The Question of Red, a novel authored by Laksmi Pamuntjak is a brave literary work because she gives another view about the G30/S PKI (Treason of the PKI’s September 30 movement), a historical day must be remembered by the old and young people of Indonesia. Through Laksmi Pamuntjak’s novel people would know the voice of tapol that never been heard because I assume that [so far] her work gives a new historical facts about G30 S/PKI. Pamuntjak brilliantly represents the social and humanism aspect hidden inside the darkest history for along time throught her literary work.

Even though what happened in the past cannot be revised but history teaches [us] many things. Laksmi Pamuntjak tries to deliver the truth toward her novel. It is suit with the statement of M. Yoesoef in Sastra dan Kekuasaan, Pembicaraan atas Drama-Drama Karya W.S. Rendra that literary works have a social function as a reaction, response, critic, or potrayal of certain situation. (2007:18)

Hegel and Taine [1] also view that writers, through literary works try to tell the truth altogether with the history and social truth[2] , whilts Georg Lukacs says that he real historical novel will bring us the ambience of the past and make us experience it ourselves genuinely. (1962: 53)

The story is began with the portrait of Buru Island—part of Maluku Islands, “Spice Islands”, an island sit east of Sulawesi (Celebes) and west of Papua.The island is a symbol of President Suharto’s “New Order” repression.

During President Suharto’s administration (1965-19980, the island was the site of large penal colony where more than 12.000 alleged Communists and Communist Party sympathizers were detained for more than a decade without being formally charged or tried in court. Hundreds of prisoners died or were killed there. (Pamuntjak, 2005: 9)

The amount above is the number of people sent to Buru, the exact number of people victimized around 1965-1966 is still controversially uncounted. According to Amnesty International half a million people were killed. Other estimates puts the figure at a million. Another opinion comes from Jørgenson. He states that,

There is no definite information on the number of people killed during the massacre during the last three months of 1965 and January 1966. Depending on your sources, the numbers vary between half a million to over one million. Add to these about 11,000 people who were imprisoned for upward of 13 years. Many of whom didn't survive. (p.302)

It is still debatable since Indonesian goverment never release official statement related with this issue. The amount possibly higher from the number shown above. Many of them did not survive, the small amount of survivor lived an un-imagined hard life.

I guess it is not overtstated if I say that Buru is an island of the dead for prisoners. The quotations below will strenghten my opinion.

Once anyone arrives in this place the focus is on survival. But also, subconsciously, we must prepare ourselves to die in this island, and accept we may never see another place on earth. (p.463).

And also,

... There are three options for the people incarcerated here. Some choose to live their days in a cancerous silence, or in rancor and rage, hating un-equivocally everybody and everything that represents the penal colony. Some, including me, think not all the guards are savages or heartless killing machines (admittedly we think in terms of individuals who are exceptions to the rule, not in terms of the larger system). (461)

The political prisoners treat as labors for the goverment. The military watched them every second.

We are here to make Buru Island productive, useful, and more profitable for the Suharto goverment. Falling into the category of “labor” are: erecting the buildings for each unit, clearing forests and savannah for paddy fields, building footpaths, roads, drinking water tanks, irrigation, channels, bridges and dams, building huts inthe paddy fields, searching for sago and timber in the forest and building special barracks out there and in swamp areas where the working groups can rest: working groups of tree fellers, salt makers, Melaleuca sappers, ironsmiths, rice growers and many others (p. 458)

And,

The work was punishing. There were not enough sickles, shovels, and parangs to go around, and the work crew had often had to pull grass two metres high with their bare hands (p. 411)

Ironically many of tapols were employed in farming, rice-growing but the condition of their physics were heartbreaking as food was the main trouble they should deal with. There were not enough food for them. Healthy and proper food.

There has been a spate of sickness here, mostly relating to food. Or lack of it. More patients are coming to me woth problems concerning the things they’ve eaten.

Many prisoners on rice field duty look forward to getting their extra protein from catching the orong-orong insect. They come out and float haplessly in the water when soil is crushed into it. Lizards are common, and there are kelabangs too, a kind of crab-like-spider. Now the kelabang is tricky, for if it comes in contact with fire it releases a blusih substance, and gives those who consume it the most debilitating case of the runs. (p.474)

And,

Do you know how it felt to stagger through the 150 yards from the landing site at the transit unit to the warehouse for days with a hundred weight of rice on your back? To sleep on the bare ground without shelter? But when you guys came not only did we give you this road, we gave you food when we ourselves had to make do with eating snakes and cuscus and baby mice and cicak lizards and locusts, because what bloody else was there? (p. 483)

Even to survive they consumed disgusting-food they never dreamt to eat. Not rarely they fought each other to get it. In one side they worked as labors for the goverment, to built prosperous era for the regime but they got nothing in return.

The place, Tefaat Buru, the official name for the prison, said to be much more human than most prison cells in Java, which are built for 25 people but crammed with 50 prisoners, still it was un-proper place to stay for about 11.000-12.00 people. The prison had no proper facillitates for the sick ones since there were not well-equipped doctor and place for proper burial.

I knew that too often the bodies of dead prisoners were unceremoniously dumped into a hole and covered over by earth to become maggot feed, without the proper observances. (p. 470).

