25/06/2013 Newsnight

junkie economy? Addicted to low- interest rates and printed money.

Where even the prospect of not getting a hit leaves us reeling.

Global markets have been sliding ever since the Americans hinted

about not printing any money. Is it a drug we can give up? Also tonight

the immigration loophole some British citizens are using to get

their relatives into Britain by way of another European country. We are

doing it because we have no other option. We will cheat if it means

we can stay together for the rest of our I have lives. What has

happened? Cambridge have stopped. There is a man swimming between the

boats. The man has been kicked out of Britain for this, he disrupted

the Oxford and Cambridge boat race, and is to be deported for not being

conducive to the public good. Trenton Oldfield is here to explain

why he shouldn't be set packing. graphic new documentary follows the

original Suharto death squads from 60s Indonesia as they delight of

re-enacting the destruction of hundreds of alleged communists. We

will ask why they revelled in recreating their horrific crimes.

Good evening, is it time for an intervention for the good of our

nation's health, for a long time now our dear friend the British

economy has had a problem, we can't ignore it any longer. It is

addicted to cheap money it has been getting from a bloke in

Threadneedle Street. In a week that global markets reacted so badly to

the idea that the US Government would stop their printing programme,

we ask can we go back to the monetary policies of the past, or

are we permanently hooked on cheap cash and low interest rates?

Suddenly the global markets are turbulent again. There is a credit

crunch in China, across the world people are selling off both company

shares and Government bonds. Because Europe is still the weakest

link in the hole, fragile global recovery and we are exposed to it,

there is worry there as well. Last week the boss of the US

Central Bank, Ricardo Berna, gave the long-awaited signal that he's

about to start withdrawing some of the $2 trillion printed under

quantitative easing. Under QE the Fed is currently buying up to 90%

of all US bonds issued each month. That has kept the dollar low and

the effective interest rate the US pays to borrow at below zero.

Quantitative easing works by making it unprofitable to own Government

bonds, and pushing capital into more risky markets, shares,

property, gold and even the virtual currency, Bitcoin. By signals an

end to QE, Bernanke sparked a sell- off in the stock markets. This is

what happened. Here is the S & P, the FTSE and the nick kie. All

falling markedly since the middle of May. Just as the world gets used

to that, there has been a mini- credit crunch in China. For the

past five years the Chinese economy has been run on cheap credit,

created by the Government. Using soft loans China switched from

consumer groups to massive infrastructure projects to help

ride out the global downturn. But this year growth has slowed to 7.7%.

