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Indonesians Say U.S. Cannot Hide Bloody History
JAKARTA, June 29 (News Agencies) - An attempt by Washington to recall an official history book highlighting the U.S.'s role in a bloody purge of communists in Indonesia in the 1960s is a pointless exercise, local political analysts said Sunday.
"It is meaningless, as you cannot hide history just like that," said Dewi Fortuna Anwar, of Indonesia's Habibie Center political think tank.
The U.S. move was probably motivated by a desire not to ruffle feathers in Indonesia, as the period in question covered the fall of the country's first president, Sukarno - whose daughter, Megawati Sukarnoputri, was installed as the country's leader only six days ago - the analysts said.
Documents within in the U.S. State Department history of Indonesia show Washington helped finance death squads and compiled a record of leading communists that was used by the Jakarta government as a hit list.
According to estimates, between 100,000 and one million Indonesians were killed by soldiers and fellow citizens in the purges.
The campaign was led by then-lieutenant general Suharto, who in 1965 took the presidency, toppling Sukarno. Suharto then ruled as a dictator until 1998.
"I think some in Washington think that ties with the new (Indonesian) government should not be harmed, since Megawati is the daughter of Sukarno," said political analyst Kusnanto Anggoro of the private Center of Strategic and International Studies.
"It is more for the sake of stability in the relations," he added.
However, he said the move would not greatly affect ties since the contents of the documents had already been known since the latter half of the 1990s.
The Habibie Center's Anwar also said the attempt to recall the already widely-distributed history books - an exercise one U.S. observer called "trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube" - was due to Indonesia's current political situation.
"Maybe the documents were pulled back so as not to cause problems with the new government," she said.
The declassified documents have already been posted on the Internet by the National Security Archive, a research group at George Washington University in the U.S.
They show that a U.S. list of leaders of the Indonesia Communist Party (PKI) had apparently been used by the Indonesian security authorities in their campaign.
They also reveal that the embassy had made a covert payment to a group active in the repressive efforts against the PKI.
Megawati became president on Monday after a vote by Indonesia's parliament, which simultaneously ejected her predecessor, Abdurrahman Wahid, the country's first democratically-elected leader.
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