The Mass Killings in Indonesia After 40 Years

The Mass Killings in Indonesia After 40 Years



by John Roosa and
Joseph Nevins


www.dissidentvoice.org

October 31, 2005

One
of the worst mass murders of the twentieth century.� That was how a CIA
publication described the killings that began forty years ago this month
in Indonesia. It was one of the few statements in the text that was
correct. The 300-page text was devoted to blaming the victims of the
killings -- the supporters of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) --
for their own deaths. The PKI had supposedly attempted a coup d��tat and a
nationwide uprising called the September 30th Movement (which, for some
unknown reason, began on October 1). The mass murder of hundreds of
thousands of the party�s supporters over subsequent months was thus a
natural, inevitable, and justifiable reaction on the part of those
non-communists who felt threatened by the party�s violent bid for state
power. The killings were part of the �backfire� referred to in the title:
Indonesia -- 1965: The Coup that Backfired. The author of this 1968
report, later revealed to be Helen Louise Hunter, acknowledged the massive
scale of the killings only to dismiss the necessity for any detailed
consideration of them. She concentrated on proving that the PKI was
responsible for the September 30th Movement while consigning the major
issue, the anti-PKI atrocities, to a brief, offhanded comment.
[1]

Hunter�s CIA report accurately expressed the
narrative told by the Indonesian army commanders as they organized the
slaughter. That narrative rendered the September 30th Movement -- a
disorganized, small-scale affair that lasted about 48 hours and resulted
in a grand total of 12 deaths, among them six army generals -- into the
greatest evil ever to befall Indonesia. [2] The commander
of the army, Major General Suharto, justified his acquisition of emergency
powers in late 1965 and early 1966 by insisting that the September 30th
Movement was a devious conspiracy by the PKI to seize state power and
murder all of its enemies. Suharto�s martial law regime detained some 1.5
million people as political prisoners (for varying lengths of time), and
accused them of being �directly or indirectly involved in the September
30th Movement.� The hundreds of thousands of people shot, stabbed,
bludgeoned, or starved to death were labeled perpetrators, or would-be
perpetrators of atrocities, just as culpable for the murder of the army
generals as the handful of people who were truly guilty.

The September 30th Movement was Suharto�s
Reichstag fire: a pretext for destroying the communist party and seizing
state power. As with the February 1933 fire in the German parliament that
Hitler used to create a hysterical, crisis-filled atmosphere, the
September 30th Movement was exaggerated by Suharto�s clique of officers
until it assumed the proportions of a wild, vicious, supernatural monster.
The army whipped up an anti-communist propaganda campaign from the early
days of October 1965: �the PKI� had castrated and tortured the seven army
officers it had abducted in Jakarta, danced naked and slit the bodies of
the army officers with a hundred razor blades, drawn up hit lists, dug
thousands of ditches around the country to hold countless corpses,
stockpiled guns imported from China, and so on. The army banned many
newspapers and put the rest under army censorship. It was precisely this
work of the army�s psychological warfare specialists that created the
conditions in which the mass murder of �the PKI� seemed justified.

The question as to whether or not the PKI
actually organized the September 30th Movement is important only because
the Suharto regime made it important. Otherwise, it is irrelevant. Even if
the PKI had nothing whatsoever to do with the movement, the army generals
would have blamed the party for it. As it was, they made their case
against the PKI largely on the basis of the transcripts of the
interrogations of those movement participants who hadn�t already been
summarily executed. Given that the army used torture as standard operating
procedure for interrogations, the statements of the suspects cannot be
trusted. Hunter�s CIA report, primarily based on those transcripts, is as
reliable as an Inquisition text on witchcraft.

The PKI as a whole was clearly not
responsible for the September 30th Movement. The party�s three million
members did not participate in it. If they had, it would not have been
such a small-scale affair. The party chairman, D.N. Aidit, however, does
seem to have played a key role. He was summarily and secretly executed in
late 1965, as were two of the three other core Politburo leaders (Lukman
and Njoto), before they could provide their accounts. The one among them
who survived the initial terror, the general secretary of the party,
Sudisman, admitted in the military�s kangaroo court in 1967 that the PKI
as an institution knew nothing of the September 30th Movement but that
certain leaders were involved in a personal capacity. If the movement�s
leaders had been treated as the leaders of previous revolts against the
postcolonial government, they would have been arrested, put on trial, and
sentenced. All the members of their organizations would not have been
imprisoned or massacred.

