By Nithin Coca
Fifty years ago this week Indonesia experienced one of the 20th century’s darkest moments.
In the heart of Medan, Indonesia third largest city and the setting for much of Joshua Oppenheimer’s Oscar-nominated documentary The Act of Killing, is a meticulously maintained, but quiet memorial. From a distance it looks similar to the war memorials scattered throughout Western countries.
What it commemorates, though, is one of the 20th century’s darkest moments. The Monumen Perjuangan 66 has on its white-plastered sides visual depictions of the military-led crackdown that resulted in the deaths of an estimated 500,000 to 2 million Indonesians.
This week saw the 50th anniversary of the aborted coup that led to the mass killings, which have been depicted as an act of heroism on the Medan memorial. Killings for which, today, few have been held responsible and which remain a rarely discussed and barely understood topic in now democratic Indonesia.
“The world has to understand that this was genocide, and the world has to take responsibility,” said Saskia E. Wieringa, professor at the University of Amsterdam and Chair of the International People’s Tribunal 1965.
Read the full story at The Diplomat