*GRAPPLING WITH INDONESIA’S PAST*

*AND WHAT IT MEANS TODAY*

It is still September in the US but I am a day ahead here in Jakarta, where I am haunted by the Indonesia’s past, after watching a screening of Chris Hilton’s SHADOWPLAY, a beautifully made documentary that explores the mostly suppressed history of the murder of nearly a million people here in the mid-sixties.

It is the story of the suppression of PKI, the Indonesian Communist Party, during the Sukarno era engineered by the man who would become this country’s virtual dictator/killer for 32 years, the now fallen and late General Suharto.

Although seen on PBS and over other public broadcasters around the world, it has yet to be seen publicly in Indonesia–where this history is still painful for many, and controversial because of the way the old regime had popularized iitself in the public for so many decades.

The screening last night was for foreign journalists, who have a club that meets at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. The room was packed. I was surprised that there was no discussion, no debate. In point of fact, media coverage of the grisly repression shown in the film–that involved widespread torture and widespread massacres, was suppressed at the time.

British and Australian intelligence muzzled their country’s main media outlets while US journalists also explained how their dispatches were sanitized and censored in Singapore before being forwarded to New York.

This propaganda operation was shocking and well dissected, and offered an eerie and uncommented upon parallel with what is happening today.

Back then, with the Vietnam War raging not far way, Indonesia seemed a remote US interest. What we know now is that foreign intelligence services,including the CIA, were up to their necks in the killing, often providing lists of “suspected” communists to the Armed Forces–who would then often slaughter them without trials or any attempt to establish the truth of the accusations.

Just yesterday, the Jakarta Post, which did not mention the film–that is to have its first public screening here next month at the Jakarta Film Festival–ran a story about the unhealed scars caused by what they now call a “tragedy.”

The report says the events are still shrouded in mystery and implies a much deeper role by the CIA and other intelligence agencies–unreported here–and anywhere else–for so long.

Films in the past were concocted to show the purported murder of six generals that was then blamed on the Communists. That included the sexual mutilation of their bodies by women Communists. This grotesque sexual dimension was totally untrue and reported as fact for years, despite testimony by medical examiners, who found no evidence of the destruction of sexual organs and other lurid tales.

It was a total setup, and was widely believed because the government and the news media it controlled echoed the charges. One amazing scene in the film showed a return to a monument for the Generals, recreating the sexual mutilation story by one of the surviving victims of the repression.

She meets a group of school children being brought to the monument to see their “true history.” You should see the look on the kid’s faces when she tells them it is all lies.

Afterwards, I met Yului Ismartono of Tempo Magazine, who told me that the issues of the movie are still being avoided in most circles in Indonesia. She told me how her publication was shut down three times by the Suharto regime. Her daughter Atika is now a CNN correspondent in Jakarta.

It was fascinating to watch the watchers of contemporary Indonesia watching this film. Aftewards, donations were solicited for greeting cards for one of their number who was killed in Afghanistan.

A new age of killing is about to begin, judging by the news reports of the increasingly manipulated confrontation with Iraq. Here, too, selective information and media management are shaping perceptions as the propaganda oozes out of our TV sets.

A new shadow play is in effect– only there is more play than shadows. What is happening is not murky, or just a covert confrontation. It is happening in front of all of us, as the media marches off to war with history suffocated in amnesia.

I leave Indo today, moving on to other locales and locations in this round the world magical mystery whirlwind tour of film making. I should be back in the USA next week and filing on a regular basis. A Happy Birthday to my brother Bill up in Brookline, and to my editor Jeanette.

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