With so little public discussion and so
little scholarly research about the 1965-66 mass killings, they remain
poorly understood. Many people outside of Indonesia believe that the
victims were primarily Indonesian Chinese. While some Indonesian Chinese
were among the victims, they were by no means the majority. The violence
targeted members of the PKI and the various organizations either allied to
the party or sympathetic to it, whatever ethnicity they happened to be:
Javanese, Balinese, Sundanese, etc. It was not a case of ethnic cleansing.
Many people imagine that the killings were committed by frenzied mobs
rampaging through villages and urban neighborhoods. But recent oral
history research suggests that most of the killings were executions of
detainees. [3] Much more research is needed before one
can arrive at definitive conclusions.

President Sukarno, the target of the PKI�s
alleged coup attempt, compared the army�s murderous violence against those
labeled PKI to a case of someone �burning down the house to kill a rat.�
He routinely protested the army�s exaggerations of the September 30th
Movement. It was, he said, nothing more than �a ripple in the wide ocean.�
His inability or unwillingness to muster anything more than rhetorical
protests, however, ultimately doomed his rule. In March 1966, Suharto
grabbed the authority to dismiss, appoint, and arrest cabinet ministers,
even while maintaining Sukarno as figurehead president until March 1967.
The great orator who had led the nationalist struggle against the Dutch,
the cosmopolitan visionary of the Non-Aligned Movement, was outmaneuvered
by a taciturn, uneducated, thuggish, corrupt army general from a Javanese
village.

Suharto, a relative nobody in Indonesian
politics, moved against the PKI and Sukarno with the full support of the
U.S. government. Marshall Green, American ambassador to Indonesia at the
time, wrote that the embassy had �made clear� to the army that Washington
was �generally sympathetic with and admiring� of its actions.
[4] U.S. officials went so far as to express concern in the days
following the September 30th Movement that the army might not do enough to
annihilate the PKI. [5] The U.S. embassy supplied radio
equipment, walkie-talkies, and small arms to Suharto so that his troops
could conduct the nationwide assault on civilians. [6] A
diligent embassy official with a penchant for data collection did his part
by handing the army a list of thousands of names of PKI members.
[7] Such moral and material support was much appreciated
in the Indonesian army. As an aide to the army�s chief of staff informed
U.S. embassy officials in October 1965, �This was just what was needed by
way of assurances that we weren�t going to be hit from all angles as we
moved to straighten things out here.� [8]

This collaboration between the U.S. and the
top army brass in 1965 was rooted in Washington�s longstanding wish to
have privileged and enhanced access to Southeast Asia�s resource wealth.
Many in Washington saw Indonesia as the region�s centerpiece. Richard
Nixon characterized the country as �containing the region�s richest hoard
of natural resources� and �by far the greatest prize in the South East
Asian area.� [9] Two years earlier, in a 1965 speech in
Asia, Nixon had argued in favor of bombing North Vietnam to protect
Indonesia�s �immense mineral potential.� [10] But
obstacles to the realization of Washington�s geopolitical-economic vision
arose when the Sukarno government emerged upon independence in Indonesia.
Sukarno�s domestic and foreign policy was nationalist, nonaligned, and
explicitly anti-imperialist. Moreover, his government had a working
relationship with the powerful PKI, which Washington feared would
eventually win national elections.

Eisenhower�s administration attempted to
break up Indonesia and sabotage Sukarno�s presidency by supporting
secessionist revolts in 1958. [11] When that criminal
escapade of the Dulles brothers failed, the strategists in Washington
reversed course and began backing the army officers of the central
government. The new strategy was to cultivate anti-communist officers who
could gradually build up the army as a shadow government capable of
replacing President Sukarno and eliminating the PKI at some future date.
The top army generals in Jakarta bided their time and waited for the
opportune moment for what U.S. strategists called a final �showdown� with
the PKI. [12] That moment came on October 1, 1965.

The destruction of the PKI and Sukarno�s
ouster resulted in a dramatic shift in the regional power equation,
leading Time magazine to hail Suharto's bloody takeover as �The West's
best news for years in Asia.� [13] Several years later,
the U.S. Navy League's publication gushed over Indonesia's new role in
Southeast Asia as �that strategic area's unaggressive, but stern,
monitor,� while characterizing the country as �one of Asia�s most highly
developed nations and endowed by chance with what is probably the most
strategically authoritative geographic location on earth.�
[14] Among other things, the euphoria reflected just how lucrative the
changing of the guard in Indonesia would prove to be for Western business
interests.

