ABSTRACT
Indonesia has experienced violence on a large scale. The anti-leftist mass killings of 1965-1966 rank among the worst massacres in the world in a ‘century of genocide’ (Totten et al. 1997). This volume is concerned with recent violent conflict in Indonesia, but it is not only the recent history of Indonesia that has been tainted with blood. Many tens of thousands of lives were lost in the Dutch subjugation of Aceh and Bali. Hundreds of thousands of Indonesians died as a result of their conscription as forced labourers by the Japanese. Thousands more lives were sacrificed in the fight for independence from the Dutch and in the social revolutions which accompanied it. Many more died in the prolonged armed struggle for an Islamic State in West Java, Aceh and South Sulawesi, as well as in various regional rebellions.
