ABSTRACT
Short stories that were published in the first decade of the New Order regime became a blueprint for mainstream Indonesian novels about 1965, where the persecution of communists is not talked about and only the persecution of their innocent families or wrongly accused individuals is questioned. In the selected short stories, claimed to carry humanitarian spirit, there is an obvious attempt to define who does not deserve to be killed and who does, with members of the PKI always classify among the latter. The short stories were translated into English and re-published in collections by Harry Aveling, a scholar in Indonesian studies, making them a subject of literary and academic interests. Both the original and the translation represent the new trajectory of Indonesian literature that maintains the Red Scare after the defeat of the Left in the country.
