US urged to declassify files on Indonesia’s 1965-66 anti-communist massacres that could reveal extent of how both militaries cooperated

Rights groups are urging the US to release secret files on Indonesia’s anti-communist massacres of 1965-66, as the Southeast Asian country takes a tentative step toward a reckoning with one of the worst atrocities of the last century.

The push by Human Rights Watch and Indonesian group Kontras comes ahead of a conference in Indonesia next week that will be a rare public discussion of the mass murder of 50 years ago.

Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth said Wednesday the massacres, orchestrated by the military, were “one of the most horrendous crimes of our era”.

There is no official figure for the number of people killed but researchers estimate half a million. Within Indonesia, widely accepted accounts of the era gloss over the deaths. The role of the US is cloaked in secrecy. At the time, the US viewed Indonesia as a bulwark in its efforts to thwart the influence of communist Soviet Union and China in Southeast Asia.

“We want to know the working level involvement between the US government and the killers in 1965,” said Roth. “Who knew what and what were the channels of communication? Were there names [of suspected communists] conveyed by the US government to the Indonesian government and what happened to those people.”