Indonesian mass killings of 1965–1966

Indonesian mass killings of 1965–1966
Location	Indonesia
Date	1965-1966
Target	Extermination of alleged Indonesian Communist Party members and other communist sympathizers
Attack type	Politicide, Mass murder, Crimes against humanity
Deaths	400,000[1] to 3,000,000[2][3]
Perpetrators	Indonesian Army and anti-communist vigilantes[4][1]

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The Indonesian mass killings of 1965–1966 (also variously known as the Indonesian massacres, Indonesian genocide,^[5] Indonesian Communist Purge, Indonesian politicide,^[6][7] or the 1965 Tragedy) were large-scale killings and civil unrest which occurred in Indonesia over many months, targeting communist sympathizers, ethnic Chinese and alleged leftists, often at the instigation of the armed forces and government. Initially it began as an anti-communist purge following a controversial coup attempt by the 30 September Movement in Indonesia. The most widely published estimates were that 500,000 to more than one million people were killed,^[8][9] with some more recent estimates going as high as two to three million.^[10][11] The purge was a pivotal event in the transition to the "New Order" and the elimination of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) as a political force. The upheavals led to the fall of President Sukarno and the commencement of Suharto's three-decade authoritarian presidency.

The claims of a coup attempt by Communists released pent-up communal hatreds which were fanned by the Indonesian Army, which quickly blamed the PKI. Communists were purged from political, social, and military life, and the PKI itself was disbanded and banned. The massacres began in October 1965, in the weeks following the coup attempt, and reached their peak over the remainder of the year before subsiding in the early months of 1966. They started in the capital, Jakarta, and spread to Central and East Java and, later, Bali. Thousands of local vigilantes and army units killed actual and alleged PKI members. Although killings occurred across Indonesia, the worst were in the PKI strongholds of Central Java, East Java, Bali, and northern Sumatra. It is possible that over one million people were imprisoned at one time or another.

Sukarno's balancing act of "Nasakom" (nationalism, religion and communism) had unravelled. His most significant pillar of support, the PKI, was effectively eliminated by the other two pillars—the army and political Islam; and the army was on the way to unchallenged power. In March 1967, Sukarno was stripped of his remaining power by Indonesia's provisional Parliament, and Suharto was named Acting President. In March 1968, Suharto was formally elected president.

The killings are skipped over in most Indonesian history textbooks and have received little introspection by Indonesians, due to their suppression under the Suharto regime, which ruled for over three decades. Satisfactory explanations for the scale and frenzy of the violence have challenged scholars from all ideological perspectives. The possibility of a return to similar upheavals is cited as a factor in the "New Order" administration's political conservatism and tight control of the political system. Vigilance and stigma against a perceived communist threat remained a hallmark of Suharto's doctrine, and it is still in force even today.

Despite a consensus at the highest levels of the US and British governments that it would be necessary "to liquidate Sukarno," as related in a CIA memorandum from 1962,^[12] and the existence of extensive contacts between anti-communist army officers and the US military establishment (including the training of over 1,200 officers, "including senior military figures," by the US military, and also providing weapons and economic assistance^[13][14]), the CIA denies active involvement in the killings. It was later revealed that the US government provided extensive lists of communists to Indonesian death squads.^[15] A top-secret CIA report stated that the massacres "rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murders during the Second World War, and the Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s."^[21]

Background

Support for Sukarno's presidency under his "Guided Democracy" depended on his forced and unstable "Nasakom" coalition between the military, religious groups, and communists. The rise in influence and increasing militancy of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) and Sukarno's support for it, was a serious concern for Muslims and the military, and tension grew steadily in the early and mid-1960s.^[22] The third-largest communist party in the world,^[23] the PKI had approximately 300,000 cadres and a full membership of around two million.^[24] The party's assertive efforts to speed up land reform frightened those who controlled the land and threatened the social position of Muslim clerics.^[25] Sukarno required government employees to study his Nasakom principles as well as Marxist theory. Sukarno had met with Zhou Enlai, Premier of the People's Republic of China. After this meeting he decided to create a militia, called a Fifth Force, which he intended to control personally. He ordered weapons from China to equip this Fifth Force. He declared in a speech that he favoured revolutionary groups whether they were nationalist, religious or communist stating "I am a friend of the Communists, because the Communists are revolutionary people.^[26]" Sukarno said at a Non-Aligned summit meeting in Cairo (October 1964) that his current purpose was to drive all of Indonesian politics to the left and thereby to neutralise the "reactionary" elements in the army that could be dangerous for the revolution.^[27] Sukarno's international policies increasingly reflected his rhetoric.

30 September

On the evening of September 30, 1965 known as the 30 September Movement, six of Indonesia’s top military generals were captured and executed by a group of militants. The movement proclaimed itself as Sukarno’s protectors, issuing a preemptive strike to prevent a possible coup by the “anti-Sukarno”, pro-Western Council of Generals.

After the execution of the generals, the movement’s forces occupied Merdeka Square and the presidential palace. Shortly after, however, President Sukarno refused to commit to the movement, for it had captured and assassinated many of his top generals. As the night continued, the movement’s poor leadership began to show starting with a series of incoherent radio messages. The movement mainly aimed to occupy the main Telecommunications building; however, it ignored the east side of the square, which was the location of KOSTRAD, the armed forces strategic reserve. At the time, Major General Suharto was in control of the reserve, and upon hearing the news of the takeover, he quickly capitalized on the movement’s weaknesses, regaining control of the square without resistance.^[28]

Following the surrender, the movement’s troops did not take further action. At the same time, the Indonesian military slowly gained influence as Sukarno’s waned, and within days, the government was under the control of Suharto. Suharto immediately deployed troops and dispersed the movement while trumpeting the movement’s actions as a “danger” to the nation.

