Exposed: A Visual History of the Destruction of the Indonesian Left

by Geoffrey B. Robinson, Douglas Kammen

Exposed tells the story of the orchestrated mass violence of 1965–1968 in Indonesia and its aftermath. By highlighting visual imagery, Geoffrey Robinson and Douglas Kammen fill a void in existing accounts, challenge distorted official narratives, and establish a basis on which new social memories and interpretations might be formed.

Following an alleged coup attempt on October 1, 1965, at least half a million members of the legal Communist Party of Indonesia and other leftist organizations were killed and another million or so were detained and held for long periods without charge or trial. The consequences of these events were far-reaching and marked a crucial turning point in the Cold War. In less than a year, the largest non-governing Communist party in the world was crushed, and the country's popular left-nationalist President Sukarno was swept aside, signaling the start of more than three decades of military-backed authoritarian rule. Exposed is the first-ever visual history of these important, but long-obscured, events.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 2025

About the author

Geoffrey B. Robinson is a professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles who writes and teaches about the history of political violence, genocide, human rights, and mass incarceration, primarily in Southeast Asia.

A Canadian, he earned his BA at McGill University and his PhD at Cornell, where he was a student of Benedict Anderson and George Kahin. Before coming to UCLA in 1997, Robinson worked for six years at Amnesty International’s Research Department in London, and in 1999 he served as a Political Affairs Officer with the United Nations in Dili, East Timor.

His books include The Dark Side of Paradise: Political Violence in Bali and “If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die”: How Genocide Was Stopped in East Timor (Princeton).

Reviews

[Anitha Silvia]

Yes, the dead do speak, but in their own way and in their own time. Buchenwald, Ravensbruck, Dachau, Auschwitz, and all the other human slaughterhouses, even those in Indonesia, cannot silence the dead.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer, The Mute’s Soliloquy