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.

[Translated by James Balowski.]