The end of silence

In 1965-1967, one to two million people were murdered by Soeharto's army in Indonesia in the name of the communist suppression. Over fifty years later, the victims are still stigmatized, and the pain and terror of the atrocities continues to haunt not only the victims but also their families. This book contains memoirs of the victims and the victims' families, and reveals how the strategy of Soeharto and his Western allies was so powerfully and effectively sustained that many former victims have been transformed into agents that preserve the very ideology that has persecuted them. It is no surprise that the most persistent challenges that many of my respondents had to face in revealing the truth about their families' histories came from members of their own families, who had themselves been victimized by the 1965 atrocities, and who are still afraid to speak out.