Instead of simply turning the taps on more, China's Central Bank has

tightened credit. This is what has happened to the InterBank lending

rate, the SHIBOR, the Chinese version of LIBOR has spiked, making

it hard for some companies to borrow, some think this is the sign

of something bigger, a Chinese slowdown. What does it all mean

here? On Monday Mark Kearney the new boss of the Bank of England

takes over. Here we have quantitative easing, but unlike in

America we have a long and deep austerity programme under way, and

a weak recovery. So not contend with printing money, the Government

has asked him to do more, ignoring the threat of inflation and pegging

interest rates to zero for years to come. The man he will take over,

Lord Mervyn King, seemed to encourage that today. I think

people have rather jumped the gun in thinking this means an imminent

to normal levels of interest rates, it doesn't. Until markets see in

place policies to bring about that return to normal economic

conditions there is no prospect for sustainable recovery. Without a

prospect for sustainable recovery markets can understand it will not

be sensible to return to normal interest rates. In Britain all this

market shaking matters, because the fear is we become quantitative

easing junkies. This graph shows the effective interest rate the

Government borrows at over ten years. As you can see it has been

falling, in part because we got the deficit down, in part because we

did a lot of quantitative easing, and in part because the world

calmed down. Now at the very end it is starting to tick back up again,

that is a direct reflection of all the problems in the world I have

just described. Lord Mynerss is the Labour peer who

had a career in finance before serving as City Minister in Gordon

Brown's Government. John Redwood is a Conservative MP and chair of the

party's economic affair committee, and George Buckley is the Chief UK

Economist at Deutsche Bank. John Redwood, has cheap money been good

for the country? I think cheap money was a necessary evil to try

to make sure the recession didn't get worse and spiral out of control

after the credit crunch in 2007/08. From the savers' point of view it

has been very bad news. Your natural constituency? You have to

weigh it up, some people gain, those who borrowed a lot of money,

some people lost, the savers, who didn't have overall impact on

spendable income, one lot won and one lot lost. It was also much

easier for the public rather than the private sector. A lot of people

are having to pay higher interest rates than half a per cent as we

are told in the short-term rate. is almost the default position, are

we addicted to it? I think this Government and probably the new

Government and the Bank of England will say they will carry on with

very low official interest rates for longer. They may find that bond

rates, medium-term rates go up a bit because of the world situation,

they may find that banks continue to require higher interest rates in

the private sector, as they have been doing throughout the last two

or three years. I wouldn't adirected, but it is -- addicted,

but it is part of the recovery process put in place. Are we

addicted? We needed quantitative easing, had we not had the amount

that was done we would be in a situation that is a lot worse. The

only good thing about this, this is probably one of the reasons I don't

think we are addicted, is that had we not done QE, and in terms of

people who have taken on loans, we have seen some numbers from the

British Bankers' Association, saying we have had a reasonable

increase in the number of people taking out mortgage debt. Which the

Government has been desperate to have. That is encouraging news, but

there haven't been that many people who have taken out debt at the

exceptionally low interest rates. That is the only good bit of news

we have seen. When you get a hint from Bernake that next year the

quantitative easing will be put back, there is such instability in

the markets they can't take the news? It tells you how effective

quantitative easing has been, it tells you how much interest rates

were brought down by quantitative easing. How much is our response

conditioned to it now? We needed to have this level of interest rate.

Do you think it is a good addiction? I don't think it has

been used properly. It bought time, that time has not been used

productively. From the beginning you didn't think this would happen

down the line? I don't think anybody foresaw that the recession

would last this long. We are now talking about a major part of the

gilt-edged market being owned by the Government. The Government has

issued debt and bought the debt back, it has moved money from the

left to the right pocket. We will have to see from the new governor a

real change in more unconventional policies. Even cancelling out the

two sides of the equation. whole idea, when it was brought in

by a Labour Government that eventually this would kick-start

growth, where is the growth? We have seen growth in America, we

haven't seen it here? We have seen a positive stimulus to the economy,

the Bank of England evidence is very strong. We are seeing further

evidence of that. But fiscal policy has held the economy back. You

can't put all the responsibility for growth on to monetary policy.

What do you think about the Lord Mynerss idea that we should be

writing off some of the debt now? don't agree with that, or that

fiscal policy has been wrong. This Government has increased current

spending in the first three years in office, just as Labour did when

it was in office. The borrowing is still at a very high level. There

is every evidence that there is plenty of fiscal stimulus in the

economy. Where is the growth, you say? Where is the growth?There has

been some growth, and there has also been a very big contraction of

our two big lead sectors of the previous decade, oil and gas has

contracted because the reservoirs are getting old, and banking and

financial services and business services have been very badly

walloped by the credit crunch under the previous Government. When your

two lead sectors are badly damaged, you have to run very fast to catch

up. You can't do much about the first sector, the oil price is so

volatile, but you could have for the second one? The Government

could have introduced supply side reform, and increased capital

expenditure rather than reduce. was your Government that cut it.

One of the problems in Government accounting, this is not a party

political point, is we lump capital expenditure together with revenue

expenditure. The one thing we should be doing when we have excess

comasity in the economy is building roads, -- capacity in the economy,

is building roads, schools and new railways, this Government has been

very slow to do that. You are an economist for the bank, would

capital projects have made a massive difference, they seem to

have in America? We can look at the mull pliers, in terms of what an

increase -- multipliers, in terms of what an increase on current

spending does to the economy and capital spending. When you raise

capital spending it does more to raise GDP than current spending.

Capital spending is very important. This Government has been shy of big

capital spend and projects? I don't think it has at all. The previous

Government made extreme low large cuts in future capital programmes.

This Government has put a little bit of those cut back and wants to

put a lot more and has come up with the National Infrastructure Plan.

