Exiled Memories: The Collective memory of Indonesian 1965 exiles

This study is about the memory of people in transition after the experience of statelessness. The stateless people discussed in this study are Indonesians who were prevented from returning home because the state considered them part of a group inspired by leftist ideologies. This was a story of stigmatisation that took place against the left in Indonesia in 1965. Since the state revoked and refused to renew their passport, and because of the fear to return, they became stateless people in mainly socialist countries. Many of those who are the sub-ject of this study went through some transit countries before finally gained a Dutch or Czech citizenship. As part of the study, interviews guided by the fo-cus on oral history and memoir research were conducted with 1965 Indonesian exiles living in the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. The focus of the research is to explore the interplay between collective and individual memories. In particular, the study tries to analyse how individu-als‟ exilic trajectories have shaped their memories of homeland and of the 1965 event itself. To do so, I borrow the notion of “collective memory” from Halbwach and “site of memory” from Pierre Nora to understand how they adjust the meaning of home in relation to their different exilic trajectories and their being away from the actual violence of 1965. Among the key findings are how the meaning of home is not static in relation to one geographical area but is identified through two or more countries according to their different exilic trajectories. Taking into account the fact of different exilic trajectories, it is of course interesting to understand that they demonstrate a variant of the 1965 discourse of state‟s violence and at the same time reveal different sub-group and individual memories in which their exilic trajectories are remembered.