Mar 3, '14
By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON - Watching former gangsters and paramilitary leaders proudly reenact scenes from Indonesia's military-led mass killings of 1965-66 in the Oscar-nominated documentary, The Act of Killing, it's easy to forget the role of outside countries. "It was like I had wandered into Germany 40 years after the Holocaust only to find the Nazis were still in power," director Joshua Oppenheimer told IPS.
But while US covert support for the deadly crackdown that killed at least half a million people is not the focus of his film, Oppenheimer hopes the powerful country will at least admit its role.
"There was lots of foreign support for the genocide and that is used as an excuse not to apologize," he said during a recent visit to Washington.
"It's my hope that the US will also take responsibility for its part so the Indonesian government can come to terms with the past and we can move on to reconciliation and healing," he added.
While the US has not formally admitted to that part, declassified documents show the CIA directly assisted the Indonesian army in its quest to eliminate the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) - killing anyone accused of links in the process - after a failed coup attempt.
"The simplest way to put it is that in the month leading up to the events of September 30, 1965 the US sought through covert operations to provoke an armed clash between the Indonesian army and the communist movement in the hope that it would eliminate the PKI," said Bradley Simpson, who heads a project at the National Security Archive that declassified key US government documents concerning Indonesia and East Timor during the reign of General Suharto (1966-1998).
"Perhaps most important is the fact that the [Lyndon] Johnson administration sent clear signals that they enthusiastically supported an attempt to destroy the communists from the bottom up knowing full well that this would lead to mass violence," he told IPS.
The Act of Killing was beaten by 20 Feet From Stardom for the accolade of "Best Documentary Feature" in the 86th annual Academy Awards on Sunday March 2.
But while Oppenheimer may have produced one of the most unusual documentaries of all time, he had initially set out to film a different story in Indonesia. While documenting a community of exploited plantation workers in 2001, Oppenheimer, then in his late 20s, witnessed how they were bullied by the "Pancasila Youth", a gangster-led paramilitary organization that used death squads and repressesses the population to this day.
After victims of the genocide were intimidated into not talking to him by order of the military - the leaders of which proudly display their brute hold on the population and corruption on camera - some survivors urged Oppenheimer to interview the perpetrators instead.
"I was afraid at first, but after I got over that fear I realized that everyone I interviewed was boastful about even the most horrible details of the killings, which they described with smiles on their faces," he said.
In the eight years that it took Oppenheimer to complete The Act of Killing, which was executive produced by internationally known directors Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, he only discovered his main character, Anwar Congo - the founder of a right-wing paramilitary organization that grew out of the death squads - in the final year of filming.
Congo, who describes torturing and murdering suspected communists "like we were killing happily," acts as though he is the director of the documentary as he collaborates with friends and colleagues to recreate scenes from his memory.
"I felt his pain was close to the surface, so I lingered on him," said Oppenheimer.
But while Congo seems haunted by his past, especially by a recurring nightmare of a severed head with eyes he failed to close staring at him, he ultimately reverts to the excuse that he was just following orders.
(Inter Press Service)
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