Those cuts were in the eye of the storm, not part of a long-term

policy. Set out for the following five years. They were your long-

term policy. They weren't, there wasn't a five-year commitment to

fiscal policy in 2010. There was a rolling plan.

You would have returned to big capital projects? I don't know HS2

would have been brought forward? have only to look at our motorways

and roads to see plenty of holes that need to be filled. This is

precisely what John MaynardCaines says we should be doing. You are

saying that capital projects have huge spending that some other

projects don't? I agree some have that, but there are others which

bring huge revenue losses in the future. That is not a good idea.

The Government isk looing at what will make the most impact,

broadband is a good project that they are encouraging. But if you

want a good railway it takes ten years to go through all the perMiGs

and requirements. Looking ---- permissions and all requirements.

How worried should we be about the latest tremors in China? Interest

rates need to be normalised. They need to be nominal GDP plus one or

two per cent. At the moment they are less than half that level.

they ever get to 5%? It will, that is big issues for people on

interest-only mortgages or fixed rate mortgages. In Japan, 20 years?

I would hope regardless of the mismanagement of the economy by

this Government that we are not set for 20 years of recession.

Seriously what do you think? think it is worth bearing in mind

that at the moment ten-year interest rates are 2.5%. That is

not, even after having risen so much after the last week, it is

still not a number that suggests the market is convinced that this

recovery is serious. 2.5% is not consistent with a strong recovery.

What would convince the market? market would have to raise or see

interest rates higher than that to be convinced. The problem is when

interest rates go up you start to worry that it could have a negative

feedback loop. This is exactly why we are so worried about the speed

in the rise of interest rates we have seen. Ben Bernake will think

about scaling back QE. We did that, we stopped QE on a single day back

in October in 2012, it didn't have this impact on the UK markets. But

the US is so much important and has an im We are living in America's

world? We, because she does more on a bigger scale and in a bigger

economy. Bernake saying to the Chinese that you have lent too much

and you have to stop, that caused the crisis, we have to catch if the

Chinese back off a bit or precipitate a worse situation in

China, that will be bad for the rest of the world. You began the

conversation that this is bad for savers in your constituency, when

will we return to that? He don't see the official rate going up this

parliament, -- I don't see the official rate going up this

parliament. The economy will grow from here but not fast enough to

justify suddenly jacking up official rates. I think official

rates in America will stay longer for longer too. They want to get

unemployment substantially down before they increase them they have

said. The paradox of Government policy in monetary areas is we are

repeating the same mistakes that were made in monetary policy made

by the Bank of England in 2006/07. We are stoking up asset bubbles and

creating uncertainty and risk in the economy. There will be a need

for adjustment, whether it is in the course of the parliament or

beyond is a matter for debate. But interest rates will have to go up

in due course. We're joined but our political

editor, because tomorrow the Chancellor, George Osborne, will

announce his Spending Review. Allegra, damp squib, lots of tweets

have gone out. Do we know much? very much, it is very unusual that

the Treasury doesn't say very much the night before one of these. It

makes me think he might be up to something. But actually all

suggestions are that he would quite like tomorrow to be boring. Because

he has got in trouble in the past with his financial statements. The

thing that is relevant to the contributions by the previous

guests is that they thought that the deficit would have been coming

down, all sorts of things with growth not transpiring, it means

that actually George Osborne had to extend it through to 2018. Which is

a very long time in the future. Tomorrow what we are getting is the

first tranche of how you get on that new trajectory, it is �11.5

billion. It is something, but it is just a dress rehearsal. So we get

cuts tomorrow but to get the target of 2018, into the next parliament,

we will have another �13 billion in 2016/17, and after that yet more.

Tomorrow we learn a little bit about what life will be like in the

next parliament. But not a huge amount. I also sense that it will

be a terrible phrase, "salami slicing", efficiencies here and

backroom savings there. There will be pain, but he wants to stop the

fireworks. The thing about these is that Labour has now moved on to

broadly supporting them. A lot of the politic has gone out of it.

