ABSTRACT
This chapter gives an overview of the main events relating to the 30 September Movement in Indonesia and the genocide and other crimes against humanity that followed the group’s actions in the early morning of 1 October 1965. Even now those, and their families, who fell victim to the massacres, mass incarcerations and purges carried out by the army under General Suharto, continue to be stigmatized. The silence around the genocide, the impunity of the perpetrators, and the continued campaign of communist phobia haunt Indonesian society. An introduction to the political and economic background to these events is provided. In 2015 the International People’s Tribunal on the 1965 Crimes against Humanity opened its hearings, and in July 2016 the Final Report containing the conclusions of the panel of judges was published. The conclusion was reached that a genocide took place in Indonesia for which the state was responsible. The propaganda campaign waged by the New Order state under President Suharto commenced.