On the 5th of October, a military propaganda campaign linking the coup attempt with the PKI masterminded by Suharto and the military began to sweep the country. Graphic images and descriptions of the murdered, tortured, and even castrated generals began to circulate the country. Despite falsified information, the campaign was successful, convincing both Indonesian and international audiences that the murders were a PKI attempt to undermine the Indonesian government under President Sukarno. Though the PKI denied involvement, pent-up tensions and hatreds that had built up over years were released.^[28]

Even though the 30 September Movement killed 12 people, Suharto ultimately presented it as a nationwide conspiracy to commit mass murder. Millions of people associated with the PKI, even illiterate peasants from remote villages, were presented as murderers and accomplices of the Movement. In early 1966, two Indonesian specialists at Cornell University, Benedict Anderson and Ruth McVey, observed in their Cornell Paper that Suharto's army began the anti-communist campaign well after the 30 September movement had collapsed. Between the moment that the movement ended and the moment that the army's mass arrests began, three weeks had elapsed in which no violence or trace of civil war occurred, even according to the army itself. Sukarno constantly protested the purge, stating that the army was "burning down a house to kill a rat," but he was powerless as Suharto commanded a firm hold on the military.^[29]

Representations of the Nature of the Killings of the Generals

One aspect of the Lubang Buaya myth which describes the Gestapu killings of generals involves Gerwani, also known as the Gerakan Wanita Indonesia. It is an activist-based movement which fought for women’s right and their implementation. As one of the largest women’s organizations in the 1950s, its broad membership was also a result of its close affiliation with the PKI. However, Gerwani’s affiliation to the PKI eventually led to the organization’s implication in the killings of the generals during Gestapu.

Members were implicated in the fabricated involvement of Gerwani in the killings of the six generals through the Lubang Buaya Myth. A myth which claimed that Gerwani had performed sadistic, sexual crimes before and after killing the six Generals during the incident. And this Lubang Buaya was also used to justify the mass killings of communists after the incident.

On another note in John Roosa’s Pretext for Mass Murder, Roosa explains how the killings of the generals go awry. Supardjo was a military tactician and preferred Untung as the head because he was a soldier who had advanced through the ranks due to his bravery, not intelligence.

The plan to capture the generals failed when they did not receive President Sukarno’s statement of support.  The statement of support was meant to legitimate the plan’s goals for it to be immediately broadcast over the radio.  As the centerpiece of the movement, the abductions, failed, the consequent steps also failed. Sukarno could not support a group of junior officers killing their generals, and Sukarno told this to Supardjo in order to call off the killings.

“This was not in accordance with the time-honored custom of abducting one’s seniors and then releasing them later unharmed.”

According to this “time-honored custom,” Indonesian militarists had to cooperate under civil terms for abductions.  There were rules that bound the military to follow suit and procedure for protocols.  They cannot irresponsibly execute military leaders without understanding the importance of its aftermath. Indonesian military tactic is very strategic, and that is evident as Supardjo led a majority of Indonesia’s armed powers.  Indonesia’s military history has transformed into various factions, in which all follow a very strict operation for war.  Due to all the various attempts of mobilizing this movement, military operations were unable to carry out the capturing of the generals.

Pengkhianatan was one of the most famous forms of propaganda that depicted the Generals killings in 1965. It provides a detailed insight into the Suharto Regime’s representation of the events that took place. Other than this, Suharto used other forms of propaganda to ensure that their ‘version’ of history would be established in the public’s consciousness. Roosa in his book, Pretext for Mass Murder, delves into the success of the propaganda.^[30]

“With its volumes of propaganda the Suharto regime has booby-trapped the historians’ path with false clues, dead-end diversions, and doctored bit of evidence. The falsity of Suharto’s solution is apparent in its imprecise use of the term PKI. According to the official version, the PKI masterminded the movement. But it is obvious that the PKI, as an institution that consisted of millions of people, could not have organized a secretive military rebellion.” ^[29]

It is now widely accepted outside Indonesia that the official version of history is largely fabricated. The western support and endorsement for this ‘fabricated version’ of history whereby the PKI was the enemy can be explained by their opposition to the communist ideals. The nature of the killings of the generals were hence represented to exaggerate the cruelty involved in order to instigate people’s disdain towards the PKI.

Political purge

The army removed top civilian and military leaders it thought sympathetic to the PKI.^[31] The parliament and cabinet were purged of Sukarno loyalists. Leading PKI members were immediately arrested, some summarily executed.^[32] Army leaders organised demonstrations in Jakarta^[32] during which on 8 October, the PKI Jakarta headquarters was burned down.^[33] Anti-Communist youth groups were formed, including the army-backed Indonesian Student's Action Front (KAMI), the Indonesian Youth and Students' Action Front (KAPPI), and the Indonesian Graduates Action Front (KASI).^[34] In Jakarta and West Java, over 10,000 PKI activists and leaders were arrested, including famed novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer.^[34]

The initial deaths occurred during organised clashes between the army and the PKI including Indonesian armed forces units who were sympathetic to communism and were trying to forcibly resist General Suharto's crackdown. For example, much of the Marine Corps, the Air Force, and the Brigade of Police (Brimob) were infiltrated up to commander level by the PKI.^[35] In early October, forces of the Strategic Command (Suharto's Kostrad), and the RPKAD paracommandos led by Colonel Sarwo Edhie Wibowo were sent to Central Java, a region with strong Communist allegiances, while troops of uncertain loyalty were ordered out.^[34] At the same time, the Siliwangi Division was deployed to guard Jakarta and West Java, both of which, unlike Central and East Java, remained relatively immune to the mass killings.^[36] Early fighting in the Central Java highlands and around Madiun suggested the PKI might be able to establish a rival regime centred on these regions. However, widespread fears of a civil war, between factions supported by the United States and China respectively, quickly evaporated, as the forces sent by Suharto took control.^[35] Many rebel commanders chose not to fight as Suharto-deployed forces arrived, although resistance came from some, like General Supardjo, for a few more weeks.

