Unmarked Graves: Death and Survival in the Anti-Communist Violence in East Java, Indonesia

Although the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) was the world’s third largest communist party in 1965, claiming to have 27 million members, within five years it had been completely destroyed. Research into the 1965–1966 anti-communist violence and what led to the end of the Sukarno era in Indonesia is currently booming. The recent fiftieth anniversary of the mass killings stimulated a number of journal special issues and a range of new studies on this controversial topic which touches on events that have not yet been fully unravelled. There are also dozens of autobiographies by survivors for whom time to speak out is fast running out. These attempts to reconstruct the historical circumstances before, during, and after the collective violence have, of course, implications for the present-day politics in Indonesia, where the remaining survivors still await proper official recognition of the hardship they endured and restitution for injustices against them.