New Film Shows U.S.-Backed Indonesian Death Squad Leaders Re-enacting Massacres

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That’s—that was one moment, and that is a crucial moment in the film, in that it opens up the whole exploration of his conscience, which I was resistant to throughout the film. I felt as though I had been entrusted by a community of survivors to expose a whole regime, and I was asking questions of the nature of the regime. I was not interested in leading a killer to remorse. But as it’s happened, his broke—discovering his brokenness has been the most effective exposé, if you like, of the rottenness of the whole regime, because if he was a genuine hero, if he was really this sort of founding father of this great new order, he would be enjoying his old age in peace. But instead, he is tormented, and the other killers you meet in the film are totally hollow, and also, in a way, therefore, destroyed by what they’ve done. And I think that has resonated so much with Indonesians as they see the film. They say, "My gosh, what is the nature of this country?"

AMY GOODMAN: So talk about the Pancasila. Talk about what is happening today.

JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER: So, there is a—Anwar is a founding father of this paramilitary movement called Pancasila Youth, as are all of the killers we meet in the film. And it is a three-million-strong right-wing paramilitary gangster movement that has the support of the government. There’s a scene in the film where we see the vice president of Indonesia, the then-vice president of Indonesia—

AMY GOODMAN: Kalla.

JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER: —addressing—Jusuf Kalla, addressing a rally of Pancasila Youth, wearing the—wearing their trademark orange camouflage. Obviously, camouflage we think of as something you wear so that you blend in. Bright orange camouflage you wear so that you stand out. It exists so that—it exists so that these people are feared. It exists to scare people. And he addresses—the vice president of Indonesia addresses this rally and says, "We need our gangsters. We need to be able to beat people up so that we can get things done." And there’s a key—

AMY GOODMAN: This is the vice president saying this, and gangster, he says, means?

JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER: Free man.

AMY GOODMAN: Free man.

JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER: And, indeed, the word for "gangster" in Indonesia is preman, which comes from the Dutch "free man." So, it’s—they’ve used this etymological, not quite coincidence, but essentially by now a coincidence, to euphemize and justify a whole—the whole existence of a gangster, a parallel system of gangsters.

And one of the—the other time in the film where we take Anwar to the countryside is to re-enact a massacre of a village. Pancasila Youth has sort of, I don’t know, set as its sort of most heroic victory a—its most heroic victory was the massacre of a village called Kampung Kolam, and it’s a village outside of Medan where they basically went in, they said it was a secret communist base, but they went in, and they raped, looted and massacred. And to understand how this whole right-wing paramilitary movement sees itself, I gathered together the—about a hundred young leaders in this movement, a minister in the government, a deputy—the deputy minister of youth and sport—his dossier is to look after political gangsters, with "youth" being a euphemism for gangster. He flies in from Jakarta to act—to direct and act in this massacre. And they re-enact the destruction of a village. We build a set. We build a village. They cast their children and their wives to play the victims. And they set about destroying the village. And very real trauma comes up, especially for Anwar, during the course of that—of that scene.