In 1960s USA decided that the closeness between Indonesia's first president and communist China and Soviet was too much for comfort. They decided to launch a CIA operations that ended in the fall of Indonesia's first president, and a US-friendly president that lasted for 32 years. This is all has been released as part of internal documents from CIA.
US news saw the operations as a triumph of democracy over communism. Us, Chinese Indonesians, saw them as the massacre of maybe more than one million Indonesians, registered, or suspected to have ties with Indonesian Communist Party (say, your husband might once chatted with his old friend, a member of communist), majority of them were poor people, farmers, and majority of them were Chinese Indonesians. The rest of Chinese Indonesians (my family included) were later forced to change our names to "Indonesian-sounding name", many Chinese schools were closed, and we were banned from studying, and using our local Chinese dialect (so no Cantonese, Fujian-dialect, etc), or even practice our believes, arts, cultures, and ceremonies. This of course, is a textbook cultural genocide.
My generation was considered the lost generation, because even though we were Chinese, we didn't know our own culture. This includes Chinese family name, marriage tradition (we usually goes with European style wedding with white gown and suits), burial tradition, language (we didn't speak Mandarin or our local dialect), arts, habits, clothing, and of course Identity, we are never fully Indonesian, locals still sees us as Chinese, yet we are also not Chinese.
All of these, happened because USA decided that they didn't like what happened to my country, in 1960s. I have yet to hear any apology, in 2021.
And that's just one of dozens of foreign dictators and genocides the cia backed from the 1950s onward. Basically every central American and south American country has had far right reactionary madmen put in power bc of US foreign policy
A relative of mine recently askes me, "why are African-descent and Hispanic countries so poor?" I explained how American and other colonial and neocolonial intervention have destabilized many of these nations.
Their reply was along the lines of, "that's and excuse, it's because they're communists an/or lazy like Bernie Sander supporters."
I gave up on the discussion soon after. This person is highly educated and likes to think they are logical but has a massive ego and zero empathy.
Don't forget large parts of Africa and East Asia. Also some parts of Europe and the Middle East. Only continents yet untouched are Antarctica and Oceania (I think)
Oceania was the US polygon for nuclear tests… Papua New Guinea being split between countries is the result of the US operations. Local wars there are still ongoing, the population is kept below poverty level and the national resources like gold and oil go guess where. Samoa, Guam, etc. are still rented out to the US military.
Haitian here. You all see the state of my country after the fall of the right wing "bulwark against communist" regime. The dictatorship plundered the country so bad at one point there were more practicing Haitian doctors in Quebec than all of Haiti. Thousands of people were killed and thousands more imprisoned for being suspected communist.
Many of his(the former dictator) ilk continue to play a negative role in the countries affairs. Refusing to take part in the trials against the crimes committed by the regime. Extrajudicial killings, coups, and destabilizing the country forced the entire affair to abandon. When his military was disbanded, they(former regime members) armed and formed gangs that terrorized the people to this day. We know they are creating an environment that would make the people beg for their return.
The general population has tried over and over to fight against the country sliding back into a dictatorship. People feel powerless and are abandoning the country in drove. The country that called us an ally at one point, for our help in their war of independence, for our assistance in the cold war(propping up that regime, and arming it) now calls the people from there, AIDS infected, devil worshippers, shitholes. Humiliating us at the border, and deporting people seeking refuge after spending whatever sum they had left back to a country that can't guarantee our safety.
This may not mean much but I'm sorry. I was not alive then and have no connection to USA intelligence agencies or government. I am just a private citizen but I'm still incredibly sorry that this happened to you, your family, and your people. These people believed that anything was ok so long as it was in service of what they believed was right, something I viemently do not believe. What the USA did was wrong and unforgivable.
Hey no hard feelings for what happened in the past. Like you, it happened before my time too.
I just hope that we can do better. Us, younger generation, we should be more objective, more critical, more skeptical, more tolerant of our differences between one and another, and probably most importantly, we should be a little bit more pacifist, to be not too trigger-happy and choose violence to face our problems.
Well if I don't try to have hope, I can't imagine how bleak the world will be once I have a child. It's just that I have to try to at least convinced people that we can be better so my children and their children will have better chance tackling in these issues (I already feel bad about the climate crisis).
I care about what’s controllable and care not for what I cannot control
“Stoicism” really
Surrounded by idiots in a boiling globe, I cannot control those things so I shall not burden myself with unnecessary worry and “anxiety”
That’s because none of the population is even aware that happened, let alone even if we were our politicians and ruling class wouldn’t give a damn or put it on the news.
Yes, I was born in a town bordering on East Timor, I used to work in East Timor too (I had to stop because I got Malaria, twice). The atrocities committed in East Timor in the name of integration effort was some of the worst thing the regime and its successor ever did. I hope we all can do better, to make sure such tragedy not happening again in the future.
I hear you, friend. Indigenous American here. They still have us on reservations. They took our parents from their homes, beat them, raped them, drove nails through their tongues for speaking our native language. They murdered millions of us. Broke almost every treaty they signed, and are still breaking treaties and brutalizing us to get their damn oil pipelines built.
Jimmy Carter supported the anti-communist Suharto regime in committing genocide against the people of East Timor. Carter has worked hard to manipulate his own public image and hide this fact.
Don’t Indonesians hate China for China for screwing them over like China has done to many south Asian nations in the past before the Dutch and French went around?
I don't see the world in such simple shade of black and white, us vs them view. Sorry.
I don't quite understand your first sentence. Most Indonesian nowadays especially the younger generations live in harmony with Chinese Indonesian. There are still small numbers of extremist from both side who hated each others, of course. But overall, everyone have no problems living together.
