Persisting Silence: Sexual Slander, Mass Murder, and The Act of Killing (Wieringa, 2014)

=== [PDF page 1] === Asian Journal of Women's Studies ISSN: 1225-9276 (Print) 2377-004X (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/rajw20 Persisting Silence: Sexual Slander, Mass Murder, and The Act of Killing Saskia E. Wieringa To cite this article: Saskia E. Wieringa (2014) Persisting Silence: Sexual Slander, Mass Murder, and The Act of Killing, Asian Journal of Women's Studies, 20:3, 50-76, DOI: 10.1080/12259276.2014.11666190 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/12259276.2014.11666190 Published online: 04 Jan 2016. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 370 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rajw20 === [PDF page 2] === AJWS, Vol. 20 No. 3, 2014, pp. 50-76. Persisting Silence: Sexual Slander, Mass Murder, and The Act of Killing 1 Saskia E. WIERINGA Abstract With The Act of Killing (TAOK), Joshua Oppenheimer has produced a landmark film about the mass murders in Indonesia during 1965-67. His complex layered portrait of a number of killers in Medan, North Sumatra exposes the impunity of the killers. The idea that the Communist Party (PKI) had to be destroyed to save the nation and, to that end, hundreds of thousands of its members and affiliated mass organizations had to be destroyed and their members tortured, raped or imprisoned for many years is still widely believed in Indonesia. The film rose to great acclaim internationally. However, it has not made a major dent in the silence about the largest genocide in Indonesian history in the country. In this article, I argue that the relative indifference of the Indonesian public can be attributed to the enduring success of the sexual moral panic created by the military in their campaign of slander against the communist party. Keywords Communism; Indonesia; Gerwani; mass murder; sexual moral panic AJWS ISSN 1225-9276 43 Ⓒ 2014 Asian Center for Women’s Studies http://acws.ewha.ac.kr === [PDF page 3] === Saskia E. WIERINGA 51 Introduction In 2000, Josepha Sukartiningsih (2004) was asked to interview some women who had been imprisoned for many years after the “events of 1965,” as the inter-army clash on the night of September 30-October 1, 1965 in Indonesia is euphemistically called and which led to the army top brass being abducted and murdered. She was apprehensive at the time as she had grown up during the New Order regime of General Suharto (1966-1998) and had imbibed fear of these women members of the communist women’s organization, Gerwani (Gerakan Wanita Indonesia, Indonesian Women’s Movement). The Gerwani members had allegedly been dancing naked while torturing, castrating, and murdering the right-wing generals on that fateful night. They were accused of having indulged in this orgy while singing a popular song, ‘Genjer-genjer.’ Even though she had understood that the New Order government had been spreading lies about what had happened on that night, blaming the Communist Party (the PKI) for the murders, she and most Indonesians continued to consider women involved in the left-wing movement of the Sukarno period as bad, wild, communist, and cruel. This story is only one among many others. Nonetheless, almost 50 years after that fateful night, and although most of the lies perpetrated by the army have been exposed, many Indonesians still believe that the socially and politically active women of Gerwani were evil whores and that the PKI was an atheist organization intent on destroying the nation (Wieringa, 2002; 2011). Another example is the home in Jakarta where some former women political prisoners live. They prefer to live among friends who know and respect their histories, rather than with their families, who silence both their contribution to the women’s movement and their torture by the military, while dealing with the stigma they have had to endure. They are portrayed in the film The Women and the Generals by Maj Wechselmann (2012). The enduring success of the psywar of the army under General Suharto was based on sexual slander which even now frames leftist === [PDF page 4] === 52 AJWS, Vol. 20 No. 3, 2014 women and communism in general as inhuman, perverse, and atheist. In this article, I argue that the relative calm with which the film TAOK was received in Indonesia (in contrast to the international furore it created) can be seen as an indicator of the success of the intelligence operation by the army and its allies. This leads to a silence at different levels. I mention a range of issues in this article. The government still hinders attempts to explore the extent of the mass murders and crimes against humanity.2 Students are still taught the army version of the ‘events of 1965’ and the ensuing mass murders, in spite of overwhelming evidence that this version contains serious errors and biases (see Roosa, 2006).3 In public life, the victims and their families are still stigmatized, while there is impunity for the perpetrators. Fifty years after these ‘events,’ people are still intimidated if they try to find out what actually happened. The history of Gerwani, once a successful and internationally admired women’s organization, is likewise shrouded by a deafening silence. Activist women fear to be called ‘new Gerwani’ (Wieringa, 2011), because of the stigma that this title carries. Introducing The Act of Killing Oppenheimer’s 2012 documentary, The Act of Killing (hereinafter referred to as TAOK), provides a rare insight into the psyches of some mass murderers involved in the Indonesian genocide of 1965-67. There are two versions of the film, a shorter one (116 minutes), which is shown in cinemas, and a longer version (director’s cut, 159 minutes). In this article, I only refer to the differences between these two versions when relevant. The action takes place in Medan, a multi-ethnic and notoriously rowdy city in North Sumatra, which came to prominence during the rubber and tobacco boom around the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. The protagonists of the film are Anwar Congo, accompanied by his adjutant Herman Koto, and Adi === [PDF page 5] === Saskia E. WIERINGA 53 Zulkadry. Anwar and Adi were petty criminals in 1965, members of the anti-communist Pemuda Pancasila (Pancasila Youth) and, by their own admission, they murdered hundreds if not thousands of alleged communists with their bare hands. Oppenheimer has followed Anwar for several years, while the latter reflects on and re-enacts his past as a killer. A major part of the film consists of a film-within-a-film, with the main characters acting out a fictional, at times surreal, story based on their experiences and Anwar’s nightmares. This story centers around Arsan and Aminah: The former, a young rightwing man, represents Anwar while Aminah, his communist girlfriend, represents potbellied Herman, in grotesque drag, complete with a gaudy dress and feathers. The script is written by journalist Ibrahim Sinik, presently the