As the Sukarno presidency began to unravel and Suharto began to assert control following the coup attempt, the PKI's upper national leadership was hunted and arrested with some summarily executed. In early October, PKI chairman Dipa Nusantara Aidit had flown to Central Java, where the coup attempt had been supported by leftist officers in Yogyakarta, Salatiga, and Semarang.^[32] Fellow senior PKI leader, Njoto, was shot around 6 November, Aidit on 22 November, and First Deputy PKI Chairman M.H. Lukman was killed shortly thereafter.^[37]

Massacres

During Suharto’s regime in the time period of 1965-1988, the media was heavily influenced and censored to show a ‘certain’ history of the 1965 incident: a history which purely and undoubtedly blamed the PKI for this political tragedy. However, in recent articles such as by ‘The Jakarta Post’, a more in depth and complex story is recognized by the media offering conflicting views on who the blame should really fall on.^[38]

The killings started in October 1965 in Jakarta, spread to Central and East Java and later to Bali, and smaller outbreaks occurred in parts of other islands, including Sumatra.^[39][40] The communal tensions and hatreds that had built up were played upon by the Army leadership who characterised Communists as villains, and many Indonesian civilians took part in the killings.^[41] The worst massacres were in Central and East Java^[42] where PKI support was at its strongest. The situation varied across the country and the role of the Army has never been fully explained.^[43] In some areas the Army organised, encouraged, trained, and supplied civilian groups and local militias.^[40] In other areas, communal vigilante action preceded the Army, although in most cases killings did not commence before military units had sanctioned violence by instruction or example.^[44] It was in the earlier stages of the killings that the army's direct involvement in clashes with the PKI occurred.^[35] By the end of October, groups of devout Muslims joined the purge of Communists claiming it was their duty to cleanse Indonesia of atheism.^[35]

In some areas, civilian militia knew where to find known Communists and their sympathisers, while in others the Army demanded lists of Communists from village heads.^[45] PKI membership was not disguised and most suspects were easily identified within communities.^[46] The US Embassy in Jakarta supplied the Indonesian military with lists of up to 5,000 suspected Communists.^[16][18][19] Although some PKI branches organised resistance and reprisal killings, most went passively to their deaths.^[47] Not all victims were PKI members. Often the label "PKI" was used to include anyone to the left of the Indonesian National Party (PNI).^[48] In other cases victims were suspected or simply alleged Communists.^[34]

The killings were done "face to face", unlike the mechanical methods of killing used by Nazi Germany.^[49] The methods of killing included shooting, dismembering alive^[8] and beheading with Japanese-style samurai swords.^[50] Islamic extremists often paraded severed heads on spikes.^[51] Corpses were often thrown into rivers, and at one point officials complained to the Army that the rivers running into the city of Surabaya were clogged with bodies. In areas such as Kediri in East Java, Nahdlatul Ulama youth wing (Ansor) members lined up Communists, cut their throats and disposed of the bodies in rivers.^[52] Rows of severed penises were often left behind as a reminder to the rest.^[53] The killings left whole sections of villages empty, and the houses of victims or the interned were looted and often handed over to the military.^[48]

Local Chinese were killed in some areas, and their properties looted and burned as a result of anti-Chinese racism on the excuse that D.N. Aidit had brought the PKI closer to China.^[48] In the predominantly Christian islands of Nusa Tenggara, Christian clergy and teachers suffered at the hands of Muslim youth.^[43]

Although there were occasional and isolated flare ups until 1969, the killings largely subsided by March 1966,^[54] when either there were no more suspects, or authorities intervened.^[55] Solo residents said that exceptionally high flooding in March 1966 of the Solo River, considered mystical by the Javanese, signaled the end of the killings.^[55]

Java

In Java, much of the killing was along aliran (cultural stream) loyalties; the Army encouraged santri (more devout and orthodox Muslims) among the Javanese to seek out PKI members among the abangan (less orthodox) Javanese.^[56] The killings extended to more than PKI members. In Java, for example, many considered "left PNI" were killed. Others were just suspects^[55] or were the victims of grievance settling with little or no political motive.^[55][56] Anti-Communist killings were then instigated with youths, assisted by the Army, hunting down Communists.^[57]

Conflict that had broken out in 1963 between the Muslim party Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and the PKI turned to killing in the second week of October.^[34] The Muslim group Muhammadiyah proclaimed in early November 1965 that the extermination of "Gestapu/PKI" constituted Holy War ("Gestapu" being the military's name for the "30 September Movement"), a position that was supported by other Islamic groups in Java and Sumatra. For many youths, killing Communists became a religious duty.^[58] Where there had been Communist centres in Central and East Java, Muslim groups portraying themselves as victims of Communist aggression justified the killings by evoking the Madiun Affair of 1948.^[48] Roman Catholic students in the Yogyakarta region left their hostels at night to join in the execution of truckloads of arrested Communists.^[55]

Although, for most of the country, the killings subsided in the first months of 1966, in parts of East Java the killings went on for years. In Blitar, guerrilla action was maintained by surviving PKI members until they were defeated in 1967 and 1968.^[59] The mystic Mbah Suro, and devotees of his Communist-infused traditional mysticism, built an army, but Suro and eighty of his followers were killed in a war of resistance against the Indonesian Army.^[59]

Bali

Mirroring the widening of social divisions across Indonesia in the 1950s and early 1960s, the island of Bali saw conflict between supporters of the traditional Balinese caste system, and those rejecting these traditional values, particularly the PKI. Communists were publicly accused of working towards the destruction of the island's culture, religion, and character, and the Balinese, like the Javanese, were urged to destroy the PKI. Government jobs, funds, business advantage and other spoils of office had gone to Communists during the final years of Sukarno's presidency.^[60] Disputes over land and tenants' rights led to land seizures and killings, when the PKI promoted "unilateral action".^[61] As Indonesia's only Hindu-dominated island, Bali did not have the Islamic forces involved in Java, and it was upper-caste PNI landlords who instigated the elimination of PKI members.^[56] High Hindu priests called for sacrifices to satisfy spirits angered by past sacrilege and social disruption.^[55] Balinese Hindu leader, Ida Bagus Oka, told Hindus: "There can be no doubt [that] the enemies of our revolution are also the cruelest enemies of religion, and must be eliminated and destroyed down to the roots."^[62] Like parts of East Java, Bali experienced a state of near civil war as Communists regrouped.^[48]

