Did you know that a million people were slaughtered by genocide in Indonesia less than fifty years ago?
I didn’t think so.
Until I watched Joshua Oppenheimer’s film, The Act of Killing, I didn’t know either.
Throughout the second half of the last century, America and the rest of the Western world were obsessed with the idea of the “domino” effect of the spread of communism throughout the world. We all know about the war in Vietnam and why it began. At least a million Vietnamese people died in that war. Just as many Indonesians were victims of the wave of anti-communist fervour in the Southeast Asia, and no one talks about it.
There is a reason you are not aware of this horrifying historical event. This is because most Indonesians don’t know about it either. Stories about this time have been wiped from Indonesia’s consciousness, and the world’s, in perhaps the best example of the old adage that history is written by the victors. Suharto replaced Sukarno, then carried out and successfully erased all evidence of a genocide that was sanctioned by the United States. So who were its targets?
Communists.
Like the witch-hunts of medieval times, almost anybody could be labeled a communist. As the opening of the film explains, it was really enemies of the ruling military dictatorship who were the victims of this genocide: union members, intellectuals, ethnic Chinese. In the end, over one million so-called communists were dead. ‘Communist’ became a watchword for any minority or any individual not in favour with the government.
Don’t watch this if you want to know all of the historical facts, because aside from the bare basics, you’re not going to get them. This film does not really go into these details. In what is perhaps the most chilling documentary ever made, Oppenheimer does not just interview the killers, the men responsible for the genocide. He asks them to act it out. And they do it with relish, with pride, and with joy.
“We were allowed to do it. And the proof is, we murdered people and were never punished. The people we killed—there’s nothing to be done about it. They have to accept it. Maybe I’m just trying to make myself feel better, but it works. I’ve never felt guilty, never been depressed, never had nightmares.”
Adi Zulkadry speaks these words while he and his attractive family wander a bright shopping mall, pausing to look at expensive watches and coats.
Anwar Congo, who along with Zulkadry is the main focus of Oppenheimer’s documentary, is always conscious of the camera. He poses. During the genocide, Congo played at being an American gangster, like the ones he saw in films as an adolescent. He took that role to its absolute end. Decades later he reenacts it for Oppenheimer and, at first, has a marvelous time.
Anwar Congo reenacts murder.
At the end of this process, Congo sits down to watch what has been filmed for The Act of Killing. At first, he is pleased. “This is great, Joshua,” he says with glee, but he becomes more reflective as the film continues. Congo asks Oppenheimer if his torture victims would have felt as he did when he played at being a torture victim. Oppenheimer says, that, well, they would have felt worse, because they knew they were going to die, when you knew you were just pretending. This lesson in empathy appears to shock Congo. He wonders out loud, “did I sin?” The Act of Killing ends with Congo diminished and dry retching, a far cry from the man we first met.
And it seems real.
Literate World 