Mass Slaughter In Indonesia
Howe, Irving
To The Editor: There is something extremely disturbing about Donald Kirk's report from Indonesia in the New York Times Magazine for July 24, 1966. He discusses at length the prospects for a...
...How the New York Times would thunder in righteous wrath...
...But how, one wonders, can anything resembling democracy be built on the basic of such an appalling slaughter...
...And perhaps the first thing that might be done is for a paper like the Times to get someone to write from Indonesia who is willing to "drop his cool" just a little...
...He mentions, almost in passing, that there has occurred, either under the direct sponsorship or with the tacit connivance of this new regime, a "great purge in which some 300,000 Communists, Communist sympathizers and members of their families were killed...
...Continued on page 553) MASS SLAUGHTER IN INDONESIA (continued from page 466) But since the slaughter in Indonesia was done in the name of antiCommunism, neither editorialists nor government officials grow excited...
...IRVING HowE...
...How Vice-President Humphrey would wheel out his "liberal" rhetoric to make clear our moral superiority...
...Kirk does not seem to think it news-worthy to inquire of the Indonesian rulers what they make of this dreadful killing or how they propose to justify their relationship to it...
...To me, however, this kind of political murder is just as appalling when committed by anti-Communists as by Communists...
...and to turn a skeptical eye upon the claim that men seemingly implicated in mass slaughter can then go ahead to build "democracy...
...He discusses at length the prospects for a democratic development in Indonesia under the new triumvirate of Suharto, Malik and Sultan Buwono...
...How can a decent society be created by people who emulate some of the worst features of Stalinism...
...And why is it that Mr...
...who is ready to dig more deeply into the terrible events in recent Indonesian life...
...As a life-long opponent of Communist totalitarianism, I think it a special obligation for those of us who despise the dictatorship of a Sukarno or a Ho Chi Minh also to express our horror before the bloodletting initiated or condoned by a Suharto...
...Now imagine if a political "purge" one-fiftieth as bloody had occurred in a Communist country...
Vol. 13 • September 1966 • No. 5
