Book Review: Interrogation Records by Jeddie Sophronius
1 min read
Akankshya Abismruta reviews Jeddie Sophronius’ Interrogation Records (Published by Gaudy Boy, 2024) observing an act of rebellion in its remembering of the past.
- ISBN: 978-1958652077
- Publisher: Gaudy Boy
- Year: 2024
The easiest way to destroy a perceived threat to the state is to abolish its people. Be it a community or a movement, the erasure of people takes away the momentum. When this happens in the form of mass purging of civilians, the state pretends to have destroyed the threat, nothing more, nothing less. The silence that ensues haunts generations to come.
In Interrogation Records (Gaudy Boy, 2024), Jeddie Sophronius documents the history underlying the collective silence in Indonesia about the mass killings in 1965-66 through docupoems. They state, “To this day, there exists a black hole of silence in Indonesia’s socio-political climate when it comes to acknowledging the tragedy as what it was—a tragedy.” According to the state history, 7 generals were killed on Gestapu (September 30, 1965). The communist purging that followed as a retaliation “never happened”.
