Buried Histories
The Anticommunist Massacres of 1965-1966 in Indonesia
Format:Hardback
Publisher:University of Wisconsin Press
Published:26th May '20
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
In 1965-66, army-organized massacres claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of supporters of the Communist Party of Indonesia. Very few of these atrocities have been studied in any detail, and answers to basic questions remain unclear. What was the relationship between the army and civilian militias? How could the perpetrators come to view unarmed individuals as dangerous enemies of the nation? Why did Communist Party supporters, who numbered in the millions, not resist?
Drawing upon years of research and interviews with survivors, Buried Histories is an impressive contribution to the literature on genocide and mass atrocity, crucially addressing the topics of media, military organization, economic interests, and resistance.
In compelling prose and with heartbreaking intimacy, Roosa offers the most important collection of case studies of the Indonesian massacres ever published. This is an essential, masterful, and devastating book for anyone who cares about the history and mechanics of human evil." - Joshua Oppenheimer, director of The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence
"This is a rigorous study graced with absorbing and poignant stories. Roosa presents the subjectivity of the perpetrators, bystanders, resisters, and victims with a rare sense of subtlety. Attentive to the contingencies of history, he shows how nothing was inevitable in the tragic muteness of countless disappearances." - Karlina Supelli, Driyarkara School of Philosophy, Jakarta
"Roosa portrays a tense political environment that gave no real hint of the killing that was to follow. This book represents a major breakthrough in presenting the killings in their immediate context and in the richness of its oral history data." - Robert Cribb, Australian National University
ISBN: 9780299327309
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 18mm
Weight: 615g
344 pages