The New Order Ended 20 Years Ago, But Indonesian Students Still Aren't Taught the Full Story

Lukas Gilang Pamungkas didn't experience life in Indonesia during the New Order era. He was born in 2000, and his only knowledge of the Gen. Suharto’s 32-year-rule and eventual fall largely came from history textbooks he read in high school.

Gilang was lucky enough that his history teacher went the extra mile to show his class a film about Suharto-era human rights violations, the pro-democracy student movement, and the `97 financial crisis that helped bring about the New Order's end. That’s when Gilang realized that his history textbooks were full of incomplete, or inaccurate, information about the Suharto years.

"I appreciate what my teacher did back then," said Gilang, who just graduated from high school. "Not many teachers are like that. Now, I understand what really happened in New Order era."

From 1975 to early 1999, Indonesian history textbooks had to refer to Sejarah Nasional Indonesia, a series of six official reference books authored by the Ministry of Education. The books were edited by Nugroho Notosusanto, the historian who wrote a book that became the basis for the pro-Suharto propaganda film Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI. The book was eventually banned by then Education Minister Juwono Sudarsono in the early days of the post-Suharto Reformasi movement for being an inappropriate depiction of the past.

But it took until 2012 for the ministry to publish the newer version of the official Indonesian history text, Dalam Arus Sejarah. This series of books is considered to be more accurate because it was compiled by at least 100 historians, not just one guy with a history of penning propaganda.

But still today, a full 20 years after the fall of Suharto, Indonesian students aren't being taught the complete story about the Suharto regime.

“The writing in history textbooks is still militaristic and biased toward the New Order,” explained Muhammad Iqbal, a former history teacher at SMA Sampurna, in Bogor, West Java.

While the 2013 revision of the history textbooks is definitely better than the previous ones, there are still a lot of missing pieces, Iqbal explained. One of the legacies of the New Order, Iqbal told me, is the government’s unwillingness to include the gross human rights violations from the era in history textbooks. The new curriculum also still holds-on to old beliefs about the threat posed by the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), and the events of the 1965 killing of six of Indonesia’s top military officials in a failed coup attempt that ushered in the start of the New Order.

“I think conservatism has deep roots here in Indonesia,” said Iqbal, who’s now a lecturer at the Public Institute of Islam (IAIN), in Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan. “We’re not yet able to speak up about our history. We’re still too ashamed to admit our own past. But look at Germany, they weren’t ashamed to reveal their history about Nazis.”

In one textbook for 12th graders, a subchapter called “Causes of Reformation” doesn’t say anything about the events leading up to the fall of the New Order regime—not the riots, the kidnappings and murders of anti-Suharto activists at the hand of the military.

The same book also says that Suharto “resigned” from office, not “quit,” though he said the latter in his speech. The difference here is crucial, because the presidential resignation procedure requires approvals of the House of Representatives and the People’s Consultative Assembly through trial—and Suharto did not go through this process.

A historian at the Ministry of Education, Restu Gunawan, told me that it's hard to weed out biases like these, especially if the authors lived through the New Order era themselves. “Reformation happened not too long ago, and perhaps the writers experienced the event themselves, so it’s hard for them to be objective,” Restu said.

Restu stressed to me that the government no longer requires historians to strictly refer to the government’s history guidebook, which gives them more freedom to explore the accounts in less-biased texts. History book authors are welcome to use other sources as long as it fits the curriculum.

As for teachers, they have the freedom to add other sources outside of the compulsory textbooks, Restu told me. The whole purpose of the revised 2013 curriculum was to encourage teachers to get creative, he said, so that students are able to gain a more complete perspective on the New Order era.

“History should be free from ideologies,” Restu told me. “History isn’t an exact knowledge. Back then, students had to answer exactly what the teachers expected. Now students can disagree and argue with the teachers, as long as they have credible source.”

But some teachers are still not convinced. Puteri Soraya Mansyur, a history teacher at SMA 10 Batanghari in Jambi, still notices the lack of facts in history books. Even today, the government still exercises a lot of control over what’s deemed appropriate or not to write in the textbooks being taught in schools.

"At the end of the day, the books will have to go through a review by the government," Puteri told me. "The Trisakti shootings aren’t covered that much, its as though they weren't a significant event."

Puteri, who has been teaching for eight years, prefers teaching using books published by non-government publishers like Erlangga and Bumi Aksara, because these books have more information.

In the end, it’s the students that are most affected. According to Puteri, many students don’t quite understand how the complex sociopolitical and economic systems started by the New Order still affect Indonesians today. They don't know that our issues with corruption, weak law enforcement, and weak economy are symptoms of the past regime.

"Many students believe that most problems in the country are caused by the current government," Puteri said. "When in fact it’s not true."