Thank you very much indeed. Well the Government has been trying

to reduce immigration from outside the EU, including restrictions on

language and earnings and relatives trying to enter the country. But

some Britons are finding a way round these obstacles by going and

working in Europe, another country in Europe for a number of months,

so their cases can be considered under EU law not British law. And

so, as BBC Asian Network reporter Katherine Nye explains, it can be

easier for Europeans to get their relatives living outside the EU

into this country than it is for British people. This woman is from

the Czech Republic, married to her husband from Pakistan, and they

live in Leeds. Their daughter chats in Czech, Urdu and English. When I

met my husband, his original visa had already expired, after we got

married in the mosque we applied for his residence as a permanent

member of the EU citizens. decided I will not go back to

Pakistan any more, I will start my life here. Ahmed told me he's

pleased he's married to a European, and he's right to be. If she were

British, on today's rules he wouldn't be able to live here. When

it comes to bringing in family from oversees Europeans have stronger

rights than British citizens. They are not affected by our

Government's tightening immigration rules. Put simply, it is easier for

a French or Polish man, living in London, to bring in his American or

Indian wife than it is for someone British.

This is why. Within the EU, and the wider European Economic Area, or

EEA, each country tries to control the flow of people coming in

through its own immigration rules. But, overriding all of these are

the EEA's overarching rights, which include free movement of workers,

and crucially, their family. These rights kick in when people move

between countries and are economically active. This means

that when Czechs move to the UK for work, it allows her non-European

partner to live in the UK with her. Each year around 20,000 non-

European family members of Europeans, like this man, come to

live in the UK. It may seem very unfair, but if a

British person wants to gain the same rights they can. They can

leave the UK, exercise their treaty rights by working in Europe and

then come back, effectively having made themselves European.

Chris Hall is doing just that. He's an actor and stunt man from

Swindon. He met Sarah, a screenwriter, while working in

Chicago. And they married in December. Some of Chris's acting

work is freelance, so he doesn't officially meet the �18,600 the

Government now says he must earn to have Sarah live with him in the UK.

The couple dramatically fled the UK when they realised Sarah's visa

wouldn't be extended. So activate his treaty rights they have moved

to Paris, and Chris has got a job in a bar.

Sarah was told about this route by a friend. I put a thing on Facebook

that was like I have to leave the country in 48 hours, come say

goodbye to me. Original low I was like I'm going to have to --

original low I was like I will have to fly back to the states, and she

was like go to France and somewhere in the EU, and there is something

called surrender same, she will explain it when I got there she

said. I was like, OK. This method, quitting the UK,

exercising your treaty rights and coming back to be treated like a

European citizen, it is known as the Saringder Singer route, named

after the case that allowed Britons to do that. I talked to her on-line,

when we knew all of the details. It was really, really crazy what we

did. The couple have been in Paris since

February, and will stay another two months while Chris collects proof

that he has been exercising his treaty rights. He will take to the

border, payslips, utility bills and bank details. It feels like the

whole thing is a numbers game, they are always talking about

immigration and how they want to get it down and combat it and make

sure they are doing the job set to do. I'm a British citizen, if we're

in there somewhere you are cracking down on the wrong people.

British citizens can do the route in any country within the European

Economic Area. But a large proportion are choosing Ireland

because it is close by and there is no language barrier when looking

for work. Here in Dublin there is a growing community of people

exercising their treaty rights in order to get a family into the UK.

People like Sunil, an actuary from Reading. She's original low from

Australia, she moved to the UK more than ten years ago and is now a

British citizens. She's bringing her parents in from Australia, and

says she will pay for private healthcare for them. The three of

them are living in a temporary flat in in Dublin.

