Hermawan Sulistyo - Palu Arit Di Ladang Tebu
>> Sabtu, 24 Januari 2009
This book was written by Hermawan sulistyo to give a clearly explanantion about the dark periode during the mass killing of Indonesian Communism Party(PKI)'s sympathizers Between 1965 - 1966 in East Java. Vioelence action in indonesia that proceed from political reason really got the long complicated roots of history. Ironically, there just a few of research about this one in Indonesia and so there are no definitely explanation about the tragedy. This book tell that the main conflict was between some of Indonesian Islamic organizations based on East Java and PKI's sympathizers. The conflict between them had been going on for a long time and the peak was after the killing of seven top Indonesian Armed Forces Generals. The incident was trigerring all of Indonesian people to put the blame on PKI, which before the incident, there are some rumours heard by Soekarno ( The First Indonesian President) that would be a rebellion action by some Indonesian Armed Forces Generals. And in fact that all of those rumours was floated to the surface by PKI. And after Soeharto got the "SUPERSEMAR" ( The Controversial document which the real paper was gone and disappear containt agreement from Soekarno to gave an authority for Soeharto to do anything that needed to control the situation and keep the national security ). And Soeharto declared that Indonesian Communist Party as a forbiden politic party ( untill now ) in Indonesia for the first action. This action was followed by doing a mass killing of PKI's member. And sporadically, the mass killing was hapened In every part of the country, and the biggest was in East Java especially in Jombang & Kediri. And in these cities, the writer doing a long research, collecting data, interviewing some Historical witness and even the subject who did the killing. And the research shows that the killings wasn't done systematically. Some sources said that almost one million people were killed in this tragedy, but the official source said that there were only 250 victims.
In conclusion, lets turn aside from the debate, the main point is; this book gave us a worth clearly explanation about the big dark tragedy that hapened in a particular period of this nation history. And in political cuture's point of view, this book also gave us a picture of politic's situation in Indonesia in 70's decade and the impact to Indonesian people not just who were exist at that time but also the indonesian people nowadays as well.