The balance of power was shifted in favour of anti-Communists in December 1965, when the Army Para-commando Regiment and Brawijaya units arrived in Bali after having carried out killings in Java. Led by Suharto's principal trouble shooter, Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, Javanese military commanders permitted Balinese squads to kill until reined in.^[63] In contrast to Central Java where the Army encouraged people to kill the "Gestapu", on Bali eagerness to kill was so great and spontaneous that, having initially provided logistic support, the Army eventually had to step in to prevent chaos.^[64] Sukarno's choice of provincial governor for Bali, Sutedja, was recalled from office and accused of preparing a communist uprising, and his relatives were tracked down and killed.^[65] A series of killings similar to those in Central and East Java were led by black-shirted PNI youth. For several months, militia death squads went through villages capturing suspects and taking them away.^[48] Hundreds of houses belonging to communists and their relatives were burnt down within one week of the reprisal crusade being launched on Bali, with occupants being butchered as they ran from their homes. An early estimate suggested that 50,000 people, including women and children, were killed in this operation alone. The populations of several Balinese villages were halved in the last months of 1965.^[66] All the Chinese shops in the towns of Singaraja and Denpasar were destroyed and their owners killed after summary stand-up judgements found them to have financially supported the "Gestapu".^[66] Between December 1965 and early 1966, an estimated 80,000 Balinese were killed, roughly five percent of the island's population at the time, and proportionally more than anywhere else in Indonesia.^[67]

Sumatra

PKI-organised squatters' movements and campaigns against foreign businesses in Sumatra's plantations provoked quick reprisals against Communists, following the Jakarta coup attempt. In Aceh as many as 40,000 were killed, part of the possibly 200,000 deaths across Sumatra.^[32] The regional revolts of the late 1950s complicated events in Sumatra as many former rebels were forced to affiliate themselves with Communist organisations to prove their loyalty to the Indonesian Republic. The quelling of the 1950s revolts and 1965 killings were seen by most Sumatrans as a "Javanese occupation".^[32] In Lampung, another factor in the killings seems to have been Javanese immigration.^[43]

Kalimantan

In West Kalimantan, approximately eighteen months after the worst of the killings in Java, indigenous pagan Dayaks expelled 45,000 ethnic Chinese from rural areas, killing up to 5,000.^[43] The Chinese refused to fight back, since they considered themselves "a guest on other people's land" with the intention of trading only.^[68][69]

Other motives

Religion

Islam in Java was divided between Abangan, who mixed Islam with other religions like Hinduism and native religious practices, and the Santri, who followed standard orthodox Islam. Many Abangans were supporters of the Communist Party.^[70][71][72] The empoverished Abangans' interests were supported by the PKI Communists.^[73]

Abangan Muslim Communists made up most of the people who were slaughtered in the mass killings.^[74][75] Abangans were targeted for attacks by Ansor, the youth wing of Nahdlatul Ulama.^[76] Abangan PKI members were slaughtered by the Santri with help from the Indonesian Army.^[77]

Abangan Muslims were forced by the Indonesian government to convert to Hinduism and Christianity in the aftermath of the slaughter, to disassociate themselves from Communism.^[78]

The Abangan felt pressured into choosing either Hinduism or Christianity in the aftermath of the killings to avoid being classified as atheist communists.^[79][80][81]

Ethnic factors

Sumatran youths massacred Javanese plantation labourers who made up the membership of the PKI in North Sumatra.^[82]

Role of anti-Chinese prejudice

Targeting of ethnic Chinese played an important role in the killings in Sumatra and Kalimantan, which have been called genocides. Charles A. Coppel is sharply critical of this characterisation, in which he sees a western media and academics unwilling to face the consequences of an anti-communist agenda that they endorsed,^[83] instead scapegoating Indonesian racism and indulging in extravagant and false claims of hundreds of thousands or millions of Chinese killed.^[84] Charles Coppel wrote of the distorted coverage in an article titled: "A genocide that never was: explaining the myth of anti-Chinese massacres in Indonesia, 1965–66". Coppel sees the same bias in coverage of the May 1998 riots, where the Volunteer Team for Humanity noted non-Chinese looters made up the majority of those who were killed.^[85] His thesis continues to inspire debate.^[86]

An estimate is that around 2,000 Chinese Indonesians were killed (out of a total death toll of 500,000), with documented massacres taking place in Makassar and Medan and on the island of Lombok.^[87] Robert Cribb and Charles A. Coppel noted that "relatively few" Chinese were actually killed during the purge while the majority of the dead were Indonesian Communists.^[88] The death toll of Chinese was in the thousands while the death toll of non-Chinese Indonesians was in the hundreds of thousands. Balinese and Javanese made up the majority of people who were massacred.^[84]

Indigenous, non-Muslim, pagan Dayaks expelled 45,000 ethnic Chinese from rural areas, killing 2,000–5,000.^[43] The Chinese refused to fight back, since they considered themselves "a guest on other people's land" with the intention of trading only.^[68][89]

Deaths and imprisonment

Although the general outline of events is known, much is unknown about the killings,^[40] and an accurate and verified count of the dead is unlikely to ever be known.^[90] There were few Western journalists or academics in Indonesia at the time, the military was one of the few sources of information, travel was difficult and dangerous, and the regime that approved and oversaw the killings remained in power for three decades.^[91] The Indonesian media at the time had been undermined by restrictions under "Guided Democracy" and by the "New Order's" takeover in October 1966.^[92] With the killings occurring at the height of Western fears over Communism during the Cold War, there was little investigation internationally, which would have risked complicating the West's preference for Suharto and the "New Order" over the PKI and the "Old Order".^[93]

In the first 20 years following the killings, 39 serious estimates of the death toll were attempted.^[64] Before the killings had finished, the Indonesian army estimated 78,500 had been killed,^[94] while the PKI put the figure at 2 million.^[64] The Indonesian army later estimated the number killed to be 1 million.^[59] In 1966, Benedict Anderson had set the death toll at 200,000. By 1985 he concluded that a total of 500,000 to 1 million people had been killed.^[64] Most scholars now agree that at least half a million were killed,^[95] thus more than in any other event in Indonesian history.^[56] An armed forces security command estimate from December 1976 put the number at between 450,000 and 500,000.^[55]

