Architects of Mass Slaughter
Book Review

Miah, Malik
http://solidarity-us.org/atc/197/mass-slaughter-in-indonesia/
Date Written:  2018-11-01
Publisher:  Against the Current
Year Published:  2018
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23452

Detailed review of two books about the Indonesian Genocide.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

The Army and the Indonesian Genocide:
Mechanics of Mass Murder
By Jess Melvin
Routledge, 2018, 319 pages, $65 hardcover, $39 Kindle.

The Killing Season:
A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965–66
By Geoffrey B. Robinson
Princeton University Press, 2018, 429 pages, $35 hardcover.

Melvin’s book along with Robinson’s The Killing Season are must reading. New research documents how the mass slaughter carried out by the army, and exposes the official big lies of why the PKI and the Left were destroyed. The terror was also systematically directed at ethnic Chinese and non-Muslims. The PKI, banned in 1966, remains illegal and denounced to this day....

Melvin discusses why genocide is a correct term for the massacres. Genocidal definitions (based legally on the Geneva Conventions after WWII) are interesting but not key to understanding what happened in Indonesia. Whether one calls it politically based genocide or ethnic cleansing as occurred in many other countries, it was without doubt a planned pogrom....

In The Killing Season, Geoffrey Robinson, a former Amnesty International researcher (for six years) and Professor of History at the University of California Los Angeles, also shows through his research, interviews and analysis how the murderous campaign was deliberately organized by the army - before and after the banning of the PKI. He shows the role of the United States and other imperialist powers.
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