Indonesians recount role in communist slaughter
The men bound the thumbs of dozens of suspected communists behind their backs with banana leaves and drove them to a torch-lit jungle clearing. As villagers jeered, the prisoners were killed, one by one.
"There was no resistance," remembers Sulchan, then the 21-year-old deputy commander of an Islamic youth militia. "All of them had their throats cut with a long sword."
Sulchan was a killer in one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century, where up to half a million people were massacred in 1965-66 in a purge of communists which was backed by the United States government. The bloodbath swept into power the dictator Suharto, who ruled for three decades. Today, Indonesian history books make no mention of any deaths, and government and military officials depict what happened as a necessary national uprising against a communist threat.
In a series of interviews with The Associated Press, Sulchan and three other killers said the massacres were in fact a carefully planned and executed state operation and described some of its horrors for the first time. In their rare testimony, all the men spoke of what they did with detachment and often pride, and expressed no regret at what they described as defending their country and religion, Islam.
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"There was no resistance," remembers Sulchan, then the 21-year-old deputy commander of an Islamic youth militia. "All of them had their throats cut with a long sword."
Sulchan was a killer in one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century, where up to half a million people were massacred in 1965-66 in a purge of communists which was backed by the United States government. The bloodbath swept into power the dictator Suharto, who ruled for three decades. Today, Indonesian history books make no mention of any deaths, and government and military officials depict what happened as a necessary national uprising against a communist threat.
In a series of interviews with The Associated Press, Sulchan and three other killers said the massacres were in fact a carefully planned and executed state operation and described some of its horrors for the first time. In their rare testimony, all the men spoke of what they did with detachment and often pride, and expressed no regret at what they described as defending their country and religion, Islam.