editor of the Medan Post. The scenes we see (here I collapse both versions) consist of fragments of the doomed love affair between both protagonists, framed in cheerful dance sequences and a grand finale, in which Anwar is pardoned by two of his victims and presented with a medal for having sent them to paradise. In between, Anwar and Adi explain how they tortured and murdered and where they dumped the bodies. Anwar is plagued by nightmares, while Adi informs us that he would do the same thing again, given the right justification for it. The film demonstrates that the arrogance of the present day leaders is sustained by the continued threat of violence by the very vigilante groups that were involved in the mass murders. In turn, these militias are fully supported by such prominent political leaders as Jusuf Kalla who was filmed when he was the nation’s Vice President (2004-2009), a position he will hold again from October 2014 onwards. Oppenheimer was originally filming the families of the victims of the mass murders of 1965-67 around Medan when he was struck by their silence. He was advised that the killers still lived among their victims; they were still bragging about their crimes and were happy to have their stories recorded. Anwar was one of the killers he interviewed. In the long period that they worked together on the film (7 years), Anwar relived and re-enacted the past he was === [PDF page 6] === 54 AJWS, Vol. 20 No. 3, 2014 still so proud of and which he wanted future generations to remember. He is shown to go through a psychological process and even comes close to a form of remorse, plagued as he was by nightmares. How does the man explain his actions to himself? In the longer version of TAOK Anwar gives three justifications: the first one is economic and political. They were petty criminals in 1965, scalping cinema tickets; the PKI threatened their livelihood by banning popular Hollywood films. They were also members of the right-wing youth group Pemuda Pancasila, which engaged in violent clashes with the Communist Pemuda Rakyat (People’s Youth). Moreover, they were caught within a situation of great political turmoil and, as members of the right-wing militia, they joined in the murder of leftists that was underway, impelled by the military in Medan, an aspect that is not spelt out in the film. They and their co-butchers won this struggle and are thus living with impunity, backed up by the laws their leaders have designed, as Adi bluntly explained to Joshua Oppenheimer, who interviews him in the film. But were these economic and political conditions adequate justification to kill hundreds of people singlehandedly? The two other justifications provided by Anwar are related to two major aspects of the propaganda campaign of the military: the 1983 film that blamed the PKI for the coup and the smear campaign against Gerwani, as of mid-October 1965, with all its gory and perverse details. Anwar explained that whenever he watched Arifin C. Noor’s 1983 film, Treachery of the September 30th Movement in which the military version of the putsch that signalled the beginning of the genocide was portrayed, he felt better. But this film relieved his conscience, almost 20 years after the killing started and it could not have incited him to murder in 1965-66. His motivation to start slaughtering his fellow citizens is revealed when he, Anwar, watches the fictional scene just after Arsan (Anwar) is murdered by Aminah (Herman), who lies beside him. She is dressed as an evil, sexually depraved communist woman, mouth smeared with the red juice of === [PDF page 7] === Saskia E. WIERINGA 55 some berries; laughing loudly and madly; eating a piece of raw liver; and shouting that it is Arsan’s liver she has just ripped out. Next, she produces an oblong piece of stuffed cloth, approximately 20 cms. in length, also dripping with berry juice and proceeds to stuff that into the mouth of Arsan (who, although dead, is gagged), shouting “this is your penis, eat it.” Later, when Herman and Anwar, comfortably seated on Anwar’s porch, watch this scene being screened, Anwar muses that it should be shown at the beginning of the film, so that people would understand why he murdered. Apparently, he became enraged when he was told the stories of wildly singing and dancing women, seducing and then castrating the army’s top brass, the nation’s symbol of masculinity. Along with millions of other Indonesians he came to associate the PKI with depravity and an evil that needed to be ripped out of society. Strangely enough, this last scene is edited out of the short version and only appears in the long version of TAOK. In the short version, the audience is thus left with two justifications for the killings. Coup? Which coup? The film contains little background information. However, to understand Anwar Congo’s actions, we need to discuss the ‘events of 1 October 1965.’ In the early morning of that day, six generals (and a lieutenant) were kidnapped by a group that called itself the ‘September 30th Movement,’ comprising of some middle-ranking officers and a few members of the PKI politbureau. Apart from some members of the PKI’s youth movement, the Pemuda Rakyat (Youth of the People or PR), ordinary PKI members and members of the mass organizations associated with them, such as the labor union, the farmers’ organization or the cultural association, were not involved and were caught unaware by subsequent events. Communication between the two subgroups of the Movement === [PDF page 8] === 56 AJWS, Vol. 20 No. 3, 2014 (political and military) turned out to be very poor (Roosa, 2006). Three generals were killed right away, the other three on a nearby training field, in an area called Lubang Buaya (Crocodile Hole). The field belonged to the Air Force and was used for training young left-wing volunteers for Sukarno’s anti-Malaysia campaign. At the time, the training camp was intended primarily for young female members of the PR and the training was held for the third time (see also Sukartiningsih, 2004). Similar camps were established all around the country by various other mass organizations. Putsch-leaders, Lieutenant-Colonel Untung and Colonel Latief, explained that they wanted to bring their superiors to the President, based on rumours of a right-wing Council of Generals who allegedly planned to stage a coup, supported by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The purpose of the Movement was declared in two radio broadcasts on October 1.4 Apart from the abduction, limited military action took place around the Freedom Square (including the occupation of the radio station) and in Solo and Yogyakarta. Major-General Suharto, the commander of the strategic army reserve, KOSTRAD, who, as it turned out, had been informed of this manoeuver by Untung and Latief (if he was not already aware of the events from other sources beforehand, see below), but had failed to warn his superiors (or inform the President), quickly managed to quell whatever remained of the insurgency (see Wertheim, 1979). He immediately pinpointed the blame on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). To this day, controversies surround these ‘events of 30 September 1965.’ Most present-day scholars, while differing regarding details, agree that the affair was organized by a group of left-leaning army officers, fierce supporters of President Sukarno, with political backing from a few members of the PKI Politbureau (Roosa, 2006). From this perspective, the first skirmish―the abduction and the murder of the generals―was mainly based on inter-army rivalry and should not be viewed as a coup, but a purge. It was never intended to topple the president; in fact, the plotters stated they wanted to protect the president. The actual coup was the mass murder === [PDF page 9] === Saskia E. WIERINGA 57 of anything between 500,000 and three million leftist people, culminating in the handing over of power to General Suharto in March 1966. President Sukarno could be pushed aside as his position was weakened by the eradication of a major group of supporters and constant allegations that he was involved in planning the first putsch. Recently, more information has become available, which strongly points to the much more prominent role played by General Suharto in the whole affair. Melvin (2014), who has researched the mass murders in Aceh, convincingly demonstrates that Suharto and his allies had already long prepared for their anti-PKI actions. If their goal from the beginning was to annihilate the PKI and to take military control over the state, the ‘events of September 30th’ can be seen as allowing them the perfect opportunity to bring that about. The Army’s Propaganda Campaign How was the volatile political and economic situation of 1965 Indonesia manipulated to turn into a mass murder? The purge in which the army’s top brass was abducted and killed does not in itself provide enough motivation to engage in a killing spree of such scale. There had been similar inter-army clashes in the 1950s, which had not resulted in wide public unrest (Crouch, 1988; Sundhaussen, 1982). Political, economic, and cultural arguments have been advanced that I will discuss briefly before analyzing the sexual politics of the campaign, which I maintain, comprise its core significance. During my research on the Indonesian Communist women’s mass movement, Gerwani, in Java, I often heard that “PKI bikin kacau” (“PKI created trouble”), as a vague allusion to the reason why the militant wing (Banser, Barisan Serba Guna or Multipurpose Brigade), in particular, of the youth movement Ansor of Nahdlatul Ulama or NU (one of the two major mass Muslim organizations) probably killed hundreds of thousands of members and sympathizers of the PKI in East Java.5 Rural unrest was indeed a major === [PDF page 10] === 58 AJWS, Vol. 20 No. 3, 2014 feature of social and economic life in 1965, as Anderson & McVey (1971) and Wertheim (1979), among others, argue along with spiralling inflation. Political turmoil too played a major role. The PKI had embarked on a strategy of gaining influence through regular political channels and had acquired a large following, much to the disfavor of the army and right-wing religious and nationalist groups. But socio-economic and political tensions cannot fully explain the extent or the nature of the mass murders. Nor can cultural factors, advanced by those who insist that these tensions could only be resolved by ‘cleansing’ the villages (as NU followers to this day themselves argue), to justify how so many people could be slaughtered so brutally in such a short time. As Robinson (1995) argues, if harmony is seen as an essential village characteristic, why could this presumed disruption of harmony not be resolved harmoniously?6 Both explanations, the politico-economic and the cultural, underestimate the active role of the military and the wide ranging impact of the mass propaganda campaign in which the PKI was framed as an inhuman, atheist, and evil force, as exemplified by its castrating, seductress and murderous young women. Why was Gerwani, the women’s organization, associated with the PKI, singled out?7 The sexual moral panic created by the army and its allies, based as it was on creation of the myth of murderous and castrating women, was apparently conceived as the most successful route to vilify the progressive forces in the country and to destabilize Sukarno, paving the way for the ascendance of General Suharto to the presidency.8 Apart from Aceh, where preparations for the nationalist anti-Malaysia campaign had allowed the military to train large numbers of militia that could be immediately mobilized (Melvin, 2014), the killings did not start right away, but had to be planned and organized first. In the first weeks of October 1965, two kinds of preparation took place: military and ideological. Most analysts focus on the military side (Cribb, 1990; Jenkins & Kammen, 2012; Kammen & McGregor, 2012; Roosa, 2006), but they all concede that psychological warfare was waged based on the stories of what had supposedly === [PDF page 11] === Saskia E. WIERINGA 59 happened at Lubang Buaya. What did happen there is relatively clear. Three generals were brought to the camp already dead, three others were murdered on the spot. Then, their bodies (and that of a lieutenant who was mistaken for General Nasution) were thrown into a disused well, which was consequently covered up. Their bodies were found there three days later. The autopsies, which took place in the army hospital, detail the causes of death: gun shots, traumas possibly caused by blows and by guns. The decomposed bodies had been lying for a few days in a wet tropical climate, due to which the eyes were badly affected. The findings of the autopsy, however, were ignored and only after Anderson’s accounts of these were published in 1987 did they re-appear in the public arena. Apart from a policeman, Sukitman, who guided Sarwo Edhie’s (commander of the para commando regiment) troops to the well, there were others present at Lubang Buaya: some 60 girls mostly from the PKI’s Youth Organization, Pemuda Rakyat, and a few regular Gerwani members. In the middle of the night they were woken up by the noisy plotters. They witnessed the violence and the shooting of the three generals who had arrived still alive, followed by their bodies being dumped in the well (Wieringa, 2002; 2003, see also Sukartiningsih, 2004). The army then propagated a very different account to the outside world. In their version, the girls had seduced the generals by performing a lurid, naked dance (Fragrant Flower Dance), accompanied by singing the ‘communist’ song, “Genjer-Genjer,” after which they proceeded to castrate them and gouge out their eyes.9 In this way progressive, politically active women and, by association, the PKI were said to have indulged in unspeakable sexual perversions. It is this version which reached East Java when Ansor and Banser were preparing