Islamic hardliners and former military commanders have gathered in Jakarta to reject calls for reconciliation over Indonesia's 1965 massacre, saying it will "reawaken the threat of communism".
Seated under a sprawling banner depicting the Indonesian map and flag, the head of the Islamic Defenders Front Muhammad Rizieq Shihab, also known as Habib Rizieq, yelled and shook his fist as he spoke about the government's moves to face the dark chapter of Indonesia's past.
"The PKI (the Indonesian communist party) will be reawakened if we don't gather our strength now," he shouted on Wednesday.
"Indonesia is getting closer to China and to its Communist Party."
The symposium, which claims to be securing Pancasila, the five principles of Indonesian philosophy, "from the threat of PKI and other ideology's resurrection", is being held in Jakarta over two days.
Other panel members of the panel on Wednesday included retired general Try Sutrisno, a former chief of armed forces and vice-president under Suharto.
It's being held in reaction to the government sponsored two-day symposium in April that was a bid to "make peace with the past".
The scale of the tragedy continues to be a point of contention between victims and the government, but according to human rights groups, at least 500,000 people were killed during the state-sanctioned purges from 1965 to 1966.
But the talks aimed at reconciliation have unleashed a crackdown by police against anything deemed to be linked with communism, with books, films and even fish coming under fire.
On May 9, a shop owner in Jakarta was arrested and questioned after he unsuspectingly reproduced images of a hammer and sickle on T-shirts featuring the German thrash metal band Kreator.
Meanwhile a fish in Yogyakarta that had spots resembling a hammer and sickle was confiscated and its owner arrested, Indonesia's human rights commission Komnas HAM told AAP last month.
Chairman of the previous symposium Agus Widjojo said on Wednesday that reconciliation did not mean there would be a chance for communist ideology to re-emerge.
As part of the reconciliation, there will also be investigations into atrocities said to have been carried out by the PKI in the 1940s.
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