Click to expand Image A discussion about the 1965-1966 massacres in a Jakarta bookstore with Martin Aleida, a former political prisoner (a journalist of the Harian Rakjat, a mouthpiece of the Communist Party of Indonesia), Nani Nurrachman Sutojo (the daughter of a general killed by the September 30th Movement), and Eunike Sri Tyas Suci, a psychologist who edited a book on the traumas of the victims, September 30, 2025. © 2025 Andreas Harsono/Human Rights Watch Tari Lang in her new memoir recalls the morning of October 1, 1965, when as a 14-year-old, she had watched Indonesian tanks and soldiers sweep into the elite neighborhood in Jakarta where she lived with her Indonesian father and British mother. When she ran to tell her parents, “[t]hey fell silent,” she writes, “just looking at each other.” The previous day, soldiers had kidnapped and murdered six army generals, claiming they were carrying out a pre-emptive coup to protect the president at the time, Sukarno. The coup failed, but the army and its supporters responded with a vengeance against those considered responsible and perceived political enemies. With the backdrop of the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union, the army brutally purged suspected members and sympathizers of the Communist Party of Indonesia.Tari Lang’s parents were among the million people imprisoned. At least 500,000 were killed or executed. Gen. Soeharto, who led the government onslaught, replaced Sukarno as president and ruled for the next 33 years.The 1965-66 massacres were among the darkest days in Indonesian history. Marxism and communism remain banned in the country and continue to be applied to target critics of the government.No one was ever held to account for the mass killings. Successive Indonesian governments made vague promises that they failed to keep, including former President Joko Widodo, who in 2023 announced that a “non-judiciary mechanism” would provide reparations to the victims or their descendants. Bedjo Untung of the 1965 Murder Victims Research Foundation in Jakarta told Human Rights Watch that “not a single 1965 survivor or family could get a court decision to document what they had suffered.” Since President Prabowo Subianto Djojohadikusumo took office in October 2024, his government has sought to rewrite history, including the anti-communist mass violence. The impunity for those crimes still fuels human rights violations throughout the country.Lang’s mother, Carmel Budiardjo, was deported to the United Kingdom in 1970 and became a prominent human rights activist. Her father, Suwondo, was only reunited with his family in 1978. But for many Indonesians, uncertainty about what befell their loved ones remains. Instead of ignoring the legacy of the massacres, the Prabowo government should meaningfully work toward delivering justice. Sixty years isn’t too late.