The government's plan to reinstate history textbooks that blame the Indonesian Communist Party for the violence after the 1965 coup attempt is reminiscent of dictator Soeharto's New Order education syllabus, historians say.
They also questioned why the writers of the more objective 2004 text books were interrogated by prosecutors, intelligence agents and the police.
A political scientist from the University of Indonesia, Arbi Sanit criticized the Yudhoyono administration's plan to reinstate the questionable theory in the new school curriculum.
He told The Jakarta Post on Saturday the move only proved that New Order elements still had control in the present government.
"They have an interest in keeping the PKI as the scapegoat," he said. "These people are those who are afraid that Soeharto will be accused of masterminding the tragedy."
Between 80,000 and 3 million people are believed to have died in the bloodletting that occurred in the months after the aborted coup.
This year the government decided to revise the history textbooks in the 2004 national curriculum. The 2004 books did not heap blame solely on the PKI as they did in the Soeharto era. Communist party members and those of organizations affiliated to the PKI were the main targets of the grass-roots violence after the coup.
Education Ministry curriculum center head Diah Harianti said the 2004 curriculum more comprehensively explained the events surrounding the Sept. 30, 1965 tragedy than the revised one did.
Instead of associating the tragedy only with the PKI, it blamed the social conflicts on ideological and political differences among citizens.
Now, with no explanation, the Education Ministry had decided to reinstate the PKI as the main culprit, he said.
Members of the police, Attorney General's Office and State Intelligence Agency questioned Diah and one other official at the curriculum center recently about why 12-grade history books based on the 2004 curriculum did not blame the PKI for the violence.
The former head of the center, Siskandar, and six publishers who distributed the history books were also summoned to the AGO's office.
A historian with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, Asvi Warman Adam, said the AGO was trying to intimidate the people who were trying to understand what really happened in 1965 and the subsequent political events leading to Soeharto's rise to power.
"The AGO is not supposed to do that, since we (historians) haven't even agreed on what actually happened (in 1965)," he said.
Diah said: "I really can't understand why they questioned us for that."
An AGO prosecutor, Muchtar Arifin, said the interrogation sessions were only to check on the accuracy of data contained in the history books.
"The books are distributed nationwide. We have to make sure that they contain accurate information. Remember, it deals with education for children," he told Kompas.
— JP
Source URL: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2006/09/18/pki-reinstated-1965-tragedy-culprit-school-textbooks.html
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