association. Although a lack of information makes it impossible to pinpoint an exact casualty figure, many scholars today suggest that the figure is at least 500,000. According to a CIA study of the events in Indonesia, "In terms of the numbers killed the anti-PKI massacres in Indonesia rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century". The United States played a significant role in the killings, supplying economic, technical and military aid to the Indonesian military when the killings began and providing "kill lists" (via the U.S. embassy in Jakarta) with the names of thousands of suspected high-ranking members of the PKI. A tribunal held in the Hague in 2016 concluded the massacres were crimes against humanity, and the U.S. backed the Indonesian military "knowing well that they were embarked upon a programme of mass killings". Declassified U.S. diplomatic cables released in 2017 corroborate this. According to UCLA historian Geoffrey B. Robinson, the Indonesian army's campaign of mass killings would not have occurred without the support of the U.S. and other powerful Western governments. Documentary filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer, director of The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, said: We know that U.S. embassy officials were compiling lists of thousands of names of public figures in Indonesia and handing these to the army and saying, 'Kill everybody on these lists and check off the names as you go, and give the lists back to us when you’re done'."The Look of Silence": Will New Film Force U.S. to Acknowledge Role in 1965 Indonesian Genocide? Democracy Now! 3 August 2015. Time magazine presented the following account on 17 December 1965:Communists, red sympathizers and their families are being massacred by the thousands. Backlands army units are reported to have executed thousands of communists after interrogation in remote jails. Armed with wide-bladed knives called parangs, Moslem bands crept at night into the homes of communists, killing entire families and burying their bodies in shallow graves. The murder campaign became so brazen in parts of rural East Java, that Moslem bands placed the heads of victims on poles and paraded them through villages. The killings have been on such a scale that the disposal of the corpses has created a serious sanitation problem in East Java and Northern Sumatra where the humid air bears the reek of decaying flesh. Travelers from those areas tell of small rivers and streams that have