Why today’s global warming has roots in Indonesia’s genocidal past | Joshua Oppenheimer

The mass killings in 1965 live on in global emissions from forced forest fires - and through human rights abuses in the palm oil fields

There has been tremendous concern over the ways climate change will affect human rights, but little attention to how human rights abuse affects our global climate.

Fifty years ago, Indonesia went through a genocide. The massacres may be relatively unknown, but in a terrible way the destruction continues, and threatens us all. In 1965, the Indonesian army organised paramilitary death squads and exterminated between 500,000 and 1 million people who had hastily been identified as enemies of General Suharto's new military dictatorship. Today, the killers and their proti(C)gi(C)s are comfortable establishment figures whose impunity, political power and capacity for intimidation endure.

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