Documentary breaks “˜Forty Years of Silence’
By Josh Wasbin
Feb. 1, 2009 9:20 p.m.
Fewer than 3,000 Americans were killed in the tragedy of 9/11, seven and a half years ago, and is it still a major part of our cultural fabric. About 500,000 Indonesians were killed in the 1960s due to genocide, and the tragedy quickly fell from the headlines. Until now, at least.
Enter Robert Lemelson, an anthropology researcher at UCLA for the Semel Institute for Neuroscience, whose new documentary about the genocide, titled “40 Years of Silence: an Indonesian Tragedy,” will be screened on campus Wednesday at noon.
Between October 1965 and March 1966, anti-communist militants killed half-a-million members of the Indonesian Communist Party.
In order to stall a military coup from an opposing party, the Communist Party (also known as the PKI) kidnapped some of the opposition’s leaders.
Violence ensued through many waves of retaliation, decimating the members of the PKI and the citizens who shared their political beliefs.
Although many refuse to touch on the topic of these mass killings, the leftover turmoil of the genocide is still in effect.
Being Latvian and Jewish, Lemelson has ancestors who were decimated by genocide.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the effects of genocide on people,” Lemelson said. The researcher also wrote his graduate thesis on genocide (specifically the genocide in Cambodia).
Lemelson traveled in Indonesia as a Fulbright scholar from 1996 to 1997. Nobody would even speak about the genocide that had occurred there, he said. This piqued his curiosity.
As many survivors as there were, very few felt inclined to talk about it.
Armed with a movie crew, Lemelson examined the lives of four families who had survived and who had loved ones who did not.
Out of the footage, research, interviews and archival evidence emerged Lemelson’s documentary.
“On a bunch of levels, it’s a historical document, but it’s about other issues like how societies remember their histories (or forget them), how they deal with mass murders, (and) how kids deal with it,” Lemelson said.
Lemelson was stunned by the silence that persisted in Indonesia.
There had been no memorials for the genocide ““ no statues or monuments.
“One (man) who witnessed the murder of ones he loved hadn’t even told his family after 35 years,” Lemelson said. It wasn’t talked about, he continued, because if you did talk about it, you might disappear.
Despite being so unheard of, the genocide in Indonesia is considered one of the largest genocides of the last century.
Those who committed the genocide were driven by hatred, by greed, or by fear of losing political power.
Now, 40 years later, Lemelson’s film shows viewers that it is time to begin remembering the tragedy that occurred in Indonesia.
Lemelson cites a quote by poet George Santayana on his Web site to illuminate the grander mission and importance of “40 Years of Silence.”
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