Before 1998, there is no record of the life of tapol published, all remain secret. In 1978 and 1979 the Goverment officially release them but some choosed to remain in Buru for certain reasons.

... Bhisma telling Manalisa about his prisoner friends, including one who refused to go home because his wife remarried. “There’s nothing more shameful,” Bhisma told the old warrior, “than finding your wife fattened and festooned by another man.” Another dared not return to his village for fear of being mauled by his anti-Communist neighbors, saying they believed he’d had a hand in the murder of one of their relatives all those many years ago. The friend had told Bhisma there wasn’t any truth to it, but slander had become fact because no one had refused it. (p. 60)

Long life in prison, far away from home made tapol choose to stay. Also the fear of the stigma labelled to them, or action of revenge from the sorrounding. Out of the prison does not mean that they would gain a beautiful life. It is understandable for them who stayed in Buru. The policies of New Order regime were harmful for the tapols.

After being release, there were also a rule that they [and their families] cannot join public servant/civil servant and military. A code, ET, Ex-Tapol, ex-political prisoner, also applied in their personal id-card, a code that they are tapol/related with Communist. In 1980-s, everyone who wanted to apply in a job vacancy must provide a free-Communist letter, a statement issued by the Police Department. Even though now the policy is change, I believethat the experience are traumatic for the tapols and their families.

Under Suharto’s policy, people who spoke out the realities of Buru would be banned. Pramoedya Ananta Toer was one of them. The man also mentioned by the character in Pamuntjak’s novel, Bhisma. He was sent to Buru for about ten years. He wrote his memoir based on his life in Buru. Several of his books: This Earth of Mankind, Child of Nations, Footsteps, and House of Glass were banned even though those were translated into more than twenty languages.

Pramoedya was on the first ship-load of prisoners to be sent there. For the next ten years Parmodya and his fellow prisoners developed Buru Island, opening by bare hand thousand hectares of land for road and waterways, constructing from the trees they themselves felled the barracks they were to call their homes.

Drought, floods, and pestilence—the very hardship of life on Buru—drove some prisoners to suicide. More succumbed from torture, and a far larger number died from what can only be called intentional neglect.

The issues inside Pamuntjak’s are the same as the testimonies given by Pramoedya. In his memoir, The Mute’s Soliloquy, describing his years in the hard labor prison that details survival through foraging for worms and snakes.

In the memoir, he wrote that, “The bodies of those men who could stand were wet with dew, but many more were unable to get up, they were either dead, unconscious or had no strength left to stand. A sour smell of blood and human waste clung in the air.”

Suharto regime used media to legitimate his power. A movie about the Indonesian Communist Party treason was produced and being a-must-seen movie every 30 September. The movie showed how the tragedy happened. How Indonesian Communist Party and its wing, Gerwani (Gerakan Wanita Indoensia/Indonesian Women’s Movement), an women’s organization closely linked to the Indonesian Communist Party, did kidnapped the general and people who disagree with the socialism, and torture even mutilated the person who againts. PKI held socialism and communism as the base of their party. When the Orde Baru (New Order) era felt down, Soeharto era was over in 1998, the movie vanished.

Untill now, the reality shown in the movie [still] pros and cons, whether the rebellion is true or not. As I have stated in the previous passage. The goverment of Indonesia never release the exact amount of people sent to Buru or the documentation of their life into public as well the chronological of the movement, person whom must be charged, and the issue related, so I conclude that Pamuntjak’s novel show the real life of the tapols since she did a long research before writing this novel, for about 8 years research. Even though the statements told by novelist (fiction writers) were not meant to be truth, and not to be taken as a truth, but as stated by Carr that fiction would present the truth and indirectly describe the human being condition and portrays the reality of human and event. (Carr, 1996:75).

Finally, I could conclude that the tapols at that time got unbearable suffer with unfair treatments. The goverment silence the dark truth of it. I do really hope that we learn from the past to make a better future, as Cicero’s wise words “Histori ist Magistra Vitae”, history is the best teacher.[]

Work cited

Brown, Archie. 2009. The Rise and Fall od Communism. London: Vintage.

Jørgenson, Holm Peer. 2009. The Forgotten Massacre. Bandung: Qanita Mizan Publishing House.

Lukacs, Georg, 1962. The Historical Novel. London: Merlin Press.

Pamuntjak, Laksmi. 2005. The Question of Red. Jakarta: Gramedia Pustaka Utama.

Pradotokusumo, Partini Sardjono. 2005. Pengkajian Sastra. Jakarta. PT Gramedia Pustaka Utama.

Yoesoef, M. 2007. Sastra dan Kekuasaan, Pembicaraan atas Drama-Drama Karya W.S. Rendra. Jakarta: Wedatama Widya Sastra.

Online sources

http://www.insideindonesia.org... accessed on June 26, 2015).

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/01/books/01prem.html?pagewanted=print&_r=0

(last accessed on June 24, 2015).

http://www.warscapes.com/retro... (last accessed on June 26, 2015).

[1] See Rene Wellek & Austin Warren. Teori Kesusastraan (trans. Melani Budianta) Jakarta, 1990), p.iii.

[2] Ibid.