Arrests and imprisonment continued for ten years after the purge.^[56] A 1977 Amnesty International report suggested "about one million" PKI cadres and others identified or suspected of party involvement were detained.^[64] Between 1981 and 1990, the Indonesian Government estimated that there were between 1.6 and 1.8 million former prisoners "at large" in society.^[96] It is possible that in the mid 1970s, 100,000 were still imprisoned without trial.^[97] It is thought that as many as 1.5 million were imprisoned at one stage or another.^[98] Those PKI members not killed or imprisoned went into hiding while others tried to hide their past.^[56] Those arrested included leading politicians, artists and writers such as Pramoedya Ananta Toer, and peasants and soldiers. Those incarcerated in the vast network of prisons and concentration camps faced "extraordinarily inhumane conditions."^[8] Many did not survive this first period of detention, dying from malnutrition and beatings.^[59] As people revealed the names of underground Communists, often under torture, the numbers imprisoned rose from 1966–68. Those released were often placed under house arrest, had to regularly report to the military, or were banned from Government employment, as were their children.^[59]

Aftermath

Impact

Sukarno's balancing act of "Nasakom" (nationalism, religion, communism) had been unravelled. His most significant pillar of support, the PKI, had been effectively eliminated by the other two pillars—the army and political Islam; and the army was on the way to unchallenged power.^[99] Many Muslims were no longer trusting of Sukarno, and by early 1966, Suharto began to openly defy Sukarno, a policy which had previously been avoided by army leaders. Sukarno attempted to cling to power and mitigate the new-found influence of the army, although he could not bring himself to blame the PKI for the coup as demanded by Suharto.^[100] On 1 February 1966, Sukarno promoted Suharto to the rank of Lieutenant General.^[101] The Supersemar decree of 11 March 1966 transferred much of Sukarno's power over the parliament and army to Suharto,^[102] ostensibly allowing Suharto to do whatever was needed to restore order. On 12 March 1967, Sukarno was stripped of his remaining power by Indonesia's provisional Parliament, and Suharto named Acting President.^[103] On 21 March 1968, the Provisional People's Representative Assembly formally elected Suharto as president.^[104]

Several hundred or thousand Indonesian leftists travelling abroad were unable to return to their homeland.^[105] Djawoto, the ambassador to China, refused to be recalled and spent the rest of his life outside of Indonesia.^[106] Some of these exiles, writers by trade, continued writing. This Indonesian exile literature was full of hatred for the new government and written simply, for general consumption, but necessarily published internationally.^[107]

In December 1965, the US embassy in Jakarta had sent a telegram to Washington stating that without the uprising, "removal of foreign oil companies would have been a certainty." In late 1968, the National Intelligence Estimate for Indonesia reported: "An essential part of the Suharto government's economic program ... has been to welcome foreign capital back to Indonesia. Already about 25 American and European firms have recovered control of mines, estates, and other enterprises nationalized under Sukarno. Liberal legislation has been enacted to attract new private foreign investment. ... There is substantial foreign investment in relatively untapped resources of nickel, copper, bauxite, and timber. The most promising industry ... is oil."^[108]

The killings served as a direct precedent for the genocidal invasion and occupation of East Timor. The same generals oversaw the killing in both situations, and encouraged equally brutal methods—with impunity.^[109]

Global reaction

To Western governments, the killings and purges were seen as a victory over Communism at the height of the Cold War. Western governments and much of the West's media preferred Suharto and the "New Order" to the PKI and the increasingly leftist "Old Order".^[110] The British ambassador, Andrew Gilchrist, wrote to London: "I never concealed from you my belief that a little shooting in Indonesia would be an essential preliminary to effective change."^[111] News of the massacre was carefully controlled by Western intelligence agencies. Journalists, prevented from entering Indonesia, relied on the official statements from Western embassies. The British embassy in Jakarta advised intelligence headquarters in Singapore on how the news should be presented: "Suitable propaganda themes might be: PKI brutality in murdering Generals, ... PKI subverting Indonesia as agents of foreign Communists. ... British participation should be carefully concealed."^[112]

A headline in U.S. News & World Report read: "Indonesia: Hope... where there was once none".^[113] Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt commented in The New York Times, "With 500,000 to 1 million Communist sympathizers knocked off, I think it is safe to assume a reorientation has taken place."^[114] The right-wing oilman H. L. Hunt proclaimed Indonesia the sole bright spot for the United States in the Cold War and called the ouster of Sukarno the “greatest victory for Freedom since the last decisive battle of World War II."^[108] Time described the suppression of the PKI as "The West's best news for years in Asia,"^[115] and praised Suharto's regime as "scrupulously constitutional."^[116] "It was a triumph for Western propaganda," Robert Challis, a BBC reporter in the area, later reflected.^[116] Many Western media reports repeated the Indonesian army's line by downplaying the army's responsibility for and the rational, organised nature of the mass killing, and emphasised the role of civilians instead, invoking the orientalist stereotype of Indonesians as primitive and violent. A New York Times journalist wrote an article titled "When a Nation Runs Amok" explaining that the killings were hardly surprising since they occurred in "violent Asia, where life is cheap."^[117]

In recalling the attitudes of US government officials regarding the killings, State Department intelligence officer Howard Federspiel said that "no one cared, as long as they were Communists, that they were being butchered."^[118] Within the United States, Robert F. Kennedy was one of the only prominent individuals to condemn the massacres. In January 1966 he said: "We have spoken out against the inhuman slaughters perpetrated by the Nazis and the Communists. But will we speak out also against the inhuman slaughter in Indonesia, where over 100,000 alleged Communists have not been perpetrators, but victims?"^[119]

For the USSR, Andrei Sakharov called the killing a 'tragic event' and described it as 'an extreme case of reaction, racism and militarism', but otherwise the Soviet response was relatively muted.^[119] Other Communist states issued strong criticism of the killings. The Chinese government stated they were "heinous and diabolical crimes ... unprecedented in history."^[119] One Yugoslav diplomat commented that "even assuming the guilt of the politburo [PKI leadership], which I do not, does this justify genocide? Kill the Central Committee, but do not kill 100,000 people who do not know and had no part in it [the 30 September Plot]."^[119] The Suharto government was condemned as a "military fascist regime" by the government of North Korea.^[119]

The United Nations avoided commenting on the killings. When Suharto returned Indonesia to the UN, communist Albania was the only member state to protest.^[119]

Foreign involvement

It really was a big help to the army. They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.

