User:Merbabu/Indonesian killings of 1965-66

The Indonesian killings of 1965-66 were a violent anti-communist purge following an abortive coup in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. The most widely accepted estimates are that between 500,000 and one million people were killed. The abortive coup and subsequent purge directly contributed to the downfall of incumbent and Indonesian founding president Sukarno and the Transition to Suharto's "New Order".

The killings started in October 1965 following the abortive coup attempt in Jakarta and Suharto's assumption of army control.

Java (Muslim)
Conflict that had broken out in 1963 between Muslim party Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and the PKI became slaughter in the second week of October.

Bali
While violence against people associated with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) occurred across Indonesia, Java and Bali experienced the worsts massacres.

Hindu Bali did not have the Islamic forces involved in Java and upper-cast PNI landlords instigated the elimination of PKI members.

Demonstrations
In October 1965, students in Jakarta formed the Indonesian Students Action Front (KAMI), which called for the banning of the PKI. It was soon joined by a host of similar organizations made up of high school students, workers, artists and laborers and the like. Other targets for the demonstrators were rising prices and government inefficiency. They also demonstrated against Subandrio, the foreign minister and head of the BPI intelligence agency and the number two man in the government.

On 10 January 1966, demonstrators, including KAMI, demonstrated in front of the Provisional legislature and announced what became known as the Three Demands of the People (Tritura):
 * Dissolution of the PKI
 * The expulsion from the cabinet of G30S/PKI elements
 * Lower prices and economic improvements

In February 1966, as anti-communist demonstrations continued, Sukarno tried to placate Suharto by promoting him. On February 21, he tried to regain the initiative by announcing a new cabinet, which included former Air Force chief Omar Dhani, who had issued a statement on October 1 1965 initially supporting the coup. More provocatively still, Sukarno fired General Nasution from his cabinet post. The new cabinet immediately became known as the Gespatu cabinet, after the acronym coined by the military for the 30 September Movement.

Two days after the announcement, a huge crowd attempted to storm the presidential palace. The next day, while the new cabinet was being inaugurated, soldiers from the presidential guard opened fire on a crowd in front of the palace, killing student protester Arif Rachman Hakim, who was turned into a martyr and given a hero's funeral the following day.

On 8 March 1966, students managed to ransack the foreign ministry, and held it for five hours. They daubed slogans, one accusing Subandrio of murdering the generals, and drew graffiti showing Subandrio as a Pekingese dog (a reference to his perceived closeness to communist China) or hanging from gallows.

Sukarno then planned a three-day series of meetings to restore his authority. The first, on 10 March, involved the leaders of political parties. He managed to persuade them to sign a declaration warning against the undermining of presidential authority by student demonstrations. The second stage was a cabinet meeting planned for 11 March. However, as this meeting was underway, word reached Sukarno that unidentified troops were surrounding the palace. Sukarno left the palace in haste for Bogor, where later that night, he signed the Supersemar document transferring authority to restore order to Major General Suharto. Suharto acted quickly. One 12 March he banned the PKI. The same day, there was a "show of force" by the Army in the streets of Jakarta, which was watched by cheering crowds. On 18 March, Subandrio and 14 other ministers were arrested., including third deputy prime minister Chairul Saleh. That night, the radio announced that the ministers were in "protective custody".

The killings
On October 18, a declaration banning the Communist Party of Indonesia was read over the army-controlled radio stations. Although the extent of the ban was not clear, it was soon used as a pretext for the Indonesian Army to go throughout the country carrying out extrajudicial punishments, including mass arrest and summary executions, against suspected leftists and Sukarno loyalists.

The Army, acting on orders by Suharto and supervised by Nasution, began a campaign of agitation and incitement to violence among Indonesian civilians aimed at the Communist community and toward President Sukarno himself. The regime was quickly destabilised, with the Army the only force left to maintain order.

Beginning in later October 1965, the Indonesian army and its civilian allies (especially Muslim militia groups) began to kill members and associates of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). In most cases the killings were one-sided. In most cases the authorities arrested party members and members and leaders of affiliated organisations and held them in detention for some time before sending them out to be killed over subsequent weeks and months. In some cases, the army and militias organized raids on suspected communist villages or hamlets, slaughtering all or most of the inhabitants. The estimates of the death toll of the conflict range from over 100,000 to 3 million, but most scholars accept a figure of around 500,000.

Communists, red sympathisers and their families are being massacred by the thousands. Backlands army units are reported to have executed thousands of communists after interrogation in remote jails. Armed with wide-bladed knives called parangs, Moslem bands crept at night into the homes of communists, killing entire families and burying their bodies in shallow graves.

The murder campaign became so brazen in parts of rural East Java, that Moslem bands placed the heads of victims on poles and paraded them through villages. The killings have been on such a scale that the disposal of the corpses has created a serious sanitation problem in East Java and Northern Sumatra where the humid air bears the reek of decaying flesh. Travellers from those areas tell of small rivers and streams that have been literally clogged with bodies.—Time Magazine, December 1965

Anti-communists, initially following the army's lead, and encouraged by Western embassies, went on a violent anti-communist purge through villages, during which the PKI was blamed for the coup and effectively destroyed. The violence was especially brutal in Java and Bali. The party was outlawed and possibly more than 1 million of its leaders and affiliates were imprisoned.