Sunil has up a group called Brit Sits to show others how to use the

route. Today she is advising a Scottish woman how to bring in her

Russian mother. If you have information on how we can proceed

with this. More than happy to help. New rules brought in last July make

it effectively impossible to bring dependant relatives into the UK

from outside Europe. Why do you feel it is your right to

have your parents in the UK with you, when obviously the Government

is trying to stop so many people bringing in a lot of relatives into

the UK? By definition someone can only have two parents, so there is

no real room for abuse there. My parents aren't coming here to abuse

the system, to claim benefit, but I'm sure if someone just wanted to

be benefit scroungers it would be easier to do it in your country of

citizenship. By my having to go through this EU route, what they

are encouraging people to do is be able to claim benefits. Because if

you go down the EU route you are entitled to claim benefits as is

your non-EU family. And that's what's absolutely bizarre. We will

have people who deliberately go down this route so their non-EU

family can claim benefits. While he was in Dublin another two couples

arrived in Ireland using this route. They didn't want to speak toe me

though, because some people are fearful if the Government knows it

will try to stop them. There is a significant number of people

exploiting this route at the moment. Over the years we have had calls

from migrants, perspective migrants and mostly migrant families wanting

to have a bit of advice on how to get other family members over. Now

we are getting calls from white British people wanting to get one

family member in, their spouse, or perhaps a couple of children. And

there is a lot of anger about that. This is an infringement on British

people's rights, not just about immigrants. The Government already

accept that we can't control immigration from other E United

Statess. But we do work on the assumption that we can control

movement from outside the EU, the family reunion has had to take its

fair share of that. I think the rules that have been introduced,

placing some what more restrictions on it are perfectly fair. To have

those rules about controlling movement into the country from

outside Europe just made fun of by a European regulation is just you

know, it should be stopped. In Oxfordshire, Chris has already

used this route to get his wife, Melissa, in, she is from New

Zealand. They told me how they were received on the border on arrival

from the UK. The response of the immigration officer was to suggest

we were tricking them some how. see what you have done there, that

is really clever. I was so exasperated by that point. They

actually said, oh I see, you can just go and work in Spain or

something as a waiter for a month and bring whoever you want back

into the country with you. I thought well you are making this

out, yes, but that is not illegal, that's not, rather it is not

illegal, it is a stronger rights intitlement than the current family

immigration rules are. It is completely legitimate, it is my

right, it is every European's right. But it does mean that the British

Government can't make rules that mean anything really? Well I would

argue that actually if you are going to make a rule that inhibits

people's capacity to have a family, British citizens to have a family,

that is unjustified and illegitimate in the first place.

The Immigration Minister, Mark Harper denied to be interview,

This does some what contradict the UKBA website which says it does not

matter if the only reason a British national went to another British

state was to exercise an economic treaty right so they could bring

their family into the UK. We are doing it because we have no other

option, we will go ahead with it, if it is a cheat we will cheat if

that means we can stay together for the rest of our lives.

Unless the Government can find a way to close this route, for now

British citizens will continue to scatter themselves all over Europe

and come back with relatives in tow. You can hear that full documentary,

Extreme Immigration by visiting the BBC website.

The Oxford and Cambridge boat race is as qentseingsly English as the

many other things. But not something Trenton Oldfield, an

Australian, likes, last year he jumped in to disrupt the start and

ended up in the clirpbg for six months. Now he's to be kicked out

of the country because he's not conducive to public good.

First a reminder of the kerfuffle. Once they get around because they

are still in their favour. They have stopped. We have stopped

rowing there is a man swimming across between the boats, both

crews have had to swap, all the following boats have had to stop.

