Two critically acclaimed documentaries by Professor Joshua Oppenheimer have helped to force official recognition of Indonesia’s genocide, both domestically and internationally.
In 1965, an anti-Communist killing spree mushroomed into widespread murders of rival politicians and their sympathisers – it is estimated that over 500,000 Indonesians died.
Off the back of this genocide came military leader Suharto’s three-decade authoritarian regime – the so-called “New Order”.
Perpetrators of this atrocity – Indonesian military and internationally funded death squads – were celebrated in Indonesian schools and the media for their “heroic extermination of the communists”.
Survivors, meanwhile, have lived in a state of suppressed trauma – unable to speak the truth for fear of retribution – while younger generations have grown up brainwashed.
Oppenheimer’s Oscar-nominated and widely acclaimed documentaries, The Act of Killing: Director’s Cut (2013) and The Look of Silence (2014), call the history what it is – “genocide”.
“Since 2013, the use of the term genocide to describe the killings has become increasingly popular in Indonesia,” historian Jess Melvin says. “The adoption of the term has coincided with the ballooning success of Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary film The Act of Killing.”
Created as part of an AHRC funded research collaboration with Professor Joram ten Brink, the films pioneer a new approach to nonfiction filmmaking, historical filmmaking, the investigation of political violence, and the social imagination.
While The Act of Killing deconstructs the ‘hero’s narrative’ its key perpetrators have immersed themselves in, The Look of Silence depicts one survivor audaciously confronting his brother’s murderers.
The Act of Killing and Look of Silence have had a major impact on raising much-needed debate in Indonesia on the political events and violence that took place.
– The UK Ambassador to Indonesia (2014-19)
“We are asking questions of our elders,” Jakarta-based journalist Prodita Sabarini says of the films’ impact. “And the answers reveal not only that we were lied to by the state, but that we have also been deprived of our families’ histories.”
History on trial
The films inspired the International People’s Tribunal (IPT) 1965, undertaken in The Hague in 2015, which heightened international pressure on the Indonesian government.
“Oppenheimer said: ‘I have done my job as filmmaker. How will you fight for the dignity of your nation?’” Says IPT’s general coordinator, lawyer Nursyahbani Katjasungkana. “We were shocked at what he said, I thought it was such a provocative question.”
According to the academic blog, Indonesia at Melbourne, the IPT 1965’s final report “serves as the single most significant moral statement representing the crimes inflicted against so many.”
The IPT aimed to create a climate in which the international community would recognise the killings as crimes against humanity and pressure the Indonesian government to take action.
As such it is notable that the wide media coverage of the IPT included headlines such as CNN’s: “Tribunal finds Indonesia guilty of 1965 genocide; US, UK complicit.”
The IPT 1965’s final report can be read on the IPT website.
The US declassifies details of its involvement
On 10 December 2014, UN Human Rights Day, US Senator Tom Udall introduced a Senate Resolution demanding the US make full disclosures regarding its role in the atrocities.
“I think what this documentary does is it makes us ask some very tough questions,” said Senator Tom Udall, then a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“The United States government should be totally transparent on what it did and what it knew at the time,” he added. “And they should be disclosing what happened here.”
When The Look of Silence was nominated at the 2016 Academy Awards, Professor Oppenheimer used “his awards-season megaphone” to campaign for all relevant government documents to be declassified.
He accompanied members of Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM), Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as they visited key Washington officials, seeking support for Udall’s resolution.
In October 2017, 30,000 pages of declassified US Embassy records were published.
In The New York Times’ words, the papers showed “American officials watched it happen, without raising any public objections, at times even applauding the forces behind the killing”.
Quote - Indonesians can now read for themselves and learn about these important events in Indonesian history as part of a larger struggle for justice and accountability” – Brad Simpson, founder and director of the Indonesia and East Timor Documentation Project
Watch the Asian Human Rights Commission video on YouTube on the significance of the declassification of the US Embassy records.
Searching for accountability in Indonesia
Despite their reluctance to change their stance on this issue, the Indonesian government came under growing pressure to do so, in part due to Oppenheimer’s efforts.
After the strong public reaction to The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence’s 2014 release was beset by threats of mob violence at film screenings, with implicit consent from the police.
As activists defiantly screened the film, the controversy boosted national media coverage considerably.
On International Human Rights Day, 10 December 2015, the filmmakers made The Look of Silence available on YouTube and free for all Indonesians to download.
By 9 May 2022, The Act of Killing: Director’s Cut had been streamed 2,864,456 times; The Look of Silence had been streamed 1,395,708 times.
The Indonesian government finally organised the first government-sponsored forum for addressing the massacres in 2016.
This unprecedented gathering, including government officials, genocide survivors and perpetrators, was broadcast live around the world and included discussion of Oppenheimer’s films.
In April 2016, the president instructed his security minister to begin a formal investigation, though domestic political actors have so far stalled this.
Nevertheless, the Deputy Director of the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, Phelim Kine, says the films have helped end the “decades-long official taboo on public discussions of the massacre”.
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