Indonesia’s mass killings of 1965–1966 : retrospective and requiem

• Main Author: Faizah Zakaria
• Other Authors: School of Humanities
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Humanities::History; Indonesia; Massacre
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/146154
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Joshua Oppenheimer, who brought international attention to the massacre of up to a million Indonesians in the mid-1960s through his films The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014), regards his work as having “forever broken the silence on the 1965-1966 genocide.” 1 This statement is perhaps only half-right. Discussion and debate about these mass killings have never been silent. Since the kidnapping and murder of six generals in the early morning hours of October 1, 1965, during an abortive coup attempt that the Indonesian Army alleged was masterminded by the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) – an event which served as a pretext for the mass violence that swiftly followed – academics and observers, within and outside Indonesia, have sought to uncover and explain its murky history in studies that now span five decades.