DECLARATION OF THE 1965 COMMEMORATION COMMITTEE
18 September 2005
We, the 1965 Commemoration Committee have so constituted ourselves for the purpose of commemorating the massacres that occurred in Indonesia in 1965 and 1966 and that paved the way for a pro-US military fascist dictatorship of General Suharto. The events of 1965 and onwards are related to the colonial history of Indonesia. In the roundtable conference of 1949 Indonesia did not attain full independence which led to neo-colonialism.
We consider this commemoration of great importance. We wish to learn from the lessons of history. We wish to arouse and mobilize international solidarity and support for the Indonesian people in their continuing struggle for national liberation and democracy and for the rendering of justice to the parties, organizations and individuals whose human rights were violated by the pro-imperialist military fascists. We urge the full documentation, recognition and rehabilitation of the victims and honor those who were unjustly murdered, imprisoned and deprived of their rights.
We also wish to reaffirm the significant role that the Indonesian people under the leadership of President Sukarno and the broad united front of the Indonesian people, including nationalists, religious believers, socialists and communists, played in Indonesia and in the inter-continental struggle of oppressed peoples and nations for national independence against colonialism, imperialism and neocolonialism. Indonesia played a key role in organizing the Bandung Conference in 1955 that gave birth to the Non-aligned Movement which embodied the aspirations of newly independent nations to chart their own course free from neocolonial and imperialist domination.
This earned for Sukarno, the progressive forces and the Indonesian people the hatred of the imperialist countries headed by the US. The imperialists did all they could to assassinate Sukarno or overthrow his government by coup d' etat and by supporting separatism in Sumatra and Sulawesi. Together with the worst of the local reactionaries, they could not tolerate the patriotic and democratic advances made by the Indonesian people and the Communist Party of Indonesia and other progressive forces.
A provocation instigated by the CIA and MI6, in collaboration with other intelligence services, carried out on 30th September was used as the pretext by Gen. Suharto to seize power with the complete support of the imperialists headed by the US. Through “death lists” provided by the CIA, Suharto ordered the massacre of at least 1.5 million communists, noncommunist progressives and other Indonesians. According to the estimate of a notorious general involved in the anti-communist suppression, three million people were massacred.
Under the pretext of anti-communism, Suharto imposed a brutal military fascist dictatorship on the Indonesian people, suppressing their democratic rights and serving imperialism by handing over to it the vast natural resources of Indonesia and all major lines of business. The US, British and Dutch oil interests benefited most from the massacres and other colossal violations of human rights. They were behind the suppression of the national and democratic rights and interests of the Indonesian people for the sake of imperialist plunder.
Our commemoration has special significance today in the light of the continuing aggression of imperialism against sovereign nations, as shown by the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. Doing a repeat of the Indonesian project, US imperialism is trying to impose its neocolonial rule in Iraq by perpetrating massacres and installing a pliant puppet regime. The same US, British and Dutch oil interests are behind the same barbarities.
In the past, the imperialists and their puppets used the “communist bogey” to launch aggression against sovereign nations and to repress the people, wantonly violating human rights and all the democratic rights of the people. Today, they use the “terrorist bogey” in order to perpetrate the worst kinds of terrorism: wars of aggression and puppet regimes of open terror.
We seek justice, rehabilitation and indemnification for the victims of the Suharto regime. Those who benefited from the military fascist dictatorship must be held accountable. Among such monsters preying on the Indonesian people were the military fascist themselves and the US, British and Dutch oil interests. They must be condemned and made to pay for their crimes. Their impunity is abominable and intolerable.
We must do the utmost to rally international solidarity and support for the Indonesian people in their continuing struggle for national liberation, democracy, social justice and all-round development. We must urge and encourage them to take a major role in the struggle of the people of the world for national and social liberation and all-round progress against imperialism and reaction.