Murder, Museums, and Memory Holes: Comparing Cold War Public History in

Jakarta and Ho Chi Minh City

Michael G. Vann

California State University, Sacramento

Center for Khmer Studies Fellow, 2013

Fulbright Senior Scholar, Indonesia, 2012-2013

An inspiration and a departure…

What haunts Lawang Sewu? Read www.InsideIndonesia.org in July, 2013!

Competing Discourses and Silences

Parallel Cold War Museums/Monuments: Competing Narratives of Cold War Violence

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) Jakarta

Communist Vietnam (1975- ) New Order Indonesia (1966-1998)

Parallel and Alternate Realities: Bizarro Worlds

Methodology

• Comparative World History

– Reliance on secondary sources

– Comparative global context

• Geertzian thick description of sites

• Study the official message but also the silences

Compare • Names

• Display, artifacts, and other content

• Role in state ideologies and mythologies of the Cold War

• Victimization

• Gendering the Cold War

• Conditions, funding, and visitors

• Relationship to regime change/stability

• Silences: George Orwell’s “memory holes”

• Futures?

Names

• Exhibition House for US and Puppet Crimes (Nhà trưng bày tội ác Mỹ-ngụy), 1975-1990

• Exhibition House for Crimes of War and Aggression (Nhà trưng bày tội ác chiến tranh xâm lược), 1990-1995

• The War Remnants Museum, 1995-present

• Lubang Buaya

• Halim Air Force Base

• Kompleks Monumen Pahlawan Revolusi

• Monumen Pancasila Sakti, 1969

• Museum Paseban, 1981

• Museum Pengkhianatan PKI, 1992

Museum Displays

• Discourses of Violence and Victimization

• Central to state ideologies

• Permanent in Jakarta but changeable in Ho Chi Minh City

Dioramas in Jakarta

Recreation of PKI violence

Symbols of social order as victims of

PKI

PKI as a cultural threat

PKI as source of social chaos and disorder

Fewer Recreations in Ho Chi Minh City

• Victims of Republic of Vietnam (“American Puppet Regime”)

Prison Recreation

Photographic Evidence in Ho Chi Minh City

War Crimes

Victims of American violence: Soldiers

Victims of American violence: Civilians

Victims of RVN violence

Artifacts in Ho Chi Minh City

Military hardware in Ho Chi Minh City

Artifacts in Jakarta

Very few weapons in Jakarta

Emphasis on PKI organization/conspiracy

Recreation without artifacts

Recreation as myth making

Torture myths

• Museum

• Newspaper stories

• Rumors

• G 30 S-PKI film

– 3 ½ hours

– October 1st on TV

– School children

SUPERSEMAR Surat Perintah Sebelas Maret, 1966

New Order’s narrative structure

• General Suharto assumes power to save Indonesia from PKI threat

• PKI threat is the raison d’être of the New Order

26 June, 1982

Personalize the victims

Only the generals, lower officers, and Nasution’s daughter Ade

Not the:

500,000-1,000,000 dead

Millions of TAPOL

Innocent victim: Ade Irma Suryani

Nasution

Innocent victim: Phan Thi Kim Phuc

Gendering the Cold War

• Competing images of women

• Same view of Communist women?

• What was the reality for women?

Bad women: Gerwani

Monumen Pancasila Sakti, 1969

Ideal woman needs protection

Recovered Masculinity

Well of Death: Sumur Maut Memory Hole?

GERWANI on trial, 1975

Thanh Phong Village’s Well: Memory Hole?

Trại Học Tập Cải Tạo

Silence on the Cold War camps

New Messages in

Ho Chi Minh City

• New policies – Đổi Mới

– Market-Leninism

• New visitors

• New money

• Peace park?

Anything New in Jakarta?

• End of Orde Baru, 1998

• Reformasi of museums?

• Money?

• Visitors?

Museum Sasmitaloka Jenderal Besar DR. A.H. Nasution

29 July, 2008

• New museum • Old message

Jenderal Besar Naustion Museum, 2008

SARS in Jogja: Sindrom Aku Rindu

Soeharto

June 8, 2013

June 8, 2013

Memory Hole?

Compared to Toul Sleng?

Parallel Cold War Museums/Monuments: Competing Narratives of Cold War Violence

• Rebranding in Ho Chi Minh City

• Recycling in Jakarta

• Memory holes or holes in memory in both