for mass murder, as I recently learned.10 Such a sustained and successful propaganda campaign must have been well planned. When the preparation for it started is not known and who were its major architects is also not fully clear yet. The roots of this operation can be located in the anti-PKI organizations which had already been very active before September 30, === [PDF page 12] === 60 AJWS, Vol. 20 No. 3, 2014 1965. These included the army, the various mass organizations it controlled, civil defence militias, right-wing religious and nationalist groups, and several anti-PKI political parties. This widespread preparation enabled the army to swing into action immediately, while the purge was still underway. The army had already blamed the PKI on the morning of October 1 (Melvin, 2014). On October 2, a declaration was issued in which the September 30th Movement was denounced and the media that were seen to support it were banned.11 On October 4, a meeting was held in which what later would be called the Pancasila Front was established (see also Crouch, 1988). In his speech of that day, in front of the opened well, Suharto made no mention of the torture and mutilation of the murdered generals (Dinuth, 1997). The chair of the Pancasila Front was the NU cleric Subchan and its secretary was the Catholic General Harry Tjan Silalahi.12 Besides Suharto, the Dutch Jesuit pastor, Father Beek, confessor of his wife Siti Hartinah and close associate of Ali Murtopo, a senior Kostrad officer at the time, was also involved.13 The enigmatic Father Beek was an influential cleric who had been mobilizing Catholic students from before 1965 (see also Wertheim, 1995). He was instrumental in establishing (on 25 October 1965) the militant students group KAMI (Kesatuan Aksi Mahasiswa Indonesia, Indonesian Students’ Action Front), which included both Muslim and Catholic students who were in the forefront of the anti-PKI actions in Jakarta (Mujiburrachman, 2006) and elsewhere. Beek later became Suharto’s speech writer.14 General A.H. Nasution and other military officials, such as General Ibnu Subroto, were most likely also involved. From this group, fabrications emerged to frame the PKI as the sole dalang (puppeteer) of the September 30th Movement. Who among them dreamed up the stories of naked, singing, and dancing girls and castrated generals is so far unclear. Then, the lies had to be spread: an order was issued to the media to propagate the lies of the army.15 These were echoed by the military all over the country. Radio broadcasts of the national radio (RRI) played a major role. Ibrahim Sinik, in TAOK, also makes it very clear that his job as an editor in Medan === [PDF page 13] === Saskia E. WIERINGA 61 at the time was to make the people hate the communists. Wild Spinach As the song about wild spinach (genjer) played such an important role in the slander campaign, it is worth discussing its background in some more detail. Genjer is the name of a weed that grows along the edges of the rice-fields. During the Japanese period, it became the poor people’s vegetable in Banyuwangi, East Java. At the time the song was composed by a local musician, Muhamad Arief, whose wife used to make a tasty dish with it and as of the 1950s, it became popular, particularly in East Java.16 With other Indonesian folksongs, it was promoted as part of a cultural campaign against western imperialism and the perfidious influence of what Sukarno called ‘ngakngik-ngok music’ (see also Wieringa, 2002) and was widely aired on national TV and radio. Although the song had nationwide appeal, it became linked to the struggle underway in the countryside between poor farmers, nominal Muslims (called abangan), linked to the progressive farmers’ union and rich landlords, more observant Muslims, many of them leaders of the pesantren or Muslim boarding schools, who were not keen to implement the recently adopted land reform law. In this way, what was essentially a class issue was overwritten by religious concerns. Gerwani members sang it widely, but other women’s groups did so too; village children in East Java, regardless of the political persuasion of their parents, staged performances accompanied by it, dressed as farmers.17 In a perverse turn of events after the putsch, the army accused the communist cultural organization Lekra and Gerwani of having used the song to train members of the latter to kill and castrate the generals. The army propaganda experts suggested that the women in the song were stimulated to swing their sharp sickles as a prelude to later cut the genitals of the generals. The song was prohibited as it became associated with unspeakable communist-inspired perver- === [PDF page 14] === 62 AJWS, Vol. 20 No. 3, 2014 sions. An alternative version was produced, sung by the anti-communist gangs who picked up and murdered left-wing people, ransacked and burnt offices of organizations associated with the PKI and the houses of leaders of such organizations. The right-wing version was first published in the journal of KAMI, the anti-communist students’ group, who, inspired by Father Beek and trained by Sarwo Edhie, staged several violent demonstrations during the last months of 1965 and the beginning of 1966. In this version, women prepare to murder the generals. In a 1983 film by Arifin Noor, in which the army version of the putsch is presented, young women, supposedly Gerwani members, sing the KAMI version while they dance around the generals before killing them. The perverted version of the song is thus linked to sexual orgies and associated with unspeakable acts of cruelty. The millions of school children who were forced to watch this bloody film again and again during Suharto’s reign, have had the memory of ‘communist women’ as devilish, cruel whores etched in their minds. To their despair, women who had legally and enthusiastically carried out many social, educational and political activities as proud members of the ‘socialist family’ in Indonesia, and who had been imprisoned for many years under inhuman conditions, came home to find their children and grandchildren asking them whether they too had been murderers and prostitutes. The anti-Gerwani propaganda was so effective that both the released women and their family members kept silent, as they were afraid of being associated with anti-government behavior (see also Sukartiningsih, 2004). From Susanti’s interviews (2006), we know that the song played a role in the torture and sexual abuse of women, who had lived honorable lives until October 1965 and who were thrown into prison after the putsch. Who Were the Killers? In spite of the mass murders being framed as ‘spontaneous actions’ === [PDF page 15] === Saskia E. WIERINGA 63 of civilian groups, the military were heavily involved and engineered the violence.18 They waged a ‘war by proxy’ (Conboy, 2003). Organizing the campaigns in Java and Bali was Colonel Sarwo Edhie, the commander of the para commando regiment or RPKAD (Jenkins & Kammen, 