Look at History: Indonesian Killings of 1965–66

New York, N.Y. The Indonesian killings of 1965–1966 were an anti-communist purge following a failed coup of the 30 September Movement in Indonesia . The most widely accepted estimates are that more than 500,000 people were killed.

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 downfall of President Sukarno and the commencement of Suharto 's thirty-year presidency.

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.

The failed coup 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 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 been unraveled. 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. 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 books and have received little introspection by Indonesians. 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 against a perceived communist threat remained a hallmark of Suharto's thirty-year presidency.

Despite a consensus at the highest levels of the American and British governments that it would be necessary "to liquidate Sukarno," as related in a CIA memorandum from 1962, 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 U.S. military, and also providing weapons and economic assistance), the CIA denies active involvement in the killings.

It was later revealed that the American government provided extensive lists of communists to Indonesian death squads . 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."

Major General Suharto (at right, foreground)

attends a funeral for generals assassinated on

5 October 1965. Pierre Tendean was also killed.

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 Indonesian Communist Party (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. The third-largest communist party in the world, the PKI had approximately 300,000 cadres and a full membership of around two million.

The party's assertive efforts to speed up land reform frightened those who controlled the land and threatened the social position of Muslim clerics. Sukarno required government employees to study his Nasakom principles as well as Marxist theory. Sukarno had met with Zhou Enlai , leader 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 be used to equip this Fifth Force.

He declared in a speech that he favored revolutionary groups whether they were nationalist, religious or communist stating "I am a friend of the Communists, because the Communists are revolutionary people." 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 neutralize the "reactionary" elements in the army that could be dangerous for the revolution. Sukarno's international policies increasingly reflected his rhetoric.

Coup attempt

On the evening of 30 September and 1 October 1965, six generals were killed by a group calling themselves the 30 September Movement . With many of Indonesia's top military leaders either dead or missing, Suharto, one of the most senior surviving generals, assumed control of the army after a day of chaos, during which Sukarno refused to commit himself to either side. By 2 October Suharto was firmly in control of the capital and announced that a coup attempt had failed. The military blamed the coup attempt on their arch enemies the PKI.

On 5 October, the day of the dead generals' funeral procession, a military propaganda campaign linking the coup attempt with the PKI began to sweep the country. The new leadership circulated photos of the murdered generals, claiming that the communists, particularly communist women, had tortured and castrated them and gouged out their eyes. Later autopsies showed that these claims were fabricated.

Sukarno suggested at a cabinet meeting on 9 October that the event be called Gestok , an abbreviation of Ge rakan S a t u Ok tober – "the October 1 Movement." The army-controlled media ignored him and called the movement Gestapu (a reference to the Gestapo , the Nazi secret police). The campaign convinced both Indonesian and international audiences that the murders were cowardly atrocities committed by the PKI against Indonesian heroes, and that the coup attempt was intended to undermine the Indonesian National Revolution and overthrow President Sukarno. The PKI's denials of involvement had little effect. Pent-up tensions and hatreds that had built up over years were released.

Even though 30 September movement killed only 12 people, Suharto presented it as a nationwide conspiracy to commit mass murder. All the millions of people associated with the PKI, even illiterate peasants in 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."

Historian John Roosa believes that the individuals behind the 30 September movement were PKI members and had provoked the slaughter by launching an ill-conceived anti-military action, but the U.S. and Indonesian army were waiting for a provocation:

From 1958 to 1965 the United States trained, funded, advised, and supplied the army precisely so that it could turn itself into a state within a state. The army … gradually made itself the government-in-waiting. In the months before October, the United States and the army wanted an incident like the [30 September] movement to occur. They were busy creating the conditions for it and preparing themselves for dealing with it.

Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers – Allen at the head of the CIA and John Foster at the head of the State Department – viewed all nationalist Third World leaders who wished to remain neutral in the Cold War as Communist stooges. In full confidence of their right to handpick the leaders of foreign countries, Eisenhower and the Dulleses repeatedly used CIA covert operations to overthrow such leaders: Mossadegh in Iran in 1954 , Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 , and Souvanna Phouma in Laos in 1960 .

The Dulles brothers viewed Sukarno as yet another irritating character who needed to be removed from the world stage."

Political purge

The army removed top civilian and military leaders it thought sympathetic to the PKI. The parliament and cabinet were purged of Sukarno loyalists. Leading PKI members were immediately arrested, some summarily executed . Army leaders organized demonstrations in Jakarta during which on 8 October, the PKI Jakarta headquarters was burned down. 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). In Jakarta and West Java , over 10,000 PKI activists and leaders were arrested, including famed novelist Pramoedya .