— Robert J. Martens, political officer at the United States Embassy in Jakarta, who provided lists of communists to the Indonesian military.^[16]

According to journalist Kathy Kadane, the US government "played a significant role" in the killings by providing targeted names to the Indonesian Army.^[16] Robert J. Martens, political officer at the United States Embassy in Jakarta from 1963 to 1966, told Kadane he led a group of State Department and CIA officials who drew up the lists of roughly 5,000 Communist Party operatives, which he provided to an army intermediary.^[16] Kadane asserts that approval for the release of names came from top U.S. Embassy officials, including US Ambassador to Indonesia, Marshall Green, deputy chief of mission Jack Lydman and political section chief Edward Masters, who all later denied involvement.^[120] Martens claimed he acted without approval to avoid red tape at a critical time.^[120] The State Department volume Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, which the CIA attempted to suppress in 2001, acknowledges that the US Embassy provided lists of communist leaders to Indonesians involved in the purges, and notes that Marshall Green stated in a 1966 airgram to Washington, which was drafted by Martens and approved by Masters, that the lists of communists were "apparently being used by Indonesian security authorities who seem to lack even the simplest overt information on PKI leadership."^[121] Scholars have also corroborated the claim that US Embassy officials provided lists of communists to Suharto's forces, who, according to Mark Aarons, "ensured that those so named were eliminated in the mass killing operations."^{[21][19][124]}

According to Robert Cribb, there is no evidence that the United States significantly increased the scale of the killings.^[125] Conversely, Mark Aarons notes that Marshall Green is "long seen as one of the principal officials involved in encouraging the slaughter."^[21] Kai Thaler asserts that declassified documents show that "U.S. officials were accessories to this mass murder" and "helped create the conditions for the killings."^[4] Bradley Simpson, Director of the Indonesia/East Timor Documentation Project at the National Security Archive,^[126] contends that this was "an army-led and U.S.-backed campaign of extermination"^[127] and claims that documents^[128] show "the United States was directly involved to the extent that they provided the Indonesian Armed Forces with assistance that they introduced to help facilitate the mass killings," which included the CIA providing small arms from Thailand, and the US government providing monetary assistance and limited amounts of communications equipment, medicine and a range of other items, including shoes and uniforms, to the Indonesian military.^{[129][130][131]} In a 2008 program on the killings presented by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Bradley Simpson states:

These documents have enabled to gain a much clearer understanding of the precise role of the United States, Britain, Australia and other western governments in both attempting to provoke an armed takeover of Indonesia in 1965 and in supporting the mass killings by the army and civilian groups which followed the September 30 movement. Prior to the last few years scholars have largely speculated on the role of the American Central Intelligence Agency and other western intelligence agencies in pursuing covert operations aimed at provoking an armed conflict between the Indonesian army and the Indonesian communist party or the PKI. But these declassified documents lay out a picture of active engagement with one of the great atrocities of the 20th century, and make the United States and other western governments de facto accomplices in this campaign of mass murder that stretched through the end of 1965 and into 1966.^[132]

President Johnson's Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy reported to the president that the events since 1 October had been "a striking vindication of US policy towards Indonesia in recent years: a policy of keeping our hand in the game for the long-term stakes despite recurrent pressure to pull out" and that it was made clear to the Indonesian army that "the Embassy and the US government are generally sympathetic with and admiring of what the army is doing."^[124]

Of all countries, Swedish arms supplies seem to have been the most substantial. According to a report by an Indonesian refugee in Japan, from early December 1965, Indonesia signed "a contract with Sweden for an emergency purchase of $10,000,000 worth of small arms and ammunition to be used for annihilating elements of the PKI." Concerns about the slaughter at the Swedish Embassy did grow some months later, but apparently after the fact.^[133]

Documentary filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer, director of The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, called on the US to account for its role in the killings during a screening of the former for US congress members.^[134] On 10 December 2014, the same day The Look of Silence was released in Indonesia, Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) introduced a "Sense of the Senate Resolution" which condemned the killings and called for the declassification of all documents pertaining to US involvement in the events, noting that "the U.S. provided financial and military assistance during this time and later, according to documents released by the State Department."^[135][136]

International People's Tribunal 1965

The International People’s Tribunal on 1965 Crimes Against Humanity in Indonesia, presided over by seven international judges, was held in November 2015 in The Hague, Netherlands. It was formally established in 2014 by human rights activists, academics, and Indonesian exiles in response to an "absence of an official domestic process of transitional justice based on truth finding."^[1] In July 2016, chief judge Zak Yacoob publicly read the tribunal's findings, which called the state of Indonesia directly responsible for the events and guilty of crimes against humanity, blamed Suharto for spreading false propaganda and laying the grounds for the massacres, and concluded that the massacres "intended to annihilate a section of the population and could be categorized as genocide".^[137] The report also highlighted other allegations which the panel found to be well founded, including enslavement in labor camps, ruthless torture, systematic sexual violence and forced disappearance.^[1][137] Indonesia rejected the tribunal's ruling; Security Minister Luhut Panjaitan said the killings were "none of their business, they are not our superiors and Indonesia has its own system."^[138] The court has no legal authority to issue binding decisions or rulings.^[139]

Judge Yacoob stated that "the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Australia were all complicit to differing degrees in the commission of these crimes against humanity."^[140] The judges conclude that the US supported the Indonesian military "knowing well that they were embarked upon a programme of mass killings," which included providing lists of alleged communist party officials to Indonesian security forces with a "strong presumption that these would facilitate the arrest and/or the execution of those that were named", where as the UK and Australia repeated false propaganda from the Indonesian army, even after it became "abundantly clear that killings and other crimes against humanity were taking place."^[1][140] Australia's foreign affairs ministry rejected the conclusion of the tribunal, which it described as a "human rights NGO", and denies the country was in any way complicit in the killings. The US and the UK have not responded to the tribunal's findings.^[139] Indonesian human-rights lawyer Nursyahbani Katjasungkana^(Indonesian) called on all three countries to admit their complicity, stating that it had been proved from their various diplomatic communications and could no longer be denied.^[137]

