Zainal Effendi, Surabaya — The Surabaya state
prosecutor has seized primary and secondary school
history books that are deemed to have the potential
to disrupt national security. The book seizures were
based on Attorney General Decree Number 19/1997.
The state prosecutor found 28 books originating from
three bookshops scattered across the East Java
provincial capital of Surabaya. The three bookshops
were the Gramedia Bookshop on Jl. Manyar (20 books),
the Uranus Bookshop on Jl. Ngagel and the Koko
Bookshop located in the Blauran Market.
"We carried out the seizure of books published by
the publishers on Jl. Peneleh based on the decree by
the Attorney General", said the administrative
section head of intelligence from the Surabaya state
prosecutor’s office, Dedi Irwan Verantama when
speaking with journalists during a break in a book
raid on Koko Bookshop on Monday April 16.
Verantama added that the contents of the books,
which pervert historical facts, could endanger
national stability. He gave as an example one of the
errors found in the historical books that were
seized.
The error is that they do not include the word “PKI”
with the words G30S, which should be G30S/PKI.
Verantama stated that they would not confiscate
those books that had already been bought by
students. (gik/asy)
Notes:
G30S/PKI - September 30 Movement/Indonesian
Communist Party. An acronym referring to the alleged
coup attempt in 1965 which the New Order regime
officially described as a PKI conspiracy, labelling
it G30S/PKI. Since the overthrow of the Suharto
dictatorship in 1998 however, the involvement of the
PKI in the affair has become a subject of debate and
it is now generally referred to merely as G30S.