"Hey, you know how you personally murdered a thousand people back in the 60's? Wants to act that out on camera?" "Sure, that sounds awesome!"

[loinburger]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jun/20/joshua-oppenheimer-act-of-killing

Following a coup in Indonesia in the 60's, right-wing death squads killed a million or so "communists" - those death squads then evolved into a paramilitary organization with current ties to the government. In the course of filming a movie ("The Act of Killing") about the mass killings, the director wound up asking the perpetrators of the killings to act out their recollections of the events on camera, and they were happy to do so.

Wikipedia article about the mass killings

[Hauldren Collider]

Why do you put communist in quote marks? Do you have any reason to believe the victims weren't actually mostly communist?

[Elok]

Death squads, right-wing or otherwise, are not known for stopping to get their facts straight. Also, what does it matter if they were commies or not? Does that merit a death sentence?

[N35t0r]

According to some posters here, it might as well...

[loinburger]

Why do you put communist in quote marks? Do you have any reason to believe the victims weren't actually mostly communist?

The links I provided state that the purge also targeted enemies of the military, intellectuals, ethnic Chinese, and union members, all under the "communist" label

[Dinner]

They had good coverage on this documentary on NPR along with how the old right wing para-militaries feel absolutely no need to hide what they did at all, that the old dictatorship even made the commemoration of their mass murdering part of a national holiday, and (sadly in my mind) how they felt perfectly at ease telling an American camera man all about it on film because at the time American CIA agents were neck deep in all of it including providing the paramilitaries with kill lists of suspected communist sympathizers.

Those kill lists weren't even just a few names either and instead they had tens of thousands of names on them. Basically anyone who protested against the dictatorship, wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper which the CIA didn't like, student activitists, or anyone they didn't like for any reason at all.

[Hauldren Collider]

Death squads, right-wing or otherwise, are not known for stopping to get their facts straight. Also, what does it matter if they were commies or not? Does that merit a death sentence?

Communism is an inherently violent ideology, so if they were actually gun totin' Che wannabes I won't criticize an army for massacring them. Otherwise, no it doesn't.

[Dinner]

Most of them weren't even communists H.C. and instead they were just against the military dictatorship and wanted a return to democracy. Calling them all communists and having them all killed was a way for Sohurto to get favor with the US and keep the aid flowing in. A lot of them were also just plain nationalists who wanted to keep foreigners, including foreign companies, out of Indonesia because of the history of how the Dutch first came as foreign investors but quickly turned it into a colonialist system. They were afraid that history might repeat itself and the country might end up recolonized where as Sohurto was known as the US's man in Southeast Asia selling off state assets, logging rights in national forests, oil & gas fields, as well as mineral rights for pennies on the dollar.

[C0ckney]

HC: my ideology supports killing people with certain political views.

normal person: why?

HC: because their ideology is violent.

[Hauldren Collider]

That's not what I said, idiot. I said if they were actually guerillas, you can shoot them. I'm sorry if "gun toting che wannabes" wasn't a clear enough suggestion of militancy.

[loinburger]

The sheer numbers involved should have clued you in that they weren't guerrillas

[Uncle Sparky]

Communism is an inherently violent ideology, so if they were actually gun totin' Che wannabes I won't criticize an army for massacring them. Otherwise, no it doesn't.

You are right in that armies should kill those gun totin' types... Then they could pry the guns from their cold dead hands.

[C0ckney]

That's not what I said, idiot. I said if they were actually guerillas, you can shoot them. I'm sorry if "gun toting che wannabes" wasn't a clear enough suggestion of militancy.

yes i'm sure you really believed that there were 1 million communist guerilla fighters.

edit: loin beat me to it.

[Hauldren Collider]

The sheer numbers involved should have clued you in that they weren't guerrillas

Somehow I missed the "million" number, I thought you meant that only a thousand had been killed, which seemed like a totally reasonable number for a People's Liberation Army of Crapistan

[-Jrabbit]

Not buying it.