2012). In Aceh the military acted directly, controlling the militias it employed (Melvin, 2014). Financial, military and ideological support was provided by Australian, British and American intelligence services (see Cribb, 1990; Kammen & McGregor, 2012; Henry, forthcoming; Simpson, 2008). In East Java, the Muslim militias (Banser) supported the army; in Bali, the RPKAD was assisted by the ‘black shirts’ of the nationalist, PNI-affiliated Tameng Marheanis, and to a more limited extent the Muslim militias. In Jakarta, students were used by the RPKAD as their proxy. All over the country the PKI was portrayed as an evil force that had to be uprooted from the country; for the consumption of religious groups the campaign was orchestrated as a holy war against evil, with God and the law supporting the murderers. In this way the blame of the killings was shifted to the victims―those abject, atheist people. After this initial wave of black propaganda, which the army used to incite youth groups, including the PP, to help conduct the mass murders, in 1983 the release of the film The Treachery of the 30 September Movement by Arifin C. Noor, mentioned earlier, was meant to shore up the legitimacy of the military dictatorship that Suharto had established. The film was compulsorily shown every year to school children (from 1984 to 1997) and followed the script devised by Suharto and his advisors about the involvement of the PKI and Gerwani.19 Around the same time, the Museum of the Sacred Pancasila Monument was opened in which dioramas portray the alleged innate evil of the PKI. The uniforms of the generals who had been hauled up from the well have also been on display. The blood from the bullet wounds is still there, but contrary to the propaganda, their crotches are intact. On the bronze mural below the statues of the slain generals (and a lieutenant), the history of Indonesia since the Second === [PDF page 16] === 64 AJWS, Vol. 20 No. 3, 2014 World War according to Suharto is presented. The Dance of the Fragrant Flowers is shown, wherein the girls had allegedly seduced the generals. They are portrayed in sensuous poses with bare shoulders. Apparently, the sculptors were not allowed to follow the earlier smear campaign that insisted the girls were naked―after all prospective visitors included school children and members of various Muslim-oriented organizations (Wieringa, 2002; 2003; McGregor, 2007). The film, the monument and the museum can be interpreted to silence any other interpretation of what happened on October 1st, through its gross and deliberate distortions of reality. Mass Murder in Medan The Indonesian media, at the time fully controlled by the military, played a major role in propagating the sexual slander surrounding the events at Lubang Buaya. These included the national radio and the army-controlled newspapers. In TAOK, the editor of the Medan Post, Ibrahim Sinik, boasted that he had engineered the interrogations so that all people he associated with the PKI were condemned to death, with a single wink of his eye. Anwar and his group finished the job. Sinik backs up his anti-communist credentials with the pictures in his office in which he is seen to shake hands with Colonel Sarwo Edhie, (who came to Medan in 1967) and with President Suharto.20 Sinik wrote the script for the scenes of Arsan and Aminah, in which the nightmares of Anwar are enacted.21 Anwar and Adi, Oppenheimer’s protagonists, were members of the Pemuda Pancasila (PP) in Medan. This paramilitary group, which on its own website claims to have some seven million members, is still employed to carry out the dirty work for the army, certain political leaders (such as Kalla) and affiliated business tycoons. Although it now claims to focus less on its muscles (otot) than it did in the past and more on its thinking power (otak), it is still mostly known as a collection of thugs (Ryter, 1998). === [PDF page 17] === Saskia E. WIERINGA 65 The 1964 and 1965 clashes occurred with the Pemuda Rakyat (PR) in which, according to Lubis (who was called a setan kota or ‘city devil’ by the PP), nine members of the PP were killed. After the September 30th events in Jakarta their roles were reversed and the PP took the upper hand, supported by the army. The PP targeted not only members of the PR, but also members of the farmer and labor unions. Killing was scaled up in November, when Kampung Kolam was destroyed, an important gruelling scene in TAOK.22 Both in Medan and in Aceh, the Pemuda Pancasila were the main killers of the suspected communists, as Muslim militias were in East Java (Cribb, 1990; Crouch, 1988). They, however, were not the only murderers. Muslim and Catholic youth also joined the carnage and looting. The army in Medan, under the leadership of Kemal Idris, encouraged the slaughter (Cribb, 1990). According to Young (1990), possibly 100,000 left-wing activists and their associates were murdered in and around Medan. Members of Baperki, the left-leaning organization of ethnic Chinese people, were also targeted. The unrest in Medan was so persistent that Sarwo Edhie, head of the special forces responsible for most of the killing in Java and Bali, was sent in 1967 to sort out the youth groups and resolve contestations about the seized properties (Tsai & Kammen, 2012). TAOK: Sexual Politics and Culture Wars To what extent are the above events reflected in TAOK? With the exception of some bystanders and a few villagers in the destruction of Kampung Kolam, all actors in the film are men. This was a conscious choice by Oppenheimer who only selected perpetrators (and their family members) to act in this film as he wanted to avoid aggravating the traumas of the families of the victims.23 They represent an aggressive form of masculinity, the type called jago (literally rooster, see Onghokham, 2003). Fearless, callous, swaggering, boastful, womanizing, this is the kind of masculinity that of old has been === [PDF page 18] === 66 AJWS, Vol. 20 No. 3, 2014 sported by the musclemen of the powerful. From this angle the sexual orgy, invented by Suharto and his advisors, epitomized in the hate-inspiring picture of the aggressive, sexually promiscuous women of Lubang Buaya, can be read as a tactical move in the wider struggle, a clash of masculinities. The female counterpart of the gender order, in which the masculinity of jago thrives, is a docile, sexually subservient woman, a figure that belongs within the patriarchal, militarist New Order. Gerwani belonged to the realm of the patriarchal pre-1965 Old Order of the PKI and Sukarno.24 At the time, women’s emancipation was ostensibly applauded by progressive forces, but the social struggle was seen as more important (Wieringa, 2002; 2011). Sukarno had stimulated women to become political actors, fighters in the war for independence. The PKI had joined this course, which corresponded with socialist ideas of women’s emancipation, although PKI chairman Aidit never paid much attention to women’s issues. The