Mem­oir recalls grow­ing up under Suharto’s regime

Tari Lang writes about Indone­sia’s 1965 coup in My Neigh­bour, The Dic­tator

“A hor­rible thing happened in a very big coun­try in a corner of the uni­verse that nobody knew about.” That is how Tari Lang describes the 1965 coup in Indone­sia in a Zoom call with The Sunday Times. Yet for her, it was her entire world.

Then just 14 years old, she watched help­less as her par­ents – a deputy min­is­ter and dir­ector of the export bur­eau, and an eco­nomic researcher in the for­eign min­istry and ghost speech­writer for Pres­id­ent Sukarno – were dragged off and imprisoned without trial by the Suharto regime.