Established in 1969, the prison camp here was called, in the double-speak of Mr. Suharto's regime, the Buru Island Humanitarian Project.
But the suffering that took place on Buru suggests that "humanitarian" was a cruel euphemism and a bald-faced lie. In an incomplete but detailed list, Mr. Pramoedya has recorded 315 deaths: men crushed by falling trees, tortured to death or, in two cases, "speared by a local resident.