When Tari was 16, a dictator became her neighbour. Then her parents were imprisoned

The first thing 14-year-old Tari saw on the morning of October 1 1965 were army tanks. They were parked on the roundabout outside her family home on Teuku Umar, one of Jakarta’s finest colonial streets – lined with embassies, the residences of ministers, and the homes of business and military elites.

On a street where “nothing bad ever happens”, she saw “two tanks, three military jeeps and a dozen or so armed soldiers […] stationed on the roundabout”. She remembers: “The soldiers stand perfectly still, gripping their automatic weapons, their eyes casting suspiciously around. The flowers are squashed but that doesn’t seem to bother them.”