May 21, 2025
JAKARTA – Rights activists and historians gathered at the House of Representatives complex in Senayan, Jakarta, on Monday to demand lawmakers reject the government’s controversial bid to rewrite Indonesian history, warning it could whitewash the nation’s darkest chapters and serve the political interests of President Prabowo Subianto and past regimes.
During a hearing with the House’ Commission X overseeing education and culture, a civil coalition dubbed the Indonesian Historical Transparency Alliance (AKSI) presented a five-point manifesto rejecting a Culture Ministry-led project to produce a 10-volume official history of Indonesia.
The project, involving at least 100 historians and set for completion by the country’s 80th Independence Day on August 17, is intended to serve as the primary reference for historical books across all educational levels.
“This massive project appears to be a deliberate effort to engineer the past with a single interpretation,” one point of the manifesto states, adding that the rewriting of history could be a subtle way for the government to control public perception and monopolize the national narrative.
The alliance, which also includes more than 50 supporters including authors, artists and legal experts, further warned that the project could become an instrument to legitimize the current administration’s use of power.
“The most dangerous thing is that the new history book can help clean the sins of the current regime [of President Prabowo] or the New Order regime [led by Prabowo’s former father-in-law Soeharto], where human rights violations occurred,” said AKSI head Marzuki Darusman.
Read also: Analysis: Prabowo regime rewriting national “his-story”
A former Army general, Prabowo has faced long-standing allegations of human rights abuses during the turbulent late 1990s, claims he has consistently denied.
Culture Minister Fadli Zon, who has authored a book that defended Prabowo’s actions as a special forces commander during Soeharto’s rule, has yet to respond to The Jakarta Post’s request for comment.
Yet he previously asserted that Prabowo’s alleged crimes have been debunked and insisted that “history will be written correctly,” as reported by Reuters.
Questionable practice
House Commission X sympathized with the alliance’s concerns over the project’s lack of transparency, admitting that they had not been properly consulted by the Culture Ministry.
“We have yet to receive a single official document [about the project] from the ministry,” said Commission X lawmaker Mercy Chriesty Barends of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) during Monday’s meeting.
Meanwhile, AKSI member Jaleswari Pramodhawardani, who leads the research institute Lab45, said a circulating 30-page draft outline of the history book reveals several omissions of the country’s history.
“We have 12 recorded gross human rights violations officially acknowledged [by former president Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo] yet only two tragedies were written in the draft,” Jaleswari said, noting that one of them was the 1989 shootings of civilians by military troops in Talangsari, Lampung. A separate tragedy yet to be acknowledged by the state, the 1984 Tanjung Priok incident, was also included.
The Lab45 head further questioned the omission of other human rights violations, including the forced disappearance of pro-democracy activists in 1997–1998, a case linked to Prabowo, who was discharged from the military in 1998, in part due to his alleged involvement.
Historian Asvi Warman Adam also criticized the draft for downplaying abuses and instead “glorifying the New Order’s development achievements.”
Read also: Revising history to legitimize ruling regime
Dangerous precedent
Usman Hamid, executive director of rights group Amnesty International Indonesia, warned that the government’s move mirrors tactics used by authoritarian regimes.
“History shows us that only fascist regimes, like Mussolini’s Italy or Hitler’s Germany, rewrote their own pompous versions of history full of manipulations and censorship,” he said, Monday.
Historian Andi Achdian echoed the concern, citing American philosopher Jason Stanley’s Erasing History, which argues that authoritarian governments rewrite the past in their favor as soon as they come to power.
House Commission X chair Hetifah Sjaifudian said the committee would soon meet with the Culture Ministry, promising to urge the removal of the “official” label from the history book to preserve space for open historical discourse.
Deputy chair Maria Yohana Esti Wijayati also urged the ministry not to rush the project to meet the August 17 deadline at the expense of accuracy and completeness.