West Sumatra: Police attacks a group of elderly communist veterans
Jakarta (AsiaNews) - Veterans and supporters of the former Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) were targeted by police and security forces who intervened in a demonstration dispersing the group. The incident occurred last February 22 in a neighborhood of Bukittinggi, West Sumatra province.
A hundred people, mostly aged between 60 and 90, had gathered to remember the victims of the 1965 clashes and the subsequent military purges. However, the security forces intervened and - as has happened on other occasions - dispersed the crowd with the use of violence on defenseless citizens.
The meeting of the veterans had been called to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the birth of the so-called Research Foundation for the victims and the murders of 1965 (Ypkp). The event was attended by at least 200 people, mostly elderly men and women, relatives of the victims of the violence or political prisoners of those years.
Although finding themselves in front of helpless elderly, the police and their thugs did not hesitate to use force. Hariz Azhar, human rights activist, speaks of "several people fainting, falling to the ground unconscious from severe beatings. These are people between 65 and 90 years of age".
In Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation in the world, any link with communism or membership (in the past) of the disbanded PKI is still cause for controversy today, decades later. The attempted coup promoted September 30, 1965 by groups diverted intelligence, linked to the Communist Party of Indonesia, with the aim to depose the president Sukarno, has left an indelible mark in the recent history of the nation. The day is still remembered as a national tragedy.
The subsequent rise to power of Suharto, who between 1967 and 1998 led the country with an iron fist, resulted in a witch hunt for members of the party and its sympathizers, who were locked up in prison and persecuted with violence and brutality. Many of the affiliates were sent into exile on the island-prison in Buru (the Indonesian Alcatraz), in the province of Maluku, without even a fair trial or the right to defense in court.
Under the Suharto regime - backed by the USA, the CIA and the West in an anti-Soviet and anti-Chinese vein - at least two million people were killed or disappeared without a trace, related or suspected of sympathizing with the local Communist movement. A climate of mistrust, hostility and even persecution of former members of the party and the same political prisoners endures, in particular among police and army officers.
According to the Commission on Missing and Victims of Gang Violence (Kontras), in Indonesia alone in 2014 there were at least three incidents of direct attacks against veterans and former communist sympathizers. The controversy on the use of force against the meeting of communist veterans has even swept up the President of the Republic. In fact, although Joko "Jokowi" Widodo is not directly responsible for the attacks, and in particular the latest in West Sumatra, he stands accused of failing to defend the right to freedom speech and of thought.
In recent weeks, The head of state's consensus has reached a record minimum, partly because of the contrasts in the fight against corruption and apparent inability to manage the political pressure exerted by parties closest to him.
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