International crimes are alleged to have occurred in the colonial period, within separatist conflicts (including in relation to Timor-Leste’s independence), during 1965 and Suharto’s subsequent presidency, and more recently, including in Papua. This chapter focuses on Indonesia’s national laws and institutions for prosecuting international crimes committed in Indonesia (as well as in East Timor prior to its independence as Timor-Leste in 2002). It reflects on the politicised history of international criminal law trials in post-colonial Indonesia. It then analyses statements made by representatives of foreign states and international organisations, the Indonesian government, and civil society about approaches to international criminal justice. It considers how this engagement has resulted in the adoption of laws that reflect some aspects of the norm of international criminal justice, but also amplify other principles and remain the object of debate – including planned amendments to the Criminal Code.

By mid-1966, about half a million adherents of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) were dead, many more were arbitrarily imprisoned and even more lost civil rights. The biggest communist party outside the communist bloc disappeared almost overnight, as did its affiliated social organisations. It was the worst political violence since Indonesia´s 1945-1949 war of national liberation. How could this happen? The chapter first dismisses two once-popular analytical approaches. Neither behaviourist depictions of rampaging anti-communist crowds, nor statist images of a military conducting pogroms on its own are adequate to the known facts. It then develops a contentious politics approach with multiple collective actors. The cold war looms large; the economy is politicised; institutions are weak, factionalised, and deeply embedded in various social formations. Contention escalates from September 1963, as President Sukarno and the PKI pivot from the gradualist Soviet Union to a militant People´s Republic of China. An emerging legitimation crisis pits a social justice discourse popular among lower classes against a growing middle class religious, law-and-order discourse. When the PKI leadership makes a false move on 1 October 1965, the military mobilises its allies to strike back, with genocidal results.

By mid-1951, diplomatic efforts to resolve the Kashmir problem had dissolved. It was now up to the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (Unmogip) to monitor the Cease Fire Line (CFL) in the hope that some further means of resolving the problem might eventuate. There was, however, no resolution, and the observers were still in place well into the twenty-first century. The Australians, who joined Unmogip in January 1952, were to play a major role in Kashmir until 1985, when the Australian Government withdrew its contingent.