SYNOPSIS

Based on the proceedings of the Indonesia Update Conference (held in Canberra, Australia, October 2000), which was organized by Bob Lowry of the Australian Defence Force Academy, 25 contributions discuss Indonesia's politics, economics, governmental structures, and societal forces. The viewpoint is decidedly neo-liberal, and ideological blinders lead to some important omissions. An example is the chapter on the "rise and fall of the Indonesian generals," which parrots official Suhartoist history that the 1965 coup was solely a response to a coup attempt by the PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia), ignoring reputable evidence that the coup was instigated at the behest of the U.S. and Australian intelligence services, who viewed Sukarno as a dangerous economic nationalist. The resultant massacre of hundreds of thousands of people is glossed over as simply a move "to eradicate communist supporters from the army and wider political and social circles." Similarly, in a separate contribution, the invasion of East Timor by the American-supplied Indonesian military (and the resultant massacre of further hundreds of thousands) is characterized as Indonesia's attempt to preserve "territorial integrity," a characterization that flies in the face of UN pronouncements and world opinion.