Legacy

Historiography

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Related Topics
Historical negationism Historical revisionism

Discussion of the killings was heavily tabooed in Indonesia and, if mentioned at all, usually called peristiwa enam lima, the incident of '65.^[141] Inside and outside Indonesia, public discussion of the killings increased during the 1990s and especially after the fall of Suharto in 1998. Jailed and exiled members of the Sukarno regime, as well as ordinary people, told their stories in increasing numbers. Foreign researchers felt more empowered to publish on the topic, with the end of intimidation by the military regime.^[141][142]

The killings are skipped over in most Indonesian histories, and have received little introspection by Indonesians and comparatively little international attention.^[143] Indonesian textbooks typically depict the killings as a "patriotic campaign" that resulted in less than 80,000 deaths. In 2004, the textbooks were briefly changed to include the events, but this new curriculum was abandoned in 2006 following protests from the military and Islamic groups.^[144] The textbooks which mentioned the mass killings were subsequently burnt,^[144] by order of Indonesia's Attorney General.^[145] John Roosa's Pretext for Mass Murder (2006) was initially banned by the Attorney General's Office.^[146]

The Indonesian Parliament set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to analyse the mass killings, but it was suspended by the Indonesian High Court. An academic conference regarding the killings was held in Singapore in 2009.^[144] A hesitant search for mass graves by survivors and family members began after 1998, although little
has been found. Over three decades later, great enmity remains in Indonesian society over the events.^[142]

The Supardjo Document is a copy of the personal notes of General Supardjo regarding the September 30th movement. It is one of the few primary sources of this event and gives insight into the movement from a military persepective, including Supardjo's opinion on what may have caused the movement to fail.

The film The Year of Living Dangerously, based around events leading up to the killings, internationally released in 1982, was banned in Indonesia until 1999.

Satisfactory explanations for the scale and frenzy of the violence have challenged scholars from all ideological perspectives. One view attributes the communal hatreds behind the killings to the forcing of parliamentary democracy onto Indonesian society, claiming that such changes were culturally unsuitable and unnecessarily disruptive in the post-independence 1950s. A contrasting view is that when Sukarno and the military replaced the democratic process with authoritarianism, competing interests—i.e., the army, political Islam, and Communism—could not be openly debated, rather they were suppressed and could only be expressed through violence.^[100] Conflict resolution methods have broken down, and Muslim groups and the military adopted an "us or them attitude", and that when the killings were over, many Indonesians dismissed as something the Communists had deserved.^[100] The possibility of a return to similar upheavals is cited as a factor in the "New Order" administration's political conservatism and tight control of the political system.^[43] Vigilance against a Communist threat remained a hallmark of Suharto's three-decade presidency.^[147]

Representation of the nature of the killings

Joshua Oppenheimer—a US filmmaker who resided in Indonesia for more than a decade — released two documentaries depicting the reality of the 1965 mass murders in Indonesia. His first documentary, “The Act of Killing” follows gangsters Anwar Congo and Adi Zulkadry, who were involved in the murdering of people during the 1965 massacres. His second documentary, titled “The Look of Silence” follows an anonymous Indonesian man whose brother was killed in 1965. This man confronts the men responsible for these mass murders under the pretense of giving them eye examinations. These movies depict how the perpetrators of these mass killings considered themselves heroes because their acts were supported by Suharto’s Regime.

Through interviews and reenactments, the killers revealed that PKI members all over Indonesia were hunted down, imprisoned without trials, tortured, or killed. Civilians and students from religious boarding schools were used as executioners. Furthermore, the military released some of the most violent criminals from prisons and ordered them to carry out executions. Gruesome methods, such as beheadings, castration and brutal torture, were often used to kill communists. These films flip the script on Pengkhianatan, which was a propaganda film used by the Indonesian government to portray their ‘version’ of history. For example, in one of its most famous scenes, “three of the captured anti-Communist generals are brutally tortured — their eyes are gouged out, lighted cigarettes are put out on their skin, and they are repeatedly whipped and stabbed —while Communist women perform a macabre dance ritual to celebrate their death”. But, in reality, it was found that the generals were never tortured. The film also further exaggerates the killings whilst not depicting the military’s execution of the mass killings of millions of PKI supporters. Oppenheimer’s documentaries were one of the first sources to counter-claim Pengkhiatan and shed light upon the true nature of the killings.^[148]

“Beauty is a Wound” provides an overview of the treatment of Communists during the Suharto regime rather than the details of the event of the killings. Eka Kurniawan, the author, utilizes the technique of hyperbole functions and crude language as a reflection of Indonesia’s troubled past which includes the killing of perhaps a million so called ‘Communists.’

Insight into killings of Communists is provided by the events surrounding a boy name Kliwon. Kliwon’s father was killed in his fight for Communism which led to his mother living in fear that her son would ever become a Communist. Furthermore, a character named Salim is introduced in Kliwon’s storyline. Salim enters the novel as a Communist fugitive, and he struggles to escape from army officials. His death scene where he is shot sitting on a toilet naked reflects an exaggeration of the brutality of the killings of communists in Indonesia during the Suharto Regime.

Ahmad Tohari published his trilogy of novels of “The Dancer” in 1981, following the aftermath of the Indonesian mass killings in 1965.  His publications of the novels took place during the Suharto Regime, and under great scrutiny, was validated as an Indonesian novel.  Within his novel, the village of Paruk unfortunately goes through a myriad of poverty-induced situations, due to its bizarre cultural traditions and its inessential need to understand the world around them. Tohari uses the village of Paruk to symbolize the Indonesian citizen’s lack of awareness of how the situation of the mass killings came about, and how they essentially became the scapegoats of the entire incident. As the poverty of Paruk became significantly worse, so did the understanding of the killings itself. Representations of the killings in novels like Tohari’s serves to remind others a side of history in which factual evidence cannot determine.  Like most of all the information surrounding the Indonesian mass killings, there are biases, in which the identification of a factual evidence is unfortunately construed. Tohari advantageously uses a literary platform to carry out the significance of the Indonesian mass killings on the general public represented by the village of Paruk.

