Lifting the Curtain on the Coup of October 1st 1965

LIFTING THE CURTAIN ON THE COUP OF OCTOBER 1st 1965
- SUING FOR THE JUSTICE -

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Seluruh Korban Rejim Jendral Suharto

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Dedicated to:
all the Victims of General Suharto´s Regime

The Jakarta Post, September 30, 2005

The Institutionalization of state violence after 1965

Asvi Warman Adam, Jakarta

Prof. Henk Schulte Nordholt maintains that in Indonesia's history, the intensity of violence increases during the transition of power, the reinforcement of power, and also amid economic woes. This is exactly what happened throughout the period of the New Order.

The root of violence can be traced to the colonial era. While history textbooks in Indonesia describe the early 20th century as the period of implementation of the Dutch ethical policy in this archipelago, at the same time successive military expeditions were in fact dispatched to Aceh, Lombok, Central and South Sumatra, Borneo, Aceh, Central and South Sulawesi, Seram, Flores, Timor, Bali and again Aceh. Some 75,000 people or 15 percent of the Acehnese population were killed by Dutch colonial troops.

Following Indonesia's independence, various rebellions broke out in the country with a high death toll, though they were eventually stamped out. This was not the case with the Sept. 30, 1965 movement (G30S) coup attempt, which set off the longest conflict after independence. That year seems unending. Despite the passage of 40 years, the impact of this incident lingers, leaving deep and lasting repercussions up to the present.

Communists and Communism became the enemy constantly recycled by the New Order or especially the New Order military. This country turned into the most anti-Communist nation that probably ever existed. The Nazis exterminated millions of Jewish people in gas chambers at one juncture in history. But in Indonesia the torture inflicted on Communists or those accused of being ones lasted for decades, making them suffer physical pain followed by mental torment.

I share the view of Australian historian Robert Cribb that we could not have guaranteed the absence of brutality if the Communists had risen to power. But I wish to point out that the slaughter of 500,000 people in 1965 was the gravest tragedy of humanity in Indonesia's history.

The 1965 incident also served as a watershed, marking major changes in economic, political and cultural areas. The free-and-active, non-aligned foreign policy became pro-American and pro-western. The self-supporting economy shifted to a market economy relying on capital and external loans. The entire cultural potential was mustered to ensure successful development, with no more polemics or criticism. Unlike the changes occurring in other periods, in 1965 they were so simultaneous that their reverberations were more alarming.

Below is the process and modes of institutionalization of state violence during the New Order era.

The institute formed after the outbreak of G30S had unlimited power. Kopkamtib (Operational Command for the Restoration of Security and Order) seized and interrogated people considered dangerous to the government. It also instructed the attorney general to banish B-category political detainees to Buru Island (1969-1979).

These detainees' involvement in G30S was suspected but there was not sufficient evidence to bring them to court. Kopkamtib decided whether somebody was "environmentally clean" (with no family members directly or indirectly implicated in G30S) through special screening in the selection of civil servants and armed forces candidates, or periodical screening in the framework of rank/office promotion of servicemen and civil servants.

Under Admiral Sudomo, the agency prohibiting the public from undertaking any activity or publishing anything seen by the government as a potential source of conflict relating to the key areas of ethnicity, religion, race and societal relations, a concept known as SARA. At the end of the New Order, this body changed into the Coordinating Agency to Support the Strengthening of National Stability (Bakorstranas), which was dissolved by then president Abdurrahman Wahid.

The 1965 incident also led to a diplomatic freeze with the People's Republic of China. Everything suggestive of China was suspect and banned. Parcels of magazines with Chinese characters were examined by immigration personnel; religious and socio-cultural activities were considerable restricted if not prohibited. In the various social disturbances arising under the New Order regime, the Chinese often became a target of mass fury.

The policy of giving Indonesian names to or renaming citizens of Chinese descent is worth noting. It was a form of oppression that considerably affected individuals in a community. A name has its meaning and members of society treat each other also according to their names as they indicate the status and position of families.

In 1959 the law of land reform was enforced, which as a whole was not so radical. But it also contained provisions on production sharing between farm workers and owners, which was very favorable to laborers and could overturn the rural social order. While earlier land owners got 60 percent and laborers 40 percent of harvests, the law ruled otherwise.

Starting from 1962/63, the Indonesian Farmers Union and the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) launched "unilateral actions" against village evils, including landlords, rural authorities and loan sharks. Protests, land takeovers and village-head overthrows prevailed. Insurgencies in Java's villages were far more widespread and intense because poor masses were involved. Some of their victims were devout Muslims and clerics. The confused and uncontrolled situation prompted people to arm or protect themselves. The G30S coup attempt took place against this backdrop.

In the New Order era, the government supported by the security apparatus could easily seize people's land for and in the name of development.

The 1965 conflict was purposely maintained by the New Order regime to perpetuate its power. One of the characteristics of the 1965 incident was the utilization of history to maintain conflicts.