progressive women’s organisation, Gerwani, enthusiastically promoted such topics as women’s education, political visibility and independence. They opposed violence against women and polygyny. In the post-colonial Old Order, conservative forces tried to restore what they saw as women’s pre-independence role, based on what was defined as women’s kodrat (religiously ordained nature). Thus Gerwani, with its insistence on women’s public visibility and agency, came to symbolize not only all that was un-Islamic, but by extension also as curtailing the newfound post-colonial masculine power, in other words, as castrating. The PKI, though patriarchal in its relations with Gerwani, precisely because of its support for the group, in this view represented the kind of abject masculinity that the army and right-wing Islamic groups despised (Wieringa, 2003; 2011). In TAOK, this struggle is enacted at various levels. Several dance sequences are shown, as part of the film-within-the-film on Arsan and Aminah. The association with the Dance of the Fragrant Flowers (which immediately sprang to my mind and to that of former Gerwani members who watched it with me) is overlaid by allu- === [PDF page 19] === Saskia E. WIERINGA 67 sions to present-day TV shows and by the Hollywood dreams of Oppenheimer’s protagonists. TAOK is almost a genre in itself, blurring the lines of documentary (the killings, the making of the fictional film) feature film, gangster movie, musical and sinetron (Indonesian TV series). The lines between myth, fantasy, boasting and truth-telling are obscured as well. The representation of sexual politics underlying the construction of the PKI as evil and barbaric are portrayed most clearly in the lurid scenes in which Anwar’s pal, Herman Koto, is dressed up as an aging transvestite (modelled after popular transvestite TV actor and comedian, Tessy, full name Kabul Basuki, typically portrayed with heavy make up, thick protruding lips, glittering jewelry). His/her acting is associated with srimulat, a humorous, low-brow Javanese form of theatre (particularly popular in cities, such as Surabaya and Solo) which is transgressive of both class and gender (see also Hatley, 2008). Herman, who in TAOK is shown to be subservient to Anwar, in drag becomes even more his ‘wife,’ exposing a same-sex intimacy which suggests another layer to the homo-social atmosphere of the film. Herman (Amkinah) as ‘spouse,’ murdering and castrating his boss and ‘husband’ Anwar (Arsan), eating his liver, mouth dripping with blood, evokes the overthrow of the normative gender order, which Gerwani was accused of. Herman adds gaudy revealing clothing to the character (although the huge stomach and thick coarse legs do not suggest feminine attractiveness). He is cast playing the communist girl Aminah, swinging a sickle, just as the communists were alleged to have used. The grotesque drag of Herman/Aminah sends out another message as well. The multi-colored feathers and his revealing clothing suggest a vulgar kind of sexuality which is all the more repellent because of Herman’s boorish masculinity. He is never convincing as a female character; it rather seems as if his rudeness is exaggerated to demonstrate that Gerwani women were actually crude masculine characters. So, instead of just a MTF (male-to-female) gender reversal, we also watch an FTM (female-to-male) drag scene: evoking the alleged mas- === [PDF page 20] === 68 AJWS, Vol. 20 No. 3, 2014 culinity, or at least unfeminine character of the castrating, murdering Gerwani members. Another association is that the madly shouting Herman/Aminah portrays the PKI as out-of-control and, therefore, as unmanly and feminine and in a witchlike way capable of performing gory, outrageous acts of perversity. These images are juxtaposed with scenes portraying actual sexual torture. If the Arsan/Aminah story is fantasy, the scene in which gangster Safit Pardede reminisces about his raping young socialist girls (‘hell for you, but heaven for me’), reminds one only too well of the actual horrors of the time (we did this ‘back then, when we were the law... I fucked the shit out of everyone I met’). The cheers by his mates with which this revelation is greeted suggests their complicity in or at least approval of such crimes. Conclusion: The Banality of Evil? How is it possible that the murderers still walk on Indonesian soil as free men and can boast of their impunity, and that the lies the army propagated at the time are still largely believed? The philosopher Hannah Arendt, reflecting on the wide support the Nazi regime had in Hitler’s Germany, struggled with a similar question. How does a mediocre bureaucrat, a ‘clown with a bad memory,’ as she characterized Eichmann, in her groundbreaking book (1963) on the trial of one of the architects of the Nazi holocaust, become a mass murderer? Oppenheimer’s film asks how a petty, spiteful criminal like Anwar Congo turns into a cheerful killing machine (though at times troubled by bad dreams). Both Arendt and Oppenheimer emphasize the human characteristics of Eichmann and Anwar respectively and thus aim to hold up a mirror before us. Arendt’s (1963: 135) conclusion is that Eichmann considered himself a law-abiding citizen, who did his duty, followed orders, and obeyed the law. The law in this case being the words of Hitler who wanted the Third Reich to be judenfrei (free from Jews) and to ex- === [PDF page 21] === Saskia E. WIERINGA 69 terminate the Jews as the final solution towards that end. The desire to wipe out the communists in Indonesia finds a parallel here; the army propaganda campaign became the ‘truth’ and the law for the Indonesian mass murderers. Although Arendt misread the virulent anti-Semitism of Eichmann and made him seem more stupid than he was (see Cesarini’s, 2006 biography of Eichmann), she coined a phrase, the ‘banality of evil,’ that points to the complicity of the thousands of ‘ordinary’ people in any genocide or mass murder who actually implement the grand design that political leaders like Hitler and General Suharto conjure up. The Nazis lost and Eichmann was hanged. Suharto won and the ‘law’ of impunity he established continues to this day, propped up by the terror that the army-affiliated militias exercise. Since then, the silence surrounding the mass murders and the militias complicit in it prevent attempts to implement a large scale investigation into army collusion and the extent of the mass murders. To this day, meetings of victims and their supporters are regularly broken up. This is one of the reasons why an International People’s Tribunal on the crimes against humanity committed in Indonesia post-October 1st will be held abroad.25 It is expected that this Tribunal will generate international condemnation and national support for the kind of extensive research that only the Indonesian state can carry out. The sexual politics that were at the core of the army’s propaganda campaign against the PKI was turned into the palimpsest of New