Roads to Reconciliation

The massacre of close to half a million people, which began after a failed coup attempt led to the killing of Army generals on September 30, 1965, is the darkest chapter in the history of modern Indonesia. To this day, there has never been an acceptable accounting for the killings, most of whom were members and suspected followers of the now-banned Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI). In July, the International People's Tribunal in The Hague, the Netherlands, concluded that the state must bear responsibility for the killings, a verdict rejected by the Indonesian government, which adamantly refuses to issue any apology, stalling reconciliation efforts at the national level. In Central Sulawesi, the mayor of Palu publicly apologized to victims living in his area and launched an ongoing public discourse on the tragedy. Meanwhile, in Bali, an exhumation of mass graves in one village and giving the bodies a proper burial was one way of reconciling with the tragic past. A Tempo English special report.