Indonesia officials ban programmes on 1960s purge from festival

JAKARTA — In the past 12 years, the annual Ubud Writers and Readers Festival on the Indonesian resort island of Bali has earned praise for its provocative panel discussions, book introductions and film screenings.

But during this year's five-day gathering, which ended yesterday, it was what the international festival did not present that caused the biggest stir.

Just days before the gathering opened to the first of nearly 30,000 visitors, the local authorities in Ubud ordered organisers to cancel eight events related to the bloodiest period in modern Indonesian history: The killing of an estimated 500,000 or more people during state-sponsored purges of suspected Communists and their sympathisers in 1965-66.

The authorities' directive was part of a widespread pattern. Although the 50th anniversary of the trigger for those killings passed last month with little notice, aside from a few news stories, officials have lately begun cracking down on any exploration, analysis or remembrance of the purges.

Last month, the police in Central Java province confiscated and destroyed 500 copies of a university magazine featuring an in-depth report on the purges and, according to human rights activists, threatened to have the students responsible for the report expelled.

All told, there have been at least 27 similar events in the past year, including intimidation, threats and official prohibitions by the police, the armed forces and government agencies, according to the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy, a rights advocacy group in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital.

A local military command in the Central Java city of Yogyakarta even confiscated 27 toys from vendors that had "Communist" symbols, including the flag of the former Soviet Union, fearing they would prompt children to explore the ideology, The Jakarta Globe newspaper reported Friday.

Among the events cancelled at the festival in Bali, billed as the largest of its kind in South-east Asia, were the screening of a documentary and the debut of a book, both by Joshua Oppenheimer, an American whose 2012 film about the purges, The Act of Killing, was nominated for an Academy Award last year.

The authorities who ordered the cancellations, who the festival organisers said included Bali-based government, military and police officials, threatened to revoke the organisers' permit for this year as well as 2016, and implied that anyone defying their demands would be arrested.

Ms Janet DeNeefe, the festival's Australian founder and director, who has lived in Bali for more than 30 years, characterised those tactics as "bullying and threats".

Source: Indonesia officials ban programmes on 1960s purge from festival