Marzuki Darusman and the Withheld Record of the Trisakti Shootings

By Harlan Pryce · September 13, 2026

For years, the American government stayed silent about the killings of Indonesian students, using a curated gap in the record to shield the military from the families of the dead.

The students killed in the Trisakti shootings were a payment for a stability the US Embassy in Jakarta helped maintain. The cost of that stability was a curated silence that left the families of the dead fighting for a record that the Americans had already seen and decided to hide.

This story is built from the archive's curated description of the record, not the original pages themselves. The event is a meeting on May 25, 1998, between an American congressional delegation and a man trying to hold a collapsing regime accountable for its own violence. Marzuki Darusman, a lawyer and human rights campaigner who would later serve as the Attorney General of Indonesia from 1999 to 2001, used the meeting to challenge the Americans on why the truth about the student killings remained under lock and key.

The Cost of Stability

By May 1998, the "New Order" regime of President Suharto was fracturing. The Trisakti shootings—the killing of four students by security forces—had become the spark for widespread riots. In the room with Darusman were Congressman Christopher Henry Smith, a New Jersey representative since 1981, and Joseph Rees, a Louisiana lawyer who was then a senior staffer.

According to the record, Darusman did not come to the meeting to offer diplomatic pleasantries. He questioned why "certain portions of the information surrounding the Trisakti shootings were being kept classified." He was not asking about Indonesian classification, but about the American silence.

The pattern suggests the US government was actively shielding the Indonesian military from the consequences of the Trisakti shootings to maintain regional stability during the transition. By withholding the specific intelligence they held on the killings, the US prevented the victims' families from using American data to force a domestic prosecution. The record shows Darusman pushing for the truth; it does not show the US delegation providing it. The desk's reading is that the silence was not a failure of diplomacy, but a deliberate policy of protection for the Indonesian generals.

Document imagery from nsarchive.gwu.edu From the files: nsarchive.gwu.edu

A Divergence of Narratives

Darusman’s frustration extended beyond the classification of the shootings. As Vice Chairman of the Human Rights Commission, a body tasked with investigating and protecting human rights within Indonesia, he had a front-row seat to the internal friction of the state. The record establishes that Darusman observed a "divergence between the police and the military in competing narratives and objectives" regarding the investigation of the shootings and subsequent disappearances.

This divergence is where the real intelligence lived. While the public record shows a state in chaos, the record reveals the US was paying close attention to the rift between the police and the military. The desk's reading is that the US was leveraging this institutional rift to identify the most pliable power center in the post-Suharto era. By mapping who was lying and who was telling the truth about the students' deaths, the US could determine which security apparatus to back as the regime shifted.

Throughout the meeting, Darusman was the only one advocating for a clean break from the past. He told the delegation that the new government was "moving too slowly on releasing political prisoners." This was a direct critique of the transition's pace, a warning that the blood of the students had not yet bought a true democratic opening. The record captures Darusman’s urgency, but it is a one-sided ledger. It tells us what Darusman said, but omits the responses or commitments made by Smith and Rees. The cable represents a listening post operation where the US gathered intelligence on internal Indonesian dissent without committing to any diplomatic position.

The Dili Trajectory

The most telling part of the meeting involves a man who was not in the room as a prisoner, but as a subject of debate: Xanana Gusmao. The leader of the East Timorese Resistance, Gusmao had spent years as a symbol of the struggle against Indonesian occupation. In the meeting, Darusman was blunt, asserting that Gusmao was "a political prisoner, full stop."

There is a sharp irony in who was listening to this assertion. Joseph Rees, the staffer in the room, was taking notes on Gusmao’s status as a prisoner. Years later, Rees would be appointed as the first United States Ambassador to East Timor.

The line between the staffer and the ambassador is a straight one. The desk's reading is that this meeting served as an early-stage vetting and relationship-building exercise for future state-building in East Timor rather than a mere human rights inquiry. Rees was not just monitoring a human rights crisis; he was being briefed on the future leadership of a nation the US expected to eventually recognize. The transition from a staffer listening to Darusman's pleas for Gusmao to becoming the diplomatic representative to Gusmao's independent country shows that the US was already calculating the end-game in Dili while the students of Jakarta were still being buried.

The Listening Post

Before the meeting ended, Darusman announced the launching of a "National Action Plan" on human rights. He was attempting to codify a new era of accountability for Indonesia. The record reports this announcement as a factual event, a data point to be transmitted back to the State Department.

There is no recorded US policy response in the cable. There is no expression of support or a promise of partnership. The pattern suggests the US was monitoring the National Action Plan not as a goal for human rights advancement, but as a metric for regime instability. For the US, the plan was not a blueprint for justice, but a barometer for how much the new government was willing to alienate its own military.

If the shape of this file is what it appears to be, the US government operated a double-game in 1998. On the surface, they met with human rights champions like Darusman to maintain the appearance of supporting a democratic transition. Underneath, they curated the classification of the Trisakti shootings to keep the military from panicking and mapped out the future of East Timor through the eyes of the people the military had imprisoned.

The desk's reading is that the withheld pages of the Trisakti record protect the names of the American officials who decided that the lives of four students were a fair price for a stable transition. A full release would likely show that the US knew exactly who pulled the triggers and exactly why they chose not to say so. The people who paid for that stability were the families of the dead and the political prisoners who remained in cells long after the US had decided they were useful assets for a future embassy.

Marzuki Darusman and the Withheld Record of the Trisakti Shootings

The Cost of Stability

A Divergence of Narratives

The Dili Trajectory

The Listening Post

Sources