Suharto�s clique of army officers took power
with a long-term economic strategy in mind. They expected the legitimacy
of their new regime would derive from economic growth and that growth
would derive from bringing in Western investment, exporting natural
resources to Western markets, and begging for Western aid. Suharto�s
vision for the army was not in terms of defending the nation against
foreign aggression but defending foreign capital against Indonesians. He
personally intervened in a meeting of cabinet ministers in December 1965
that was discussing the nationalization of the oil companies Caltex and
Stanvac. Soon after the meeting began, he suddenly arrived by helicopter,
entered the chamber, and declared, as the gleeful U.S. embassy account has
it, that the military �would not stand for precipitous moves against oil
companies.� Faced with such a threat, the cabinet indefinitely postponed
the discussion. [15] At the same time, Suharto�s army
was jailing and killing union leaders at the facilities of U.S. oil
companies and rubber plantations. [16]

Once Suharto decisively sidelined Sukarno in
March 1966, the floodgates of foreign aid opened up. The U.S. shipped
large quantities of rice and cloth for the explicit political purpose of
shoring up his regime. Falling prices were meant to convince Indonesians
that Suharto�s rule was an improvement over Sukarno�s. The regime�s
ability over the following years to sustain economic growth via
integration with Western capital provided whatever legitimacy it had. Once
that pattern of growth ended with the capital flight of the 1997 Asian
economic crisis, the regime�s legitimacy quickly vanished. Middle class
university students, the fruits of economic growth, played a particularly
important role in forcing Suharto from office. The Suharto regime lived by
foreign capital and died by foreign capital.

By now it is clear that the much ballyhooed
economic growth of the Suharto years was severely detrimental to the
national interest. The country has little to show for all the natural
resources sold on the world market. Payments on the foreign and domestic
debt, part of it being the odious debt from the Suharto years, swallow up
much of the government�s budget. With health care spending at a minimum,
epidemic and preventable diseases are rampant. There is little domestic
industrial production. The forests from which military officers and
Suharto cronies continue to make fortunes are being cut down and burned up
at an alarming rate. The country imports huge quantities of staple
commodities that could be easily produced on a larger scale in Indonesia,
such as sugar, rice, and soybeans. The main products of the villages now
are migrant laborers, or �the heroes of foreign exchange,� to quote from a
lighted sign at the Jakarta airport.

Apart from the pillaging of Indonesia�s
resource base, the Suharto regime caused an astounding level of
unnecessary suffering. At his command, the Indonesian military invaded
neighboring East Timor in 1975 after receiving a green light from
President Gerald Ford and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. The
result was an occupation that lasted for almost 24 years and left a death
toll of tens of thousands of East Timorese. Within Indonesia proper, the
TNI committed widespread atrocities during counterinsurgency campaigns in
the resource-rich provinces of West Papua and Aceh, resulting in tens of
thousands of additional fatalities.

With Suharto�s forced resignation in 1998,
significant democratic space has opened in Indonesia. There are
competitive national and local elections. Victims of the �New Order� and
their families are able to organize. There is even an official effort to
create a national truth commission to investigate past atrocities.
Nevertheless, the military still looms large over the country�s political
system. As such, there has not been a thorough investigation of any of the
countless massacres that took place in 1965-66. History textbooks still
focus on the September 30th Movement and make no mention of the massacres.
Similarly, no military or political leaders have been held responsible for
the Suharto-era crimes (or those that have taken place since), thus
increasing the likelihood of future atrocities. This impunity is a source
of continuing worry for Indonesia�s civil society and restless regions, as
well as poverty-stricken, now-independent East Timor. It is thus not
surprising that the government of the world�s newest country feels
compelled to play down demands for justice by its citizenry and emphasize
an empty reconciliation process with Indonesia. Meanwhile in the United
States, despite political support and billions of dollars in U.S.
weaponry, military training and economic assistance to Jakarta over the
preceding four decades, Washington�s role in Indonesia�s killing fields of
1965-66 and subsequent brutality has been effectively buried, thus
enabling the Bush administration�s current efforts to further ties with
Indonesia�s military, as part of the global �war on terror.�
[17] Suharto�s removal from office has not led to radical changes in
Indonesia�s state and economy.

Sukarno used to indict Dutch colonialism by
saying that Indonesia was �a nation of coolies and a coolie among
nations.� Thanks to the Suharto years, that description remains true. The
principles of economic self-sufficiency, prosperity, and international
recognition for which the nationalist struggle was fought now seem as
remote as ever. It is encouraging that many Indonesians are now recalling
Sukarno�s fight against Western imperialism (first the Netherlands and
then the U.S.) after experiencing the misery that Suharto�s strategy of
collaboration has wrought. In his �year of living dangerously� speech in
August 1964 -- a phrase remembered in the West as just the title of a 1982
movie with Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver -- Sukarno spoke about the
Indonesian ideal of national independence struggling to stay afloat in �an
ocean of subversion and intervention from the imperialists and
colonialists.� Suharto�s U.S.-assisted takeover of state power forty years
ago this month drowned that ideal in blood, but it might just rise again
during the ongoing economic crisis that is endangering the lives of so
many Indonesians.

