Propaganda and Genocide in Indonesia: Imagined Evil

Abstract

In Indonesia, the events of 1 October 1965 were followed by a campaign to annihilate the Communist Party and its alleged sympathizers. It resulted in the murder of an estimated one million people – a genocide that counts as one of the largest mass murders since WWII – and the incarceration of another million, many of them for a decade or more without any legal pro- cess. This purge was justified and enabled by a propaganda campaign in which communists were painted as atheist, hypersexual, amoral and intent on destroying the nation. To this day the effects of this campaign continue to be felt, and its victims are denied the right of association and freedom of speech. This book presents the history of the genocide and propaganda campaign and the process that led to the establishment of the International People’s Tribunal on 1965 Crimes against Humanity Indonesia (IPT 1965), which was held in November 2015 in The Hague, Netherlands. The authors, a Dutch academic and an Indonesian human rights lawyer, examine this unique event, which brought these crimes before an international court for the first time, and they consider its verdict. They single out the campaign of hate propa- ganda that provided the incitement for the murder of so many Indonesians and ask why this propaganda campaign continues to be effective. The first book on this topic, it fills a significant gap in Asian Studies and Genocide Studies.