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ETAN ALERT

Take Action on U.S. Support for Mass Violence in Indonesia

The Oscar-nominated documentary, The Act of Killing will be broadcast on PBS, Monday October 6, 2014, on POV. We hope you will watch this important and disturbing film, where

Although the massacre of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 communists, leftists, ethnic Chinese, and others in Indonesia in 1965-1967 is a foundational event in modern Indonesian political history, it remains mostly a footnote for most in the United States and elsewhere. In 2012, the documentary The Act of Killing shocked audiences throughout the world as perpetrators of the mass murder reenacted their violence. The film shows sociopathic gangsters from Medan, Sumatra, who committed these acts as they are celebrated by many in modern Indonesia. The film has fueled a debate within Indonesia and drawn attention internationally to events unknown to many. Events that the U.S. facilitated and cheered at the time.

The public television program POV will be airing the Oscar-nominated The Act of Killing on October 6 (and you can watch it on POV's website from October 7-21) and the film is available for online streaming and purchase elsewhere. The Look of Silence, a companion film currently showing at film festivals, focuses on the victims. It follows the investigation by Adi Rukun into the murder of his older brother who was killed during the violence.

These powerful films tell us much about Indonesia today as they do about the past. However, any evaluation of the events of 1965-1967 must include a discussion of the role of Western powers in the violence, including that of the United States. The East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) continues to call for accountability for those in the West who encouraged and assisted in the mass violence in Indonesia. The full truth must come out and the U.S. should declassify all files related to Suharto's U.S.-backed seizure of power and the murderous events which followed.

ETAN has prepared a backgrounder on the events and aftermath of Suharto's brutal seizure of power, where we focus on the U.S. role and responsibility. Read Breaking the Silence: The U.S. and Indonesia's Mass Violence.

What You Can Do

 
The World Bank gave $30 billion to a dictator who killed 1 million. ETAN projected the film on World Bank headquarters in Washington to highlight international complicity in Indonesia's mass violence. Photo by Dakota Bell.  

1) Sign the petition urging the U.S. government to take two immediate steps:

a) declassify and release all documents related to the U.S. role in the 1965/66 mass violence, including the CIA's so-called "job files." These detail its covert operations,

b) and formally acknowledge the U.S. role in facilitating the 1965-66 violence and its subsequent support for the brutalities of the Suharto regime.

2) Watch The Act of Killing and write a letter to the editor about the need for the U.S. take responsibility for its role in the mass violence in Indonesia. We will have some sample letters available by the weekend, but it is better to write your own. Feel free to use ETAN's Backgrounder: Breaking the Silence: The U.S. and Indonesia's Mass Violence, if you do so.

3) If you are high school teacher or college professor teaching an appropriate subject, consider assigning The Act of Killing to your students. Use it as a springboard for discussions on the impact of U.S. foreign policy, the need to address human rights violations, and how the past affects the present. (Contact: Chris Lundry for further info or assistance.)

4) Support ETAN. We need your support to continue our work for justice and accountability. Please donate today.

Donate to ETAN!

For more information see http://www.etan.org

About THE ACT OF KILLING

In The Act of Killing, directed by Joshua Oppenheimer and executive produced by Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, the filmmakers expose a corrupt regime that celebrates death squad leaders as heroes.

When the Indonesian government was overthrown in 1965, small-time gangster Anwar Congo and his friends went from selling movie tickets on the black market to leading death squads in the mass murder of over a million opponents of the new military dictatorship. Anwar boasts of killing hundreds with his own hands, but he's enjoyed impunity ever since, and has been celebrated by the Indonesian government as a national hero. When approached to make a film about their role in the genocide, Anwar and his friends eagerly comply—but their idea of being in a movie is not to provide reflective testimony. Instead, they re-create their real-life killings as they dance their way through musical sequences, twist arms in film noir gangster scenes, and gallop across prairies as Western cowboys. Through this filmmaking process, the moral reality of the act of killing begins to haunt Anwar and his friends with varying degrees of acknowledgment, justification and denial. More information about the film can be found at http://actofkilling.com/.

The Act of Killing
 

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Donate to ETAN!

Become an ETAN Sustainer, make a pledge via credit card here

Bookmark and Share

Background | Take Action | News | Links | What You Can Do | Resources  | Contact

ETAN Store | Estafeta | ImagesHome | Timor Postings | Search | Site Index |

Follow ETAN
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