Conflicted Reflections Amongst Civilian Participants in the May 1998 Race Riots in Indonesia

In the final days of Suharto’s ‘New Order’ military regime in Indonesia (1966–1998), large-scale riots broke out across the capital and several other cities. Amid the Asian financial crisis, mounting political unrest and demonstrations calling for an end to the New Order, the military sought to deflect public anger by scapegoating Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority, blaming them for the financial turmoil. Chinese Indonesians and their properties became the target of killings, looting and destruction. As with other state-led atrocities in Indonesia, there has never been any official redress for the May 1998 riots, and they remain a taboo topic. This article explores the testimonies of 31 civilians (26 men, 5 women) who took part in the riots. All participated in looting, some in a range of other violent criminal activities, including arson and sexual assaults. Using a social psychological approach, we undertake a thematic narrative analysis of the conflicted feelings of those civilians as expressed in anonymous interviews twenty years after these events. We found the trajectory of changing emotions over time, and how identified changes in participants' social identity influence a change in their feelings. This article explores the narrative techniques participants used to avoid acknowledging their complicity in the mass violence, revealing different, sometimes paradoxical, ongoing justifications.