COMMENT | Jokowi, thanks for acknowledging, but what’s next?

COMMENT | Two days ago, Indonesian President Joko Widodo acknowledged no less than 11 gross human rights violations had taken place in his country's history, including the bloodshed and arrests in 1965 and 1966, which claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands.

In the worst instance, an estimated 500,000 people were killed in violence that started in late 1965 after then-general Suharto and the military took power following an alleged abortive communist coup against the Sukarno administration.

A million or more people were jailed, suspected of being communists at a time when Indonesia’s Communist Party was the third largest in the world, after that of the USSR and China.

“The streets and drains were filled with bodies...