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Action
ALERT:
See/Show
The
Look
of Silence
and Take Action on U.S. Support
for Mass Violence in Indonesia
Read
ETAN's
Breaking
the Silence: The U.S. and Indonesia's
Mass Violence
Join ETAN, Sign up today!
Joint letter to the Indonesian government from
ETAN, Amnesty
International,
Tapol and Watch Indonesia!: Truth-Seeking
and Formal
Public Apology
Essential for
1965/1966
Resolution
50
years ago, on September 30,
the Indonesian army led by General
Suharto unleashed a murderous
campaign of terror against suspected
communists and alleged associates,
including activists, artists
and intellectuals, peasants'
groups and labor unions. Backed
by the U.S. and other western
countries, Suharto took over
as President and maintained
hardline authoritarian rule
in Indonesia for decades to
come.
Hundreds of thousands of victims
of the anti-communist purge
were killed, disappeared, raped
and imprisoned. Between October
1965 and March 1966, an estimated
one million people were killed
and some 1.7 million more were
imprisoned without trial. This
was one of the worst mass murders
of the 20th century.
These
crimes were committed by the
Indonesian army, as well as
by army-sponsored civilian mobs,
gangsters and para-military
groups of the kind featured
in THE LOOK OF SILENCE and THE
ACT OF KILLING.
Many of the mass murderers are
still alive today and have never
been brought to justice -- on the contrary, the killers
are celebrated as heroes. For
50 years the victims have been
asking for justice.
Indonesia
has made progress in its transition
to democracy since the downfall
of Suharto in 1998, but the
perpetrators of these and other
gross violations of human rights
and massacres
in Timor-Leste (East Timor),
Aceh, West Papua and elsewhere
have also evaded justice.
Many occupy prominent positions
in Indonesia.
ETAN is urging that the U.S.
declassify and release all documents
related to the U.S. role in
the mass violence, including
details of its covert operations.
The U.S. should formally acknowledge
its role in facilitating the
1965-66 violence and its subsequent
support for the brutal Suharto
regime .
THE
LOOK OF SILENCE
is Joshua Oppenheimer’s powerful
companion documentary to the Oscar-nominated
The Act of Killing. Through
a family that lost their eldest
son, the film explores one of
the 20th century’s deadliest
atrocities, still largely hidden
after 50 years—Indonesia’s 1965
army-led purge and killing of
as many as one million people.
The family discovers years later
(from Oppenheimer’s footage)
who killed their son and how,
and they must confront how privileged,
dangerous, and close at hand
the killers remain. The younger
son, an optometrist named Adi,
breaks the half-century of fearful
silence with an act the film
calls “unimaginable in a society
where the murderers remain in
power.” While testing the eyesight
of the men who killed his brother,
Adi confronts them. He challenges
them to accept responsibility
for their violence. Oppenheimer
writes that the film depicts
“a silence born of terror,”
and “the necessity of breaking
that silence, but also … the
trauma that comes when that
silence is broken."
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With profound sadness,
Adi watches footage
of interviews conducted
by Joshua Oppenheimer
with perpetrators of
the
1965-66 Indonesian
genocide in The Look
of Silence.
Courtesy of Drafthouse Films and Participant Media.
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Take action now!
1.Join
our call for the U.S. to
tell all it knows and acknowledge
its role in Indonesia's
mass violence
2.
Support ETAN and our campaign for
justice and
accountability
3.Host
a screening and
discussion
Going to a showing of The
Look of Silence?
Print out this
leaflet
and hand it out to the audience
PDFs:
Half-page:
8.5" x 5.5"
or
Full page -
8.5 x 11
ETAN
Talking Points/Discussion Guide:
Shatter the Silence!
5.
Spread
the word! Urge
others to take
action to shatter
the silence.
6.Learn
more about about the
killings, the U.S.
role and the
documentary
“I urge us all to
examine ourselves,
and acknowledge
that we are all
closer to perpetrators
than we like to
believe. The United
Kingdom and United
States enthusiastically
helped to engineer
the genocide, and
for decades enthusiastically
supported the military
dictatorship that
came to power through
the genocide. We
will not have an
ethical relationship
with Indonesia,
or so many countries
across the global
south going forward,
until we acknowledge
the crimes of the
past, and our collective
role in supporting,
participating in,
and, ultimately,
ignoring those crimes.”
- Joshua Oppenheimer
on accepting
the BAFTA for Best
Documentary for
The Act of Killing
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