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Just to add to the chat about studying genocide, one of my most  experiences as an undergrad was a lecture about the Rwandan genocide where the lecturer basically just described what people had done to them in excruciating detail in a weary detached monotone for the better part of an hour. The Indonesian mass killings of communists were also something else, if you have JSTOR access take a look at this cheery translated article called "Am I PKI or non-PKI?". For context, the PKI was the Indonesian Communist Party, and in 1965 after an apparent botched coup and a series of events no one's quite sure about, Communists started being slaughtered across the country with the tacit or explicit backing of the military and, in some places, Islamic clerics. (The US was also probably involved in a tangential way.) Here are two choice excerpts (spoilered for  ):quote:It was pretty effective too. Each day, as Kartawidjaja's Son No. 2 went to, or returned from, State Senior High School No. 1, he always saw corpses of Communists floating in the River Brantas. The thing was that the school was located to the "kulon" (west) of the river. And usually the corpses were no longer recognizable as human. Headless. Stomachs torn open. The smell was unbelievable. To make sure they didn't stink, the carcasses were deliberately tied to, or impaled on, bamboo stakes. And the departure of corpses from the Kediri region down the Brantas achieved its golden age when bodies were stacked together on rafts over which the PKI banner proudly flew. e: Actually this also reminds me of this article about one that most people aren't aware of, the killings of Koreans in Japan after the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake:. This one unnerves me more than most, because it broke out in a relatively developed country and the immediate cause was just rumours that spread after a natural disaster, it's like we're all teetering on the brink of straight-up insanity: quote:Every train was more than full. People sat even on top of the coal. All Koreans were dragged out. Immediately, they were executed by the army's swords and bullets. Japanese passengers yelled out "Long Live" victoriously. ... Our battalion was inspired by this blood fest and started Korean hunt in earnest. Zohar has a new favorite as of 18:40 on Aug 6, 2013 |
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Aug 6, 2013 18:18
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coleman francis posted:HEAVILY involved. As in funded and supported. It was mainly gving out "medicine" that's thought to have actually been small arms as I recall, it had enough momentum of its own that the US didn't really need to actively do anything other than just sit back and watch, then support Suharto when the smoke cleared up. Might be misremembering though.
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Aug 7, 2013 01:32
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