Suharto and his associates immediately concluded that the PKI was behind the 30 September Movement. With the support of the Army, and fueled by horrific tales of the alleged torture and mutilation of the generals at Lubang Buaya, anti-PKI demonstrations and then violence soon broke out .. Violent mass action started in Aceh, then shifted to Central and East Java. Suharto then sent the RPKAD paratroops under Col. Sarwo Edhie to Central Java. When they arrived in Semarang, locals burned the PKI headquarters to the ground. They swept through the countryside and were aided by locals in killing suspected communists. In East Java, members of Ansor, the youth wing of the Nahdlatul Ulama went on a killing frenzy, and the slaughter later spread to Bali. Figures given for the number of people killed vary from 78,000 to one million. Among the dead was Aidit, who was captured by the Army on November 25 and summarily executed shortly after

Ironically, a CIA study of the events in Indonesia assessed that "In terms of the numbers killed the anti-PKI massacres in Indonesia rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century..".

Among the worst-affected areas was the island of Bali, where PKI had grown rapidly prior to the crackdown. On November 11 clashes erupt between PKI and PNI, ending in massacres of PKI accused members and sympathizers. Whereas much of the anti-PKI pogroms in the rest of the country were carried out by Islamic political organizations in the name of jihad, the killings in Bali were done in the name of Hinduism. Bali stood out as the only place in the country where local soldiers in some way intervened to lessen the slaughter. In December 1966 the military proclaimed that Aceh had been cleared of communists. Simultaneously, Special Military Courts were set up to try jail PKI members. On March 12 1967 the party was formally banned by Suharto, and The pro-PKI trade union SOBSI was banned in April.

Western involvement
Seeing the nationalist and pro-Communist Sukarno as a threat to their interests, the West was keen to exploit the situation to its advantage. Suharto's portrayal of events as 'communist carnage' was the official version promoted in the West. Yet evidence has since emerged that the killings of PKI members were encouraged by the US and UK governments. According to a CIA memo, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and President John F. Kennedy had agreed to "liquidate President Sukarno, depending on the situation and available opportunities". In 1990 the American journalist Kathy Kadane revealed the extent of the secret American support of some of the massacres of 1965-66 that allowed Suharto to seize the Presidency. She interviewed many former US officials and CIA members, who spoke of compiled lists of 5,000 PKI operatives, which the Americans ticked off as the victims were killed or captured. They worked closely with the British; Sir Andrew Gilchrist cabled the Foreign Office in London saying: "…a little shooting in Indonesia would be an essential preliminary to effective change".

Commentary
Supporters of the anti-communist purges claim that the violence was justified due to the imminent threat of a PKI-led coup, citing the 1948 Madiun Affair, and that the Communist Party intended its peasant and workers' organizations to eventually become a fighting force.

Critics of Suharto claim that the PKI in 1965 had an inclination toward Eurocommunism and had come to prefer parliamentary electoral politics to armed insurrection; the party placed third in the 1955 presidential election behind Sukarno's own Partai Nasional Indonesia (PNI) and the Islamist party Masyumi. These critics allege that Suharto purposefully exaggerated PKI involvement in the assassinations of the generals, in order to justify the liquidation of this power bloc as well as to justify his repressive measures afterwards.

General References

 * Anderson, Bendict & McVey, Ruth (1971) A Preliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965 Coup in Indonesia, Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, Ithaca, NY


 * Anderson, Benedict. "Petrus Dadi Ratu" New Left Review. May-June 2000


 * Fic, Victor M. (2005) Anatomy of the Jakarta Coup: October 1, 1965: The Collusion with China which destroyed the Army Command, President Sukarno and the Communist Party of Indonesia, Yayasan Obor Indonesia, Jakarta ISBN 979-461-544-4


 * Hughes, John (2002), The End of Sukarno – A Coup that Misfired: A Purge that Ran Wild, Archipelago Press, ISBN 981 4068 65 9


 * Lashmar, Paul and Oliver, James. "MI6 Spread Lies To Put Killer In Power" The Independent. (16 April 2000)


 * Lashmar, Paul and Oliver, James. "How we destroyed Sukarno" The Independent. (6 December 2000)




 * Nugroho Notosusanto & Ismail Saleh (1968) The Coup Attempt of the "September 30 Movement" in Indonesia, P.T. Pembimbing Masa-Djakarta.


 * Rafadi, Dedi & Latuconsina, Hudaya (1997) Pelajaran Sejarah untuk SMU Kelas 3 (History for 3rd Grade High School), Erlangga Jakarta. ISBN 979-411-252-6


 * Ricklefs, M.C. (1982) ''A History of Modern Indonesia", MacMillan. ISBN 0-333-24380-3


 * Roosa, John (2007) Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement & Suharto's Coup D'Etat in Indonesia, University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-9-299-22034-1


 * Scott, Peter Dale (1985) The United States and the Overthrow of Sukarno Pacific Affairs 58, pp 239-164


 * Sekretariat Negara Republik Indonesia (1975) 30 Tahun Indonesia Merdeka: Jilid 3 (1965-1973) (30 Years of Indonesian Independence: Volume 3 (1965-1973)


 * Secretariat Negara Republik Indonesia (1994) Gerakan 30 September Pemberontakan Partai Komunis Indonesia: Latar Belakang, Aksi dan Penumpasannya (The 30 September Movement/Communist Party of Indoneisa: Bankgrounds, Actions and its Annihilation) ISBN 979-08300-025


 * Sundhaussen, Ulf (1982) The Road to Power: Indonesian Military Politics 1945-1967, Oxford University Press. ISBN 019 582521-7


 * Wertheim, W.F. (1970) ''Suharto and the Untung Coup – the Missing Link", Journal of Contemporary Asia I No. 1 pp 50-57