Order culture. The psywar against the Indonesian Communist Party, waged by General Suharto, is key to understanding how the army could incite thousands of civilians to commit acts of unspeakable cruelty. Straddling the divide between fact and fiction, TAOK exposes the echoes of the horrendous mythmaking that still haunts Indonesian society. We are provided with an insight into the justifications Anwar Congo gives for his becoming a mass killer. Material benefits played a role; his position as a leader of a death squad transformed him from being a broke petty criminal to a feared militia member with money in his pocket to indulge his tastes of alcohol, drugs (and === [PDF page 22] === 70 AJWS, Vol. 20 No. 3, 2014 sex?). Watching the 1983 film produced by the Suharto regime makes him feel better about his atrocious acts. But the slander against Gerwani, he admits, incited him to kill. Oppenheimer’s film provides a chilling portrait of present day Indonesian society, the banality or normalcy, which is based on the violence and sadism of the massacre, and particularly on the persistent silence surrounding it. The film is an eye-opener internationally; it has bagged many awards and is shown to shock audiences worldwide. However, in Indonesia, where the lies of the military are still widely believed, the impact of the film has been disappointing. It does not break the silence that still surrounds the 1965-67 genocide. I maintain that a better understanding of the country’s gruesome past cannot grow without realizing the full impact of the myth of the singing, dancing, castrating Gerwani members, as Anwar himself stressed. This myth is at the core of the army’s propaganda campaign which transformed an apparent inter-army clash (with heavy political meddling) into a gruesome mass murder, targeting the PKI and left-wing people in general and sweeping away the Old Order of President Sukarno. The sexual moral panic created by the army shamed the nation into silence. Notes 1. I thank Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, Kate McGregor and an anonymous reviewer for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this article. 2. In 2012, the national Human Rights Commission produced a report on the crimes against humanity committed after 1 October 1965. However, this was dismissed by the Prosecutor’s Office and there has been no follow-up. 3. In 2007, a whole new school curriculum in which the army version of the ‘events of 1965’ was put alongside other versions was withdrawn, and the books burnt (Pringle, 2010). 4. In these broadcasts, it became clear that the putschists had more === [PDF page 23] === Saskia E. WIERINGA 71 wide ranging ideas than to just bring the generals to President Sukarno (see Crouch, 1988; Hughes, 2002; Roosa, 2006; Sundhaussen, 1982). For the full text, see Selected Documents Relating to the 30 September Movement and Its Epilogue: Indonesia (1966). See also Dinuth (1997). 5. The incumbent President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, still maintains that the 1965 murders ‘saved’ Indonesia from the Communist threat. Retrieved from http://directaction.org.au/yudhoyono_government_ says_1965_murders_saved_indonesia, October 22, 2012, by James Balowski on 15 November 2012. See Bush (2009) and Hilmy (2010) for an analysis of the NU. 6. The cultural arguments related to the 1966-67 mass murders also ignore the historical evidence of bitter conflicts within and between villages (on Bali, see Robinson, 1995 and on Java, Onghokham, 2003). 7. Although Gerwani is often seen as an organization of ‘communist’ women, it was actually an independent organization, with strong links to and sympathies for the PKI. As I have noted elsewhere, it had both a feminist and a communist wing from the time it was set up in 1950. The communist wing ultimately got the upper hand, but until October 1965 Gerwani was not officially associated with the PKI (Wieringa, 2002). I therefore usually call it socialist, progressive or leftist, rather than communist. 8. See Herdt (2009) for an analysis of sexual moral panics. 9. For details on this media campaign, see Wieringa (2002; 2003). 10. Interview with anonymous informant on August 9, 2014. 11. Pour lists 11 organizations that signed the document (Pour 2010: 164). 12. The first name of this group was Kesatuan Aksi Pengganyangan Gerakan 30 September or KAP Gestapu/PKI (Pour, 2010: 164). Pour quotes from the 1977 book Tritura dan Hanura (People’s Three Demands and People’s Consciousness) by Soemarno Dipodisastro. 13. Ali Murtopo was an expert in psywar methods; by his own confession he had already played a double role during the independence war (Lucas, 1991). He remained an aide and confidant to Suharto and later became deputy head of the BAKIN, the national intelligence coordinating agency (Mujiburrachman, 2006). 14. He was fervently anti-communist and a master manipulator behind the scenes. Not much is known of his exact role in the anti-Gerwani === [PDF page 24] === 72 AJWS, Vol. 20 No. 3, 2014 slander campaign. The only scene in my 2007 novel The Crocodile Hole (the Indonesian version is called Lubang Buaya), which is not based on academic evidence, is where the protagonist meets the pastor, Father Bron, in the book. In this scene, Father Bron confesses that he suggested the fantasy of the orgy that the girls of the PR were accused of. Joop van Wijk, who is making a film on Father Beek, confirmed that my guess in the novel is probably very close to the truth (private conversation on May 11, 2013). 15. Elsewhere I have analyzed this media campaign (Wieringa, 2002; 2003). 16. See for instance Genjer-Genjer, pembelokan sejarah yang tercecer. Retrieved from Agunghariyadi37.blospot.nl/2012/genjer-genjer-pembelokan-sejarah-yang-tercecer on 2 August 2013 or Sejarah dan misteri lagu Genjer-Genjer, pbb-palestina.blogspot.nl/2008/01/sejarah-danmisteri-genjer-genjer.html. 17. Personal communication from Nursyahbani Katjasungkana. 18. As Roosa (2006) phrased it, the September 30th Movement was used as a ‘pretext’ for the mass murders that followed. See also Crouch (1988) and Melvin (2014). 19. An analysis of the film is given in McGregor (2007). It was shown twice a year, on September 30 and on the August 17, Independence Day, which demonstrates that this was a foundational myth of the New Order regime of Suharto, as I have argued earlier (Wieringa, 2003). 20. To illustrate the continuity of the military regime: Sarwo Edhie was the father-in-law of the present President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who in his turn was a military advisor of President Suharto from July 1997 onwards. 21. Information from Joshua Oppenheimer in a letter to the author, dated May 21 2013. 22. The precise date is in dispute. Ryter (1998: 56) writes that the attack on Kampung Kolam took place in early November. 23. The only exception was a crew member who turned out to be the stepson of a shopkeeper who was murdered. 