John Roosa
is an assistant professor of history at the University of British
Columbia, and is the author of Pretext for Mass Murder: The September
30th Movement and Suharto�s Coup d��tat in Indonesia (University of
Wisconsin Press, forthcoming in 2006). Joseph
Nevins is an assistant professor of geography at Vassar
College, and is the author of

A Not-So-Distant Horror: Mass Violence in East Timor (Cornell
University Press, 2005).

Other Articles by Joseph Nevins

*
Washington Backs
Indonesian Military Again

*
Mass Murderers and Double Standards of Justice

*

�Tiger Force� and the Costs Of Forgetting US Crimes in Vietnam

*

Beyond the Myth: Remembering Jimmy Carter,
the President

*

Border Death-Trap: Time to Tear Down
America's Berlin Wall



NOTES

1. A former CIA agent who worked in
Southeast Asia, Ralph McGehee, noted in his memoir that the agency
compiled a separate report about the events of 1965, one that reflected
its agents� honest opinions, for its own in-house readership. McGehee�s
description of it was heavily censored by the agency when it vetted an
account he first published in the April 11, 1981 edition of The Nation.
Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA (New York: Sheridan Square,
1983), pp. 57-58. Two articles in the agency�s internal journal Studies in
Intelligence have been declassified: John T. Pizzicaro, �The 30 September
Movement in Indonesia,� (Fall 1969); Richard Cabot Howland, �The Lessons
of the September 30 Affair,� (Fall 1970). The latter is available online:

www.odci.gov/csi/kent_csi/docs/v14i2a02p_0001.htm.



2. In Jakarta, the movement�s troops abducted and killed six army generals
and a lieutenant taken by mistake from the house of the seventh who
avoided capture. In the course of these abductions, a five year-old
daughter of a general, a teenaged nephew of another general, and a
security guard were killed. In Central Java, two army colonels were
abducted and killed.



3. John Roosa, Ayu Ratih, and Hilmar Farid, eds. Tahun yang Tak Pernah
Berakhir: Memahami Pengalaman Korban 65; Esai-Esai Sejarah Lisan [The
Year that Never Ended: Understanding the Experiences of the Victims of
1965; Oral History Essays] (Jakarta: Elsam, 2004). Also consider the
massacre investigated in Chris Hilton�s very good documentary film
Shadowplay (2002).



4. Telegram from the Embassy in Indonesia to Department of State, November
4, 1965, in United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the
United States, 1964-1968, vol. 26, p. 354. This FRUS volume is available
online at the National Security Archive website:

www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB52/#FRUS.



5. Telegram from the Embassy in Jakarta to Department of State, October
14, 1965. Quoted in Geoffrey Robinson, The Dark Side of Paradise:
Political Violence in Bali (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995),
p. 283.



6. Frederick Bunnell, �American �Low Posture� Policy Toward Indonesia in
the Months Leading up to the 1965 �Coup�,� Indonesia, 50 (October
1990), p. 59.



7. Kathy Kadane, �Ex-agents say CIA Compiled Death Lists for Indonesians,�
San Francisco Examiner, May 20, 1990, available online at:

www.pir.org/kadane.html.



8. CIA Report no. 14 to the White House (from Jakarta), October 14, 1965.
Cited in Robinson, The Dark Side of Paradise, p. 283.



9. Richard Nixon, �Asia After Viet Nam,� Foreign Affairs (October
1967), p. 111.



10. Quoted in Peter Dale Scott, �Exporting Military-Economic Development:
America and the Overthrow of Sukarno,� in Malcolm Caldwell (ed.), Ten
Years' Military Terror in Indonesia (Nottingham (U.K.): Bertrand
Russell Peace Foundation for Spokesman Books, 1975), p. 241.



11. Audrey R. Kahin and George McT. Kahin, Subversion as Foreign
Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia (New
York: The New Press, 1995), p. 1.



12. Bunnell, �American �Low Posture� Policy,� pp. 34, 43, 53-54.



13. Time, July 15, 1966. Also see Noam Chomsky, Year 501: The Conquest
Continues (Boston: South End Press, 1993), pp. 123-131.



14. Lawrence Griswold, �Garuda and the Emerald Archipelago: Strategic
Indonesia Forges New Ties with the West,� Sea Power (Navy League of
the United States), vol. 16, no. 2 (1973), pp. 20, 25.



15. Telegram 1787 from Jakarta to State Department, December 16, 1965,
cited in Brad Simpson, �Modernizing Indonesia: U.S.�Indonesian Relations,
1961-1967,� (Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, Northwestern
University, 2003), p. 343.



16. Hilmar Farid, �Indonesia�s Original Sin: Mass Killings and Capitalist
Expansion 1965-66,� Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vol. 6, no. 1
(March 2005).



17. For information on U.S.-Indonesia military ties, see the website of
the East Timor Indonesia Action Network at:
www.etan.org/