Tohari’s literary piece exposes the influence the Indonesian mass killings really had upon Javanese culture and society, in a way the New Order standardized history does not.  No one version of history can ever lead to a full understanding, but Tohari’s trilogy of novels truly keeps the history of the mass killings alive and never dissolving under the New Order’s form of history, as well as foreign depictions of the war. Such an openly affect-based approach to the telling of history enables people to empathize Paruk’s struggle with identity and distressed culture regarding the outplay of the killings.

Films

We shoved wood in their anus until they died. We crushed their necks with wood. We hung them. We strangled them with wire. We cut off their heads. We ran them over with cars. We were allowed to do it. And the proof is, we murdered people and were never punished.

— Adi Zulkadry, death squad leader quoted in The Act of Killing.^[149]

When Suharto was still in power, a film supporting the New Order's version of events, Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI (Betrayal of Indonesia Communist Party) was broadcast annually on the government television station TVRI every 30 September. This version was the only one allowed in open discourse in the country.^[150] After Suharto's removal from power, many people, including those involved, told other versions of the events in various books and films. One, the documentary film The Act of Killing, included interviews with individuals who had participated in the mass killings,^[151] and its companion piece The Look of Silence follows one grieving family trying to understand why it happened and exposes how those behind the Indonesian massacres still revel in their crimes 50 years on, including boasting on camera how they dismembered, eviscerated, castrated and beheaded alleged communists.^[152][153]

Books/Novels

The 1965 Indonesia Massacres inspired many novelists to write their own rendition of the incidents, either on a more local, socio-cultural level, or on a national, political level. Books that were written in Indonesia during the time of the New Order often faced censorship of certain concepts, while books written and published abroad were banned from the country.

Pretext for Mass Murder by historian John Roosa is a work that traces a historical path through the 1965 incidents, painting a scenario of explanations for what preceded, caused and followed the political coup. It focuses on several aspects of the coup such as the incoherence of facts and the incompetence of coup organizers to provide four main interpretations of the coup:(1) the movement as an attempted coup d’etat by the PKI,^[154] (2) the movement as a mutiny of junior officers,^[155] (3) the movement as an alliance of army officers and the PKI,^[156] and (4) the movement as a frame-up of the PKI.^[157] It also looks at material previously left unexplored in traditional discussions of the incident to give a reconstruction of the chaos that surrounds this period of time in Indonesian history.

The Dancer (Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk) is a trilogy of novels, by Indonesian author Ahmad Tohari, depicts a village community caught in a revolution, giving readers a perspective less acknowledged in the more popular account of the massacres. By having its two main characters, Srintil and Rasus, on opposite ends of the revolution, the novel sketches not only the circumstances that could have drawn the greater rural public into communist practices, but also the mindset of the people who were tasked with carrying out the killings. As the novel was published in 1981, certain details were censored by the New Order, but all the same, the trilogy provides valuable insight into the grass-root level of the anti-communist coup and the tragedies that followed.

The nights at the beginning of the dry season of 1966 were very cold, and there was widespread anxiety amongst the people. Wild dogs roamed the area, savage, aroused by the smell of blood and corpses that had not been buried properly. The southeasterly breeze carried the smell of rotting carrion. The stillness of the nights was broken by the sounds of the heavy footfalls of boots and the occasional reports of gunshots.

— Ahmad Tohari in his novel The Dancer ^[158]

Beauty is a Wound is a novel by Indonesian author Eka Kurniawan, published in 2002. The novel weaves history into satire, tragedy and the supernatural to depict the state of the nation before, during and after the 1965 incidents. There is less focus on the military aspect of the coup, but a good deal of focus on the communists themselves through the form of interpersonal relationships and communist ghosts who could not find peace. Without meaning to, perhaps, the novel also gives readers a glimpse of the economy of Indonesia at the time using the example of a flourishing prostitute business and a temporary swimsuit business, among others. Kurniawan projects his feelings about the revolution and coup by constructing a story of theatrical characters around it and delivers a history of the nation all the way from Dutch occupation to Suharto.

Revolution is nothing more than a collective running amok, organized by one particular party.

— Eka Kurniawan in his novel, Beauty is a Wound ^[159]

All Communists end up in front of a firing squad.

— Eka Kurniawan in his novel, Beauty is a Wound ^[160]

Black Water is a novel by English author Louise Doughty, published in 2016. Written by a British author from a European perspective, Black Water deals with the 1965 incidents by exploring them from a foreign viewpoint. Shifting between California and Indonesia as settings for the novel, the book is written from the perspective a single man working as an operative for an international company. The novel focuses more on foreign reactions to the coup rather than the coup itself, especially from the foreign journalist community.

See also

• Communist Party of Indonesia
• Gerwani
• Communism in Sumatra
• Indonesian occupation of East Timor
• List of massacres in Indonesia
• Petrus Killings
• 40 Years of Silence: An Indonesian Tragedy, a 2009 documentary film
• The Act of Killing, a 2012 documentary film
• The Look of Silence, a 2014 documentary film
• Politicide

Notes

References

External links

• Final Report of the IPT 1965: Findings and Documents of the IPT 1965. International People’s Tribunal 1965.
• Lessons of the 1965 Indonesian Coup Terri Cavanagh, World Socialist Web Site, 1998.
• The Forgotten Massacres. Jacobin. 2 June 2015.
• Suharto’s Purge, Indonesia’s Silence. Joshua Oppenheimer for The New York Times, 29 September 2015.
• Indonesia takes step toward reckoning with '65-66 atrocities. The Associated Press. April 18, 2016
• Indonesia challenged to admit existence of mass graves from anti-communist purges. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. May 23, 2016.