Recalling many examples of the above, Roosa comes to the important conclusion that “it is possible to read works on genocide without ever finding a link with capitalism, and it is possible to read Marxist stories without finding a full-fledged analysis of the genocidal fact.” For this author, one of the singularities of the Indonesian episode is this: “The story of the complete destruction of workers’ organizations and the mass murder of workers in Indonesia in 1965-66 are at the intersection of the two”: state violence and class violence, political violence and economic violence. And the reverse is equally true: almost all massacres against workers’ organizations were justified in the name of campaigns against communism, whether or not the trade union organizations had a link with a communist party. However, Roosa recalls:Īlmost all anti-communist campaigns around the world have simultaneously been campaigns against workers’ organizations. įor Roosa, however, if we can analyse this repression by looking at the state, the army, the militias, the Cold War, among others, these categories risk missing the economic dimension of the genocide: “The army’s attack on the PKI was also an assault on the working class.” The literature on mass murder has often remained allusive on this point. They had in common their more or less close ties with the PKI and its mass organizations. The victims belonged to all kinds of sectors of society: peasants, middle-class liberal professions, artists, petty entrepreneurs, soldiers, students, teachers, bureaucrats, and housewives. The targets of these mass arrests and killings were people affiliated with the Communist Party. It was a purge of a political party, the elimination of a political tendency within the body politic, a political genocide. The mass violence perpetrated in 1965-66 in Indonesia seems at first sight to be political. Now an essential reference on this episode, historian John Roosa observes in this regard: The death toll is frequently estimated at around one million deaths.įor many researchers working on genocidal experiences, the destruction of the PKI is indeed genocide. All workers’ and popular organizations (trade unions, feminists, cultural organizations) and individuals who had a real, distant or supposed link with the PKI were swallowed up. At the time it was known to be the third largest communist party in the world after those of the USSR and China. Using the pretext of the failed arrest and death of six Indonesian army officers opposed to the Indonesian president and charismatic anti-imperialist leader Sukarno, in October 1965 General Suharto launched an enterprise of systematic liquidation of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). In recent years, however, documentary filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer has aroused the interest of a wide audience for this story with his stunning The Act of Killing released in 2012, followed by The Look of Silence in 2014. The historical silence on Indonesia is probably the reflection of the sudden obliteration of whole sections of Indonesian society, of its political and cultural institutions, of whole forms of life during 1965-66.
Recognition of the Armenian genocide of 1915 is still subject to the vagaries of the diplomatic balance of forces of various powers with Turkey. For example, it was only in May of this year – 2021 – that Germany, through its foreign minister, acknowledged the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples in Namibia between 19 (“We will now officially characterize these events for what they are from today’s point of view: genocide”). This is all the more serious and dangerous because for various other disasters of the 20th century, denial, erasure and oblivion have indeed done their work. Holocaust denial, claiming to challenge the reality of the destruction of the Jews of Europe, is a persistent threat. The extent of their recognition remains very contrasted, acquired for some, still contested and denied to others, while still others barely enter the historical field of vision. There were many mass killings, exterminations and genocides during the 20th century.