The Perpetrator's Allegory: Historical Memories and the Killings of 1965

Abstract: Joshua Oppenheimer's diptych on the legacy of the 1965 anti-communist killings in Indonesia provides scholars and researchers with insights into the lives of the victims and the so-called perpetrators. Several publications and academic volumes have sprung forth from this but remain still ham-strung as that their analysis remains tied to that of Oppenheimer's production. I propose to build on these discussions by asking: how do these perpetrators remember the killings of 1965? From a preliminary analysis of data available, I posit that there is a certain level of 'ambivalence' over the roles they have played in the killings. As such, I posit that these supposedly 'evil-doers' suffer from a form of trauma and therefore complicates our categories of perpetrator, victim and bystander. In my paper, I also state that we can also glean from investigating perpetrator narratives, Indonesia's troubled path in dealing with a violent past. This paper will rely on oral interviews as well as media clippings from various sources in Indonesian. Perpetrators of the 1965 killings in Indonesia violated fundamental religious and social norms. In this article I explore their memories of those events, as revealed in their narratives and oral statements many years later.