Women on the Line, is Community Radio’s national women’s current affairs program. It is produced and presented by a range of women broadcasters from 3CR in Melbourne, and distributed nationally via the Community Radio Network Service of the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia.This is an interview with Indonesian solidarity activist Vanessa Hearman who discusses the personal and political consequences of 1965 slaughter of Indonesian left activists and the smashing of the Partai Komunis Indonesia (Communist Party of Indonesia). This was the massacre that brought General Suharto to power.
Time presented the following account on December 17, 1966 :Communists, red sympathizers and their families are being massacred by the thousands. Backlands army units are reported to have executed thousands of communists after interrogation in remote jails. Armed with wide-bladed knives called parangs, Moslem bands crept at night into the homes of communists, killing entire families and burying their bodies in shallow graves. The murder campaign became so brazen in parts of rural East Java, that Moslem bands placed the heads of victims on poles and paraded them through villages. The killings have been on such a scale that the disposal of the corpses has created a serious sanitation problem in East Java and Northern Sumatra where the humid air bears the reek of decaying flesh. Travelers from those areas tell of small rivers and streams that have been literally clogged with bodies.