There he is, there is the swimmer, the intruder in the water, just by

the blades. I'm joined now by Trenton and his

wife. Trenton, first of all, what were you thinking? Kirsly in the

three days before I jumped in the river the British Government which

as we know is not collected, had passed three. The British

Government is not elected? This one wasn't. This one was elected and

put together as a coalition? It was put together as a coalition, any

way, so in the three days preceding my protest the Queen had had given

Royal Assent to the selling of the NHS and the communications and data

bill had been introduced into the Houses of Parliament, and on the

third day the minister for the Olympics suggested that if your

neighbour, if you thought your neighbour was going to protest at

the Olympics that you should dob them in. All of that after decades

of working on inequality and poverty issues was a real concern

to me. But it was a concern to you so you thought, the boat race,

because that presumably is a kind of totem of all you dislike about

here? It is not so much about disliking here, lived here for 12

years, I have chosen to live here because it is an interesting place,

I have committed my entire working life here to work on issues of

inequality. But the boat race symbolises a lot of issues. But you

misjudged the public mood on the boat race? It seems to have changed

a lot since then. I believe similar things. It changes a lot since the

year last April? I believe so.You didn't tell your wife you were

going to do it? I didn't. Because there is these laws called joint

enterprise which are introduced, which convicts people that might

know about certain crimes or certain things that will happen. I

didn't want that. For the first time you saw it was him on

television or did the police phone you or what happened? We work

together as well, suddenly I was check ago work e-mail and the

indocks was flooded, and I opened one -- inbox was flooded, and I

opened one that said it is did I just see something I thought I saw,

and I clicked the link and there was Trenton in the Thames. If you

think this is an elitist place and pursuing elitist policies,

presumably you would be happier in Australia? As a migrant, you will

know having worked on these programmes for many years, the role

that migrants have contributed to the United Kingdom in terms of

social equality. The place we live in East London. You were the

benefit of a post graduate place at LSE, you might be one of the elite

yourself? I don't understand that argument, other than I have a good

understanding of how these institutions work. What you are

doing is fighting essentially deportation, and you are going to

appeal. Diop your baby was due yesterday, you -- Deepa, your baby

was due yesterday, you might face the prospect of being separated.

Are you now thinking you will have to make some statement of good

behaviour in order to stay, or is it too late for that? We're hoping

that the Home Office, because it is so overstretched with resources.

Lust forget about you, I don't think so? I think, we are hoping

that it may have just been a technical issue. There is a pretty

high-profile case, I doubt that will be the case. You will have to

appeal, on what grounds will you appeal? We are appealing on a

number of grounds, for example there is normally you don't get

referred for even consideration of deportation unless you are sentence

is over a year. It was a peaceful, non-violent protest. It could have

been dangerous, you endangered yourself and might have caused the

health serves out to your aid? is not there. Presumably you are in

a position now where you are about to give birth, and within six weeks

your husband could be out of the country? Yes.What would you say to

people in the end about an act that has benefited neither of you?

is a question around portionality and scale, Trenton was punished, he

served a prison sentence, we are paying off the Crown costs, he was

released on a tag. He didn't break any of those condition. He's

contributed and worked in this country for over a decade. But he

now is a criminal, of course? think the question around the right

to protest and the criminal yietsation of protest needs to be

discussed. -- criminalisation of protests need to be discussed. The

question around migrants and whether migrants have the right to

protest around issues that they feel are unjust. In our

neighbourhood I think Trenton was trying to say things like minimum

wage, minimum working hours, that's all been done through migrants

protesting. It is a interested decisional thing. Are you --It is

traditional thing. Are you going to have to say you are a reformed

character? It is so interesting, when you go to prison nobody could

tell me what the point of prison was. Nobody was able to say through

this process that I would be reformed or rehabilitated or

punished. So I mean...You Are not really rehabilitated again?

imagine, it would seem that is the casek because I was allowed out of

prison without any issues. But the issue at stake here is whether or

not you can protest? And what I'm' dealing with at the moment is I

will be concentrating on my family, I have some books to write, they

are the key issues. People do have the right to protest and not to be

criminalised for that protesting. Are you determined not to go to

Australia, you may have to go? Well it would be he very difficult

because our life is completely entangled here, we live and work

together, everything is involved. We are hoping it was a technical

mistake by the Home Office and we are hoping they will clarify that

it was an oversight. Thank you very much indeed.

Before the end of the programme we have tomorrow's front page, first,

it is very rare to see killers boasting about their crimes. And

certainly not the perpetrators of mass murder. But in a new

documentary feature, The Act Of Killing, which revisits the bloody

aftermath of the coup in Indonesian in 1975, the original

paramilitaries who executed hundreds of thousands of alleged

communists do just that. The film maker, Joshua Oppenheimer, tracked

down the leader of the death squads and they readily agreed to re-enact

several of their murders, delighting in the most bloodthirsty

details. These exerts contain distressing images.

After the 1965 coup anybody opposed to the new military dictatorship

could be accused of being a communist. This included union

members, landless farmers, intellectuals and ethnic Chinese.

In America the attack on communism was seen as a major victory.