The killings

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 . The communal tensions and hatreds that had built up were played upon by the Army leadership who characterized Communists as villains, and many Indonesian civilians took part in the killings . The worst massacres were in Central and East Java where PKI support was at its strongest.

The situation varied across the country and the role of the Army has never been fully explained. In some areas the Army organized, encouraged, trained, and supplied civilian groups and local militias. 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. It was in the earlier stages of the killings that the army's direct involvement in clashes with the PKI occurred. By the end of October, groups of devout Muslims joined the purge of Communists claiming it was their duty to cleanse Indonesia of atheism.

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. PKI membership was not disguised and most suspects were easily identified within communities. The American Embassy in Jakarta supplied the Indonesian military with lists of up to 5,000 suspected Communists . Although some PKI branches organized resistance and reprisal killings, most went passively to their deaths. Not all victims were PKI members. Often the label "PKI" was used to include anyone to the left of the Indonesian National Party (PNI). In other cases victims were suspected or simply alleged Communists.

The killings were done "face to face", unlike the mechanical methods of killing used by the German Nazis or by the Khmer Rouge . The methods of killing included shooting, dismembering alive and beheading with Japanese-style samurai swords . Islamic extremists often paraded severed heads on spikes. 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. Rows of severed penises were often left behind as a reminder to the rest. 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.

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

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 characterization, in which he sees a western media and academics unwilling to face the consequences of an anti-communist agenda that they endorsed, instead scapegoating Indonesian racism and indulging in extravagant and false claims of hundreds of thousands or millions of Chinese killed.

In recalling the attitudes of U.S. 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." 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?"

Foreign involvement

See also: CIA activities in Indonesia § Anti-communist purge

According to journalist Kathy Kadane, members of the US government provided targeted names to the Indonesian Army , which several US officials have denied. Mark Aarons argues that declassified intelligence reports indicate that "the CIA actually compiled detailed lists of those it deemed dangerous and supplied them to Suharto's forces who ensured those so named were eliminated in the mass killing operations." Alex Bellamy concurs, noting the Indonesian army used a list containing some 5,000 names of suspected PKI members, which was provided to them by the US embassy in Jakarta, to identify some victims.

A State Department history also acknowledges that the U.S. Embassy provided lists of communist leaders to Indonesians involved in the purges, and notes that the US Ambassador to Indonesia, Marshall Green , stated in a 1966 airgram to Washington 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."

Mark Aarons notes that U.S. Ambassador Marshal Green is "long seen as one of the principal officials involved in encouraging the slaughter." Bradley Simpson, Director of the Indonesia/East Timor Documentation Project at the National Security Archive , contends that this was "an army-led and U.S.-backed campaign of extermination " and claims that documents 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.

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.

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 U.S. government are generally sympathetic with and admiring of what the army is doing."

The British journalist John Pilger stated that Roland Challis, BBC south-east Asia correspondent at the time, told him how the British government was secretly involved in the slaughter: "British warships escorted a ship full of Indonesian troops down the Malacca Straits so they could take part in the terrible holocaust. I and other correspondents were unaware of this at the time … There was a deal, you see."

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. On 10 December 2014, the same day The Act of Killing 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."

Impact

Sukarno's balancing act of "Nasakom" (nationalism, religion, communism) had been unraveled. 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. 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. On 1 February 1966, Sukarno promoted Suharto to the rank of Lieutenant General. The Supersemar decree of 11 March 1966 transferred much of Sukarno's power over the parliament and army to Suharto, 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 . [124] On 21 March 1968, the Provisional Peoples Representative Assembly formally elected Suharto as president.

Several hundred or thousand Indonesian leftists traveling abroad were unable to return to their homeland. Djawoto , the ambassador to China, refused to be recalled and spent the rest of his life outside of Indonesia. 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.

In December 1965, the U.S. 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."

Legacy and historiography

The mass slaughter of 1965–1966 was heavily tabooed in Indonesia, and if mentioned is usually called peristiwa enam lima , the incident of '65. 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.

The killings are skipped over in most Indonesian histories, and have received little introspection by Indonesians and comparatively little international attention. 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. The textbooks which mentioned the mass killings were subsequently burnt , by order of Indonesia's Attorney General. John Roosa's Pretext for Mass Murder (2006) was initially banned by the Attorney General's Office.

The Indonesian Parliament set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to analyze the mass killings, but it was suspended by the Indonesian High Court. An academic conference regarding the killings was held in Singapore in 2009. 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. 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.

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. [138]

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, 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 genocide still revel in their crimes 50 years on, including boasting on camera how they dismembered, eviscerated, castrated and beheaded alleged communists.

From Wikipedia.

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