24. In Suharto’s time, the period during which Sukarno was President of the nation was called the ‘Old Order’ while Suharto’s presidency was called the ‘New Order.’ 25. In March 2014, the foundation IPT 1965 was set up and aims === [PDF page 25] === Saskia E. WIERINGA 73 to organize this tribunal in The Hague and Geneva. References Anderson, B. (1987), “How did the Generals Die?,” Indonesia, 43: 109-134. Anderson B. & R. McVey (1971), A Preliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965 Coup in Indonesia, Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program. Arendt, H. (1963), Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, New York: Penguin. Bush, R. (2009), Nahdlatul Ulama and the Struggle for Power within Islam and Politics in Indonesia, Singapore: ISEAS Publishing. Cesarini, D. (2006), Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking the Life, Crimes and Trial of a “Desk Murderer,” Cambridge: Da Capo Press. Conboy, K. (2003), KOPASSUS, Inside Indonesia’s Special Forces, Jakarta and Singapore: Equinox. Cribb, R. (ed.) (1990), The Indonesian Killings 1965-66: Studies from Java and Bali, Clayton: Monash University. Crouch, H. (1988), The Army and Politics in Indonesia (revised edition), Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Dinuth, A. (ed.) (1997), Dokumen terpilih sekitar G.30.S/PKI (Selected documents around G30S/PKI), Jakarta: Intermasa. Hatley, B. (2008), Javanese Performances on an Indonesian Stage: Celebrating Culture, Embracing Change, Honolulu: University of Hawaii. Henry, A. H. (2014 forthcoming), “Polluting the Waters―A brief history of anti-communist propaganda during the Indonesian Massacres,” Genocide Studies International, 8(2): 153-175. Herdt, G. (ed.) (2009), Moral Panics, Sex Panics and the Fight over Sexual Rights, New York: New York University Press. Hilmy, M. (2010), Islamism and Democracy in Indonesia: Piety and Pragmatism, Singapore: ISEAS. Hughes, J. (2002), The End of Sukarno: A Coup that Misfired: A Purge that Ran Wild, Singapore: Archipelago Press. Jenkins D. & D. Kammen (2012), “The Army Para-Commando Regiment and the Reign of Terror in Central Java and Bali,” in D. Kammen === [PDF page 26] === 74 AJWS, Vol. 20 No. 3, 2014 & K. McGregor (eds.), The Contours of Mass Violence in Indonesia, 1965-68, Singapore: NUS Press, pp. 75-104. Kammen, D. & K. McGregor (2012), The Contours of Mass Violence in Indonesia: 1965-68, Singapore: NUS Press. Lucas, A. (1991), One Soul, One Struggle: Region and Revolution in Indonesia, Sydney: Allen and Unwin. McGregor, K. (2007), History in Uniform: Military Ideology and the Construction of Indonesia’s Past, Singapore: NUS Press. Melvin, L. (2014), “Mechanics of Mass Murder: How the Indonesian Military Initiated and Implemented the Indonesian Genocide-the Case of Aceh,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Melbourne, Parkville. Mujiburrachman (2006), “Feeling Threatened: Muslim-Christian Relations in Indonesia’s New Order,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Leiden: Amsterdam University Press. Onghokham (2003), The Thugs, the Curtains Thief and the Sugar Lord, Jakarta: Metafor. Pour, J. (2010), Gerakan 30 September; Pelaku, Pahlawan & Petualang (The Movement of September 30th, Perpetrators, Heroes and Adventurers), Jakarta: Kompas. Pringle, R. (2010), Understanding Islam in Indonesia: Politics and Diversity, Singapore: Editions Didier Millet. Robinson, G. (1995), The Dark Side of Paradise: Political Violence in Bali, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Roosa, J. (2006), Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement & Suharto’s Coup d état in Indonesia, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Ryter, L. (1998), “Pemuda Pancasila: The Last loyalist Free Men of Suharto’s Order,” Indonesia, 66: 45-73. Selected Documents Relating to the 30 September Movement and Its Epilogue: Indonesia (1966), Ithaca, NY: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, 1:1, April: 131-205. Simpson, B. (2008), Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and US-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Sukartiningsih, J. (2004), “Ketika Perempuan Menjadi TAPOL (When Women became Political Prisoners),” in J. Roosa, A. Ratih, & === [PDF page 27] === Saskia E. WIERINGA 75 H. Farid (eds.), Tahun yang tak pernah berakhir; memahami pengalaman korban 65 (The Year that Never Ends: Understanding the Experiences of the Victims of 65), Jakarta: ELSAM, pp. 87-113. Sundhaussen, U. (1982), The Road to Power: Indonesian Military Politics 1945-1967. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Susanti, F. R. (2006), Kembang-kembang Genjer (Flowers of the Genjer Plant), Jakarta: Lembaga sastra pembebasan. Tsai, Y. L. & D. Kammen (2012), “Anti-communist Violence and the Ethnic Chinese in Medan, North Sumatra,” in D. Kammen & K. McGregor (eds.), The Contours of Mass Violence in Indonesia, 1965-68, Singapore: NUS Press, pp. 131-56. Wertheim, W. (1979), “Whose Plot? New Light on the 1965 events,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 9(2): 197-215. ________ (1995), “Indonesia’s Hidden History of 1965: When will the Archives be Declassified?,” in B. Hering (ed.), Pramoedya Ananta Toer 70 Tahun: Essays to Honour Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s 70 years), Stein: Yayasan Kabar Seberang, pp. 284-306. Wieringa, S. E. (2002), Sexual Politics in Indonesia, London: Palgrave/ McMillan Publishers. ________ (2003), “The Birth of the New Order State in Indonesia: Sexual Politics and Nationalism,” Journal of Women’s History, 15(1): 70-92. ________ (2011), “Sexual Slander and the 1965/6 Mass Killings in Indonesia; Political and Methodological Considerations,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 41(4): 544-566. Young, K. R. (1990), “Local and National Influences in the Violence of 1965,” R. Cribb (ed.), The Indonesian killings 1965-66: Studies from Java and Bali, Clayton: Monash University: 63-101. === [PDF page 28] === 76 AJWS, Vol. 20 No. 3, 2014 Abstract in Bahasa Indonesia Joshua Oppenheimer membuat film berjudul The Act of Killing (TAOK) tentang pembunuhan massal yang terjadi di Indonesia dari tahun 1965-7. Kompleksitasnya, potret-potret berlapis dari sejumlah pembunuh di Medan, Sumatera Utara menunjukkan bahwa para pembunuh tersebut bebas dari hukuman. Ide pemikirannya yakni di Indonesia masih percaya bahwa Partai Komunis Indonesia harus dimusnahkan untuk menyelamatkan Negara, dan pada akhirnya ribuan anggota Partai Komunis serta organisasi massa yang bergabung disiksa, diperkosa, dibunuh, atau dipenjara bertahun-tahun. Film ini mendapatkan pengakuan tinggi internasional. Namun, film ini tidak juga memecah kebisuan panjang tentang sejarah genosida terbesar di Indonesia. Dalam artikel ini, saya berpendapat bahwa ketidakpedulian dari masyarakat dapat dikaitkan dengan kepanikan seksual yang dibuat oleh militer dalam kampanye mereka yang memfintah Partai Komunis (PKI). Keywords Komunis; Indonesia; Gerwani; pembunuhan massal; panik seksual