East
Timor and Indonesian Action
Network projects the
Oscar-nominated documentary THE ACT OF
KILLING on World Bank headquarters
Human Rights group
calls on World Bank to acknowledge role
in the mass killing of one million
Indonesians
 |
|
|
The
World Bank gave $30 billion to a
dictator who killed 1 million.
Photo by Dakota Bell. |
|
February 20,
2014 – The Oscar-nominated
documentary THE ACT OF KILLING was
projected on the World Bank headquarters
in Washington, D.C. Thursday in an
action by the East Timor and Indonesian
Action Network. The group is calling on
the World Bank to acknowledge its role
in the 1965 military coup in Indonesia
that lead to the massacre of an
estimated one million civilians. The
World Bank helped prop up the corrupt
government of Suharto, the general who
lead the coup and ordered the mass
killings. The Bank sent the Suharto
regime $30 billion in development aid
over the course of three decades despite
knowing $10 billion had been looted by
the government.
“THE ACT OF KILLING
powerfully highlights the ongoing
impunity within Indonesia for the 1965
mass murders,” said John M. Miller of
the East Timor and Indonesian Action
Network. “Tonight we highlight the World
Bank's support for the Suharto regime,
which knowingly backed his corrupt
government while his post-coup body
count climbed. Support from the Bank,
the U.S. and others emboldened Suharto
to illegally invade East Timor,
consolidate control over West Papua, and
brutalize and rob his own people.
"We urge the World Bank to
acknowledge its role in Suharto's many
crimes and to apologize and provide
reparations to the survivors.
Institutions like the World Bank must
also be held accountable for their
financial assistance to the murderers
and decades of support as they continued
to violate human rights.”
“The World Bank
gave $30 billion dollars to a dictator
who killed an estimated one million of
his own citizens,” said THE ACT OF
KILLING filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer.
“The murderers spent years profiting off
of their heinous crimes with the World
Bank and other global financial
institutions footing the bill.”
|
|
|
Video by Chris Belcher.
Projections by Robin Bell/Bell Visuals. |
THE ACT OF KILLING,
currently Oscar-nominated for Best
Documentary feature, has been recognized
as one of the best films of 2014. The
film has received over 60 awards
including Best Documentary from the
British Academy of Film and Television
Arts (BAFTA). While the mass killings of
1965 are an open secret in Indonesia,
the government has never acknowledged or
apologized for sponsoring the murders.
THE ACT OF KILLING, which has been shown
in thousands of private screenings and
is available free online throughout
Indonesia, is empowering victims’
families to demand reparations from the
government for the first time.
About East Timor and Indonesian
Action Network
The East Timor and
Indonesia Action Network (ETAN)
advocates for democracy, justice and
human rights for Timor-Leste, West Papua
and Indonesia. In 2012, the government
of the Democratic Republic Timor-Leste
awarded ETAN the Order of Timor (Ordem
Timor) for its role in the liberation of
the country. More information about ETAN
can be found at:
http://www.etan.org
About THE ACT OF KILLING
| |
Institutions like the World
Bank must also be held
accountable for their financial
assistance to the murderers and
decades of support as they
continued to violate human
rights.
|
In THE ACT OF
KILLING, directed by Joshua Oppenheimer
and executive produced by Errol Morris
and Werner Herzog, the filmmakers expose
a corrupt regime that celebrates death
squad leaders as heroes.
When the Indonesian
government was overthrown in 1965,
small-time gangster Anwar Congo and his
friends went from selling movie tickets
on the black market to leading death
squads in the mass murder of over a
million opponents of the new military
dictatorship. Anwar boasts of killing
hundreds with his own hands, but he's
enjoyed impunity ever since, and has
been celebrated by the Indonesian
government as a national hero. When
approached to make a film about their
role in the genocide, Anwar and his
friends eagerly comply—but their idea of
being in a movie is not to provide
reflective testimony. Instead, they
re-create their real-life killings as
they dance their way through musical
sequences, twist arms in film noir
gangster scenes, and gallop across
prairies as Western cowboys. Through
this filmmaking process, the moral
reality of the act of killing begins to
haunt Anwar and his friends with varying
degrees of acknowledgment, justification
and denial. More information about the
film can be found at
http://actofkilling.com/.
