sacrifices made by Indian soldiers during the 1965 Indo-Pak war. With stunning visuals and heartfelt performances, Introduction to 65 is a tale of patriotism and heroism, which will leave a lasting impact on its audience.

In Infrastructures of Impunity Elizabeth F. Drexler argues that the creation and persistence of impunity for the perpetrators of the Cold War Indonesian genocide (1965–66) is not only a legal status but also a cultural and social process. Impunity for the initial killings and for subsequent acts of political violence has many elements: bureaucratic, military, legal, political, educational, and affective. Although these elements do not always work at once—at times some are dormant while others are ascendant—together they can be described as a unified entity, a dynamic infrastructure, whose existence explains the persistence of impunity. For instance, truth telling, a first step in many responses to state violence, did not undermine the infrastructure but instead bent to it. Creative and artistic responses to revelations about the past, however, have begun to undermine the infrastructure by countering its temporality, affect, and social stigmatization and demonstrating its contingency and specific actions, policies, and processes that would begin to dismantle it. Drexler contends that an infrastructure of impunity could take hold in an established democracy.

Between 1965 and 1968, it is estimated that the Suharto regime massacred close to 500,000 alleged communists. This volume contains previously published material, which details the mass killings of 1965 and 1966 in Indonesia. Background information and first person accounts of the events are provided as well, to give the reader a more rounded knowledge of the events. Critical information is broken out and encapsulated into charts, timelines, and graphs. Maps are provided, detailing key geographic information.

Genocide, mass murder and human rights abuses are arguably the most perplexing and deeply troubling aspects of recent world history. This collection of essays by leading international experts offers an up-to-date, comprehensive history and analyses of multiple cases of genocide and genocidal acts, with a focus on the twentieth century. The book contains studies of the Armenian genocide, the victims of Stalinist terror, the Holocaust, and Imperial Japan. Several authors explore colonialism and address the fate of the indigenous peoples in Africa, North America, and Australia. As well, there is extensive coverage of the post-1945 period, including the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia, Bali, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, East Timor, and Guatemala. The book emphasizes the importance of comparative analysis and theoretical discussion, and it raises new questions about the difficult challenges for modernity constituted by genocide and other mass crimes.