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The aborted coup also led to the overthrow of the left-leaning President Sukarno, the nation's first president and a leader of the anti-Dutch independence movement in the 1920's and 1930's, who was replaced by military leader General Suharto.īy 1967, Suharto and his right-wing New Order administration were officially ruling Indonesia. (It is also not certain that the communists were responsible.) The army outsourced the work to local gangs and militias, including the massive and still-active Pancasila Youth paramilitary organization, and within a year, at least 500,000 people (with some estimates placing the number up to 3 million) had been murdered and more than 1 million more were imprisoned. Indonesia did indeed have a very large communist party, the PKI, but hundreds of thousands of others, including critics of the military and members of the ethnic Chinese minority, were also killed. The killings began after a failed left-wing coup in 1965, when members of the so-called 30 September Movement assassinated six Indonesian army generals and announced that they had taken President Sukarno "under their protection." The army quickly suppressed the coup and launched a killing spree of alleged communists, whom they blamed for the coup. The Indonesian anti-communist purge of 1965-1966 is perhaps the least-studied and talked-about political genocide of the 20th century. There has probably never been a film that bears even the slightest resemblance to The Act of Killing and it is highly improbable we will ever see anything like it again. Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, an American based in Denmark, the documentary brings viewers into the minds of mass murderers, illuminates a horrific piece of recent history that few know anything about, and could end up ushering in a new era in Indonesian politics and identity. It is not hyperbole to call The Act of Killing an epochal film.