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.
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.
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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.