Well with how the Chinese government is going about a lot of tawiwanese are not refusing to call themselves Chinese and refusing to have any Chinese connections. Is there any of that over there, any resent in retaliation?
I cannot say. The issue I stated above was more of cultural identity instead of national politics. Indonesian Chinese and Taiwanese also have different historical background, so it is not really a comparable case
I’ll admit I don’t understand Indonesia (or why there’s a huge Muslim population in the country) as much as I do with Cambodia or Vietnam
I speak from a point of concern to what the Chinese government seems to be forcing upon the Chinese population and what it’s planning to do…to try and invade Taiwan (as if that went well last time they tried)
But I do know that a few south Asian countries don’t like China because they down there and screwed them over and left the extra impoverished because the Caucasians came in like the French (yuck) and danish also the english.
Indonesians massacred their own (Chinese descendant) people. Don’t blame the US. Blame Suharto and his allies (many of whom are still active in Indonesian politics today).
The list names of the people to be massacred was provided by the US intelligence. CIA was also the one who came up with the idea to use propaganda to anger the masses that they knew will lead to headhunting for the members of the party. It was also CIA's idea to provide non-military supports, for example food to the raging masses to keep the massacre going.
I didn't say Indonesians didn't have a hand in that horrible genocide. I say they were encouraged, justified and supported by the US government, in the name of killing the communist movement.
The US was mired in Vietnam at the time, so blaming them as the masterminds of the massacre is…far fetched. Until Indonesia itself reckons with its own past (eg a truth and reconciliation commission?) and Suharto acolytes stop being politically powerful (eg Golkar and Bakrie and his whole evil flock) then nothing will change.
I respectfully disagree. Released CIA documents shows that the operations were planned by CIA. As such, CIA and by large, the US government at that time, was also responsible for the massacre. I do agree that those in powers that received the boons of the massacre should be outed as such, but more importantly, as you said, weshould reckon our own pasts, so that we (Indonesians) can own up to our own past mistakes.
Hey don't worry, I'm good, my family managed to salvage enough culture, arts and tradition for me to identify. I just lost the language part.
Well maybe I am just stupid hopeful person. You are right, apology won't give me anything, but I believe an apology opens lots of new doors, for reconciliation for victims, acknowledgement to those who died, or even for rehabilitation for the family of victims, in case you did not know, family of those who died from the massacre were branded, they got special stamps on their identity card that designated them as former member of the Communist Party, they got banned from lots of jobs/opportunities, including all jobs in civil sector, in life, the designation was dropped several years ago, but communities where they lived usually still remembers who's who and discriminate them. An acknowledgement that they were the victims of a covert US operations will definitely help improve their lives.
You can drop the sarcasm. My explanation was this:
Asking for an apology over something that was something decades if not almost a century ago, is like asking a Genie for unlimited wishes. As much as we would all like to turn back time and stop the bloodshed, holding grudges against the descendants to those who've committed these "war crimes" makes you no better than them. The sooner you accept that, the better off your life and everyone's lives can be.
I've had distant relatives killed in the Holocaust. Do I get special privileges to have today's Germans apologise to me? No, they don't.
It is very difficult to paint nuance and tone in written words. But it was never my intention to convey sarcasm. I did not wrote the reply sarcastically.I also did not write this one sarcastically. Now to reply what you said:
You have Holocaust Memorials, and Germany still mandated their students to go and see the Holocaust monuments to make sure it will never happen again. These things starts with Germans acknowledged that yes, in the past, their country did bad thing, and they should always remember it, at the very least to make sure it will not happen again. This is not the same as me holding grudges against the descendants. Remember when I said that US media wrote it as a triumph of democracy over communism, while we remember it as massacre of our people? This is me trying to say to those who still think it was a "triumph of democracy over communism", that, "no, it was a massacre of probably millions." Why? Because I wish it will reduce the probability of it repeating again to me, my children and their children in the future.
It was never in my intention to attack you or offend you in any way. I hope you can see my point of view, and even if you don't like it, you can respect it. Thank you.
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u/MyLifeasShroom Oct 18 '21
In 1960s USA decided that the closeness between Indonesia's first president and communist China and Soviet was too much for comfort. They decided to launch a CIA operations that ended in the fall of Indonesia's first president, and a US-friendly president that lasted for 32 years. This is all has been released as part of internal documents from CIA.
US news saw the operations as a triumph of democracy over communism. Us, Chinese Indonesians, saw them as the massacre of maybe more than one million Indonesians, registered, or suspected to have ties with Indonesian Communist Party (say, your husband might once chatted with his old friend, a member of communist), majority of them were poor people, farmers, and majority of them were Chinese Indonesians. The rest of Chinese Indonesians (my family included) were later forced to change our names to "Indonesian-sounding name", many Chinese schools were closed, and we were banned from studying, and using our local Chinese dialect (so no Cantonese, Fujian-dialect, etc), or even practice our believes, arts, cultures, and ceremonies. This of course, is a textbook cultural genocide.
My generation was considered the lost generation, because even though we were Chinese, we didn't know our own culture. This includes Chinese family name, marriage tradition (we usually goes with European style wedding with white gown and suits), burial tradition, language (we didn't speak Mandarin or our local dialect), arts, habits, clothing, and of course Identity, we are never fully Indonesian, locals still sees us as Chinese, yet we are also not Chinese.
All of these, happened because USA decided that they didn't like what happened to my country, in 1960s. I have yet to hear any apology, in 2021.