Anwar Congo was the loader of the Pancasila Youth paramilitaries,

which still existed today. He enthusiastically demonstrated to

the camera what happened after he had beaten his victims to death,

because the smell and the mess was The killers dress up in outlandish,

garish outfits, making elaborate sets and cajoling Indonesians to

take part in violent re-enactments, oblivious to the fact they are

incriminating themselves in war It was a very multilayered

documentary, including the prp traitors talking to each other --

perpetrators talking about what they did to each other. Joshua

Oppenheimer is with me now. You started off filming with survivors

and then switched to the perpetrators? Every time we filmed

with the survivors the police would and arrest us, and it terrified the

survivors. He went back and asked should we make this and is it too

sensitive still. And everybody said you must make a film, one that

exposes what happened and what has happened to a whole society built

by the killers and is based on the celebration of atrocities as

something herok. I find it extraordinary, in which the killers

move around, act completely with impunity, are still heros in what

you expose of being a very corrupt and brutal society, elements of it?

I think normally when we hear from perpetrators in film, they either

apologise for what they have done or they deny it. That is because by

the time we approach them, they have been removed from power. Here

the killers have won, they are still in power, they have built a

whole society based on celebrating their atrocities, and it gives us

this opportunity to ask a fundamentally human question, which

is, first of all, how do we human beings do this to each other, but

what happens when we build our normality on terror and lies.

is a question you were asking, but that was a question that only came

later to the killers themselves. And I wonder how they saw you?

Because they call you Josh, they trust you, you are behind the

camera a lot of the time. And yet they know you are from Denmark.

That you are looking in on them. It was as if they were so blinded to

the fact that what they did was so appalling, they were happy to tell

you that they started to garotte people because it was too bloody

and smelly to machete them to death. It was one of the most shocking

things I have ever seen I think? The viewers first relationship to

the film is mine as well. Which is my gosh these men feel no remorse.

The curious thing happens during the film is some how they are

boasting about what they have done and celebrating what they have done,

and it turns out to be a symptom perhaps of the fact that they knew

it was wrong to begin with. They are desperately trying to convince

themselves that what they have done was right. And by the end of the

film some how they make scene after scene trying to some how run away

from the meaning of what they have done, only to find themselves

confronted with it. These were the particular death squads you are

talking about just now. But all along the way we have this

paramilitary group still in power, and is very much entrenched and

entwined with the Government. With what you see in the film is

tremendous corruption, brutality, attitudes towards women which are

appalling, and the every day attitudes of some of the regime. So

tell me where is it being shown in Indonesian, and can you ever go

back -- Indonesia and can you ever go back? The film in the country

has censorship, which they ban the film, so it is a crime to show it.

We have held underground to screenings, some of them big, 600

people, as of April there were 500 screenings in 95 cities and it is

growing daily across Indonesia. Handing stuff on or is it done on

social media? It is giving out DVDs, blue-rays, but also cinemas showing

proper cinema seats. But inat this vaigs-only screenings, with 500

people. The film has come like the little child in the Emperor's new

clothes and saying the king is naked and everyone was too afraid

to say it. And now said so powerfully by the killers

themselves, there is no going back. During the course of the film you

reshow some of your footage to the killers and they are contemplative

sometimes, they quite like it. What about some of the people who come

off worse than the killer, what is their response? I assume the

political leaders, whom Anwar recruits into the film, I assume

they feel betrayed. I hope they do, otherwise I haven't done my job.

you still speak to him? I'm still in touch with him, we have been

through a very painful and intimate and powerful journey together. But

the politicians in Indonesia will make it that I could probably get

into Indonesia but I wouldn't get out probably. So in a sense all the

efforts you have made to learn the language and everything, your job

is done? That is a great sadness for me that the community with whom

I made the film they became my family, it was a very dark journey

for me and painful journey. They lit this dark road with their

laughter and support. In the end did you actually like some of the

killers? I think "like" is the wrong word. I think I came to be

less and less, even as I retained my judgment of their acts, I became

less and less willing to judge another human being as an entire

person. I think I feel love for Anwar as a human being, I think

"like" is certainly the wrong word. Thank you very much, The Act Of

Killing is reduced in cinemas at this country, and Josh will be

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 57 seconds

speaking at events around the That is the end of tonight's