TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo should not have missed the commemoration of the 30 September 1965 tragedy by apologizing.

Statement made by several high-ranking state officials that the President would not apologize to the victims of the 30 September 1965 tragedy – in this case members or sympathizers of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) – will not solve the issue.

Indeed, the President does not have to apologize to the PKI.

However, this nation must admit its mistake for the violation of human rights, both suffered by the communist side and the anti-communist side.

Hundreds of thousands of – or millions – of people were killed from both sides in the 1965 tragedy.

Activists and supporters of the PKI massacred clerics and Islamic school students in the 1948 tragedy.

Later, in 1965, after the 30 September incident, in a retaliatory action, hundreds of thousands of sympathizers and members of PKI were massacred, arrested and put into jail without legal process.

All those prove that the state has failed to protect its citizens.

The failure continued because of the policies of the New Order Regime that hid facts that really happened.

The state betrayed the public’s rights to know the true information.

What happened next was that a number of things related to the 1964 tragedy were only the version of the Soeharto regime.

We know that several years after the 1965 tragedy, those labeled as members of the PKI and their descendants suffered from discrimination. They were also stripped of their rights to take the selection test of civil service candidates.

Again, the state is absent here to provide guarantee of human right protection without exceptions to all its citizens.

In an effort to investigate this tragedy, the National Commission for Human Rights conducted an investigation in 2012 and concluded that severe human right violations in various forms were indeed committed.

The commission has also a record of those responsible for the bloody tragedy.

Afterwards, after a long period of time - 50 years – the government has chosen non-judicial to settle the problem.

The government, just like what was uttered by Attorney General H.M. Prasetyo, has chosen reconciliation.

We have to welcome Jokowi’s statement that he hoped the next generation would not have to bear the burden of the past.

Reconciliation clearly needs process.

So far, how reconciliation will be implemented is still being discussed by the Attorney General Office and the Justice and Human Rights Ministry and it is not clear yet.

Also, there is no guarantee whether the deliberation of this reconciliation issue will be completed this year or next year.

Therefore, President Joko Widodo can take an initial step to do the national reconciliation, namely by apologizing, not in the sense of defending the PKI but apologizing to all the victims of the 1965 tragedy because the state has failed to perform its duty to protect its citizens.

Jokowi should have had the courage to take the initiative by apologizing to the victims of human rights violations. This is important to prove that the state respects human rights.

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