The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66 ISBN: 9781400888863 Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Princeton University Press Digital rights:Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited Subjects: Asian History;
Relying on primary documents from governmental sources such as the CIA, the U.S. State Department, and foreign governments, as well as secondary sources on mass killings, UCLA professor Robinson (The Dark Side of Paradise: Political Violence in Bali) pulls backthe curtain on a traumatic period in Indonesian history: the antileftist purges of the mid-1960s, during which half a million people were killed. After six Indonesian Army generals were assassinated on October 1, 1965, the army leadership blamed the Indonesian communist party, which had greatly increased in popularity and influence in the previous decade. What followed was a torrent of hellish violence, in many cases carried out by civilian militias associated with right-wing political parties, that was intended to destroy the communist partydown to the very roots and unseat President Sukarno, the countrys first postcolonial leader. As Robinson explains, evidence indicates that the purges were orchestrated by the army and that the United States and other Western powers, extremely concerned about the high likelihood of yet another country embracing communism, countenanced the violence. This meticulous scholarly analysis of the countrys institutions comprehensively investigates the economic, religious, ethnic, and socioeconomic factors behind the arrests, rape, torture, and murder that were inflicted on communist true believers and innocents alike. Robinsons authoritative scholarly work is an indispensable resource for specialists seeking a comprehensiveoverview of this little-studied period in Southeast Asian history. (Feb.)
Geoffrey B. Robinson is professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. His books include The Dark Side of Paradise: Political Violence in Bali and "If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die": How Genocide Was Stopped in East Timor (Princeton). Before coming to UCLA, he worked for six years at Amnesty International's Research Department in London. Robinson lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.
