Last month, Indonesia held a historic symposium on the 1965 mass killings that was seen as the first step into some form of reconciliation between the government and the 500 thousand to 1 million victims of an anti-communist purge and their families. This sparked an anti-communist panic in Indonesia, stirred up largely by military officials and extremist groups, who today are holding their own anti-communist counter symposium, titled, “Securing Pancasila From the Threat of the Re-Awakened Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and Other Ideologies”, in Jakarta.
We’re sure that many scaremongering and unfounded claims were and are being made in this event, but few would be able to top the claims of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), who are, of course, co-hosting the symposium (apart from an ex-army general who said that communism is more dangerous than terrorism).
When it came to his turn to speak, the Grand Imam of the FPI, Habib Rizieq Shihab, spoke of his absolute certainty of the awakening of the PKI in Indonesia, despite offering no concrete evidence for his claim.
“It’s nonsense when people say PKI is not rising, that they have disappeared. PKI will rise again, they will smash us if we don’t line up [to face them],” he said, as quoted by Detik.
The “evidence” he gave for PKI’s uprising include the removal of the story of PKI’s treason against the nation from school history books and how the government is entertaining the idea to erase the mandate that citizens must disclose their religions on their KTP ID cards.
But no, he did not even say if he ever saw a bunch of PKI members hanging out a coffee shop or wherever it is these imaginary people spend their time.
Yet it’s a fact that the PKI exists, dammit!
“Our children no longer know about the savages that are the PKI. That is a factual indication of their uprising,” Habib Rizieq said.
If you want to hear more of these kinds of arguments from the FPI and about 70 other mass organization groups, the counter symposium runs until tomorrow at Balai Kartini in Setiabudi, South Jakarta.
