General Suharto led the purges

Five years after the fall from power of Brigadier General Suharto, who led the purges that are believed to have killed between several hundred thousands and three million people, mass graves are being dug up in an effort to identify some of the dead.

Questions are also being asked about whether the ban on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) should now be lifted after decades of government-sanctioned negative publicity aimed at the Communists.

"There is a big change since 1998, with the fall of Suharto and the emergence of civilian presidents," Lim Syew Long of the Indonesian human rights group Tapol told the BBC World Service's Outlook programme.

"It gave [people] much more hope again - although this is a generation the youngest of whom is in their mid-60s.

"But in those days even if you were very young you were affected: it affected children and it affected grandchildren.

"You can see the first and second generation are organising themselves in political groupings, even political parties, and demanding rehabilitation and reconciliation.

"It is interesting that this wave of new hope is emerging in Indonesia."

Demanding justice

Mr Long said there were also steps being taken to move towards setting up a South Africa-style Truth and Reconciliation Committee - although this is still in its formative stage.

"I think they got a lot of inspiration from the South African model," he confirmed.

A Truth and Reconciliation Committee has already been established in East Timor

"Of course the situation in South Africa is different, so you have to adjust it to Indonesian conditions.

"Indonesian conditions are not that favourable. But one could say that let justice be done first, because so much injustice has been done to so many people.

"If the period of ending impunity and demanding justice for these groups of people then maybe reconciliation has a future here."

Thirty-eight years ago a group of junior army officers - calling themselves the 30 September movement - killed six army generals before being captured.

The army, supported by the police and the navy, smashed the coup but shortly afterwards they took power under Brigadier General Suharto.

Suharto blamed the attempted coup on the PKI and launched a systematic attack on anyone suspected of being sympathetic to its cause.

Propaganda

In some cases the populations of entire villages are said to have been killed.

"In central Java, some regions were practically decimated because all the peasants were members of the peasant union," Mr Long said.

The collapse of the Berlin wall triggered a change in Indonesia

"There was no mercy by the military - they just killed everybody."

But he added that fear of Communism could no longer be used to control Indonesia's people.

"The situation started to change a little bit after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

"With the Cold War over, this weapon of anti-Communism became more and more blunt. Nowadays it can't be used."

However, there were warnings that it would take time for some of the older generations - who had been given over 30 years of anti-Communist propaganda - to adjust.

"As a child I remember being really terrified by the Communists - in the film they were portrayed as really cruel, not like us - they didn't have any moral values at all," Dian Setianto, of the BBC's Indonesian Service, told Outlook.

"This image of Communists being really nasty people - cruel without morals - I'm sure still sticks in the minds of many people.

"I spoke to some of my uncles, and they still that it was a necessary thing to do.