The Two Faces of Dipa Nusantara
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
FOR the past 42 years he has been remembered with feelings of hatred, yet with astonishment. Dipa Nusantara Aidit was only 31 years old when he led the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). He only needed a year or two to make the PKI one of the top four political parties in Indonesia. The PKI claimed 3.5 million supporters at that time, which would have made it the largest communist party in the world after the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Aidit dreamed of a revolution, envisioning a classless Indonesian society. However, he was undone by the cataclysmic events of 1965. After that, he became a myth. Just like the events of the September 30 Movement, known in Indonesia as the G30S, the stories about him are filled with myths and tales. Who was the real Aidit?
arsip tempo : 172850879631.
FOR years, people knew him as an “evil” man. He was poker-faced and fidgety, his lips continuously billowing cigarette smoke. For years the following phrases have been ascribed to him: “Java is the key...”; “Our hour is four in the morning..”; and “We cannot be late...!”
In the 1980s film Treason of the G30S/PKI, the role of Dipa Nusantara Aidit, Chairman of the PKI, was played by Syu’bah Asa, an artist and a reporter. Every yea
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