Law, Memory, and Silence: The Case of Anti-Communism Laws in Indonesia

Abstract

This article investigates the role of Indonesia’s Anti-Communism laws in shaping and shifting collective memory of past atrocities into an imperative history. These laws are to be understood as a set of rules enacted by the state to proscribe the existence of communism by criminalizing speech of any kind that disseminates the idea of Marxism, Leninism, and Communism. Based on our analysis of several judicial decisions and empirical evidence related to the creation of collective memory, we contend that the problem of the anti-communism laws is twofold. First, these laws show a conflict between law and history because they enable judicial practices to transform the judges into the arbiters of history. Second, these laws—in addition to other institutions, mechanisms and ultimately embedded ideas/norms—have been enabling a process of social silencing that infringes freedom of expression as they have moved away from punishing acts to punishing speech, writing and certain ways of being.