Memory Studies and Human Rights in Indonesia

Abstract

The field of memory studies focuses primarily on attempts to recall or address abuses of human rights. Because of its emphasis on temporality and the politics of the past, memory studies encourages us to question how, when and why individuals and collectives turn towards the past to engage in expressions of regret or social repair in response to historical injustice. In the case of survivors of violence there are obvious reasons to appeal to the discourse of human rights, but there also appear to be triggers, in cases of communities that have played a role in past violence, for re-examining the past. Through case studies of young activists who are dedicated to researching the 1965-68 anti-communist violence in Indonesia, I will explore what memory studies can offer to our understanding of human rights activism. The young activists on whom I focus are all connected with Indonesia's largest religious organisation, the Nahdlatul Ulama (Revival of Islamic Scholars), which played a key role in the 1965-68 anti-communist violence. In this paper I will explore what motivated two activists from a so-called "implicated community" (Morris-Suzuki, 2005) to engage in a quest for social justice for long-marginalised members of society.

Purifying Indonesia, Purifying Women: The National Commission for Women's Rights and the 1965–1968 anti‐Communist violence

“…Their proof was the 1998 riots. They are also drawing a direct line to recent trends of decreased religious tolerance that have led to lethal attacks on groups labeled as deviant, such as the Ahmadiyyah and Shi'ite Muslims (McGregor : 358). Communists were called “deviant” ( sesat ) as well.…”

“…As Katharine McGregor observed: “Children and grandchildren of those killed and of political prisoners in Indonesia were stigmatized in society as being of an ‘unclean environment’”(2013: 353). Decades later, some grandchildren could be denied permission to register for the pilgrimage to Mecca on the premise of being “unclean” (McGregor : 354).…”

Traumatic Experiences in Eka Kurniawan's Novel Seperti Dendam, Rindu Harus Dibayar Tuntas

“…Although as a present generation, we don't have the experience of trauma directly as the Indonesian facing the mass killing of 1965 (known as G30S PKI) or the reformation riot in 1998. We are affected by and are indirectly responsible for those traumatic events because we grow up with those histories to borrow Morris-Suzuki's term, we are "an implicated community" which may not be responsible for such acts of aggression in the sense of having caused them, but we are "implicated" in them, in the sense that they cause us (McGregor, 2013). In this case, authors also indirectly feel that they are part of the "implicated community" who responsible for the traumatic event or events, and thus influence the authors to write the traumatic experience in fiction to represent the history of violence in Indonesia.…”

Contesting Victimhood in the Indonesian Anti-Communist Violence and Its Implications for Justice for the Victims of the 1968 South Blitar Trisula Operation in East Java

“…Claims to victimhood have arisen from within what Katharine McGregor refers to as "implicated communities," namely Indonesia's largest Islamic organization, the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), an organization more commonly associated with the perpetration of violence against the left. 16 There are two motivations for NU members' claims to victimhood and these are quite opposed to one another, involving different claimants. The first motivation is to exonerate perpetrators altogether and to maintain NU's importance as an organization to the founding of the New Order regime.…”