Editorial: 'Act of Killing' Must Force Introspection
The killing of millions of people across Indonesia in the aftermath of the 1965 coup will come under the national and global spotlight when the ceremony to announce the winners of the 86th Academy Awards is held on March 2.
Joshua Oppenheimer's "The Act of Killing," a documentary exposing the atrocities of the 1965 Communist Party purge that birthed the New Order regime, has been nominated in the best documentary category in the awards.
Many in Indonesia were quick to describe the documentary as an embarrassment to the nation and even regard it as a dangerous film that misleads the international community's perception because it fails to accurately portray today's realities in Indonesia.
While fears that the documentary will ruin — or may already have ruined — the country's image are understandable, we should not overreact to it.
It's true that the film has received many praises worldwide but it's just a movie about one particular aspect of Indonesia's history. The international community is not that naive to form a perception of a country as complex as Indonesia by watching just one documentary, regardless how good it is.
The film should be seen as a challenge to any Indonesian to come up with something better and more accurate than Oppenheimer's movie.
In fact, we should regard the film as criticism of how we deal with our past. And we can show our wisdom as a nation by accepting the film as a part of a discourse to shed the darkness of our history so we can move on and embrace the future better.
Also, the movie should motivate us to once and for all find justice for the victims and dig deeper to point out those responsible for the massacre.
As a nation that still faces so many other human rights violations, we can't live in denial and pretend everything is fine.
It's time to end denial and impunity.
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