The New Order's orchestration of history took different forms, such as: The Indonesian National History (SNI) school textbooks clearly mentioned Sukarno's involvement in the Sept. 30 coup attempt.

Labor Day was annulled and the June 1 Pancasila (state philosophy) anniversary was replaced by the Oct. 1 Pancasila Sanctity Day, which had nothing to do with Pancasila. The killing of six generals was commemorated by ignoring the massacre of 500,000 people that happened thereafter.

Until now, none of Soeharto's successors, including Sukarno's own daughter, Megawati Soekarnoputri, have been able or willing to find the truth behind the Sept. 30 coup attempt. It will remain one of the darkest chapters in the nation's history.

The writer is research professor at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Jakarta.

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The 9/30 tragedy - Editorial of The Jakarta Post Something horrible happened 40 years ago that changed the course of Indonesia's history, unfortunately for the worse. But while the circumstances surrounding the kidnapping and murder of six Army generals on the night of Sept. 30, 1965, remain shrouded in mystery, the effects of this tragic event are unequivocal: it was a case of one tragedy leading to another, and another, and another.

Whoever was responsible for the kidnappings and killings, and whatever their motives -- both questions remain contentious to this day among historians -- the events of that night, which lasted until the early hours of Oct. 1, unleashed a killing spree that went on for months, with the main targets, though by far not the only targets, being suspected members and supporters of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), which was blamed for the murder of the generals.

Soeharto was easily one of the most ruthless rulers of the 20th century, and his human rights record matches those of other dictators of his era: the jailing of tens of thousands of people without trial, the invasion of East Timor and the ensuing brutal rule of the territory, the silencing of politicians, clerics and students who disagreed with his policies, his brutal policies in Aceh and Papua, to name but a few. Last week, more than seven years after his removal from office, the National Commission on Human Rights announced that 14 government critics who went missing during Soeharto's rule had been murdered.Soeharto's legacy goes beyond the atrocities he and his regime committed. The militaristic and often brutal nature of our political culture today, from the intolerance to the use of violence to settle differences, is deeply rooted in Soeharto's New Order, and it will likely require one or two generations to undo this unfortunate legacy as the nation struggles to transform itself into a democracy.

Officially, at least during the Soeharto years, the event was marked on Oct. 1, thus confining the tragedy solely to the killing of the six generals and, at least according to military historians, to the abortive coup by the PKI. What happened afterward was justified as a necessary evil, even a historical necessity, although the killing spree was not openly recognized.

C. L. Sulzberger, writing in The New York Times from Jakarta on April 13, 1966, compared the Indonesian killings with other slaughters of the 20th century, including the Armenian massacres, Stalin's starvation of the Kulaks, Hitler's Jewish genocide, the Muslim-Hindu killings following India's partition and the purges following China's turn to communism."Indonesia's bloody persecution of its communist rivals these terrible events in both scale and savagery," Sulzberger wrote. Four decades later the nation has not fully come to terms with the reality of these events. We barely know the truth. We only have the truth Soeharto's military wanted us to have. The worst part is that most of us do not seem to want to know what happened. We would rather bury this ugly past and forget it entirely.

But here is the bad news: We can never bury the past. This dark page in our history will continue to haunt us for as long as we fail to get to the truth. As they say, only the truth shall set us free. More than seven years since Soeharto left the political stage, surely the time has come for the nation to rewrite the history of what happened on the night of Sept. 30, 1965. History is always written from the perspective of the victors. Soeharto was the winner of the power struggle in the mid-1960s, thus he had his day. But as his legacy shows, there are no real winners here. The entire nation suffered, and continues to suffer to this day. There are only losers. ch professor at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LThe 9/30 tragedy Something horrible happened 40 years ago that changed the course of Indonesia's history, unfortunately for the worse. But while the circumstances surrounding the kidnapping and murder of six Army generals on the night of Sept. 30, 1965, remain shrouded in mystery, the effects of this tragic event are unequivocal: it was a case of one tragedy leading to another, and another, and another.

If that was not enough of a tragedy, the nation saw the young Army general Soeharto seize the presidency the following year, ushering in an era of repression, brutality and corruption that would last for the next three decades. Soeharto was easily one of the most ruthless rulers of the 20th century, and his human rights record matches those of other dictators of his era: the jailing of tens of thousands of people without trial, the invasion of East Timor and the ensuing brutal rule of the territory, the silencing of politicians, clerics and students who disagreed with his policies, his brutal policies in Aceh and Papua, to name but a few. Last week, more than seven years after his removal from office, the National Commission on Human Rights announced that 14 government critics who went missing during Soeharto's rule had been murdered.

Soeharto's legacy goes beyond the atrocities he and his regime committed. The militaristic and often brutal nature of our political culture today, from the intolerance to the use of violence to settle differences, is deeply rooted in Soeharto's New Order, and it will likely require one or two generations to undo this unfortunate legacy as the nation struggles to transform itself into a democracy.

But the biggest tragedy for the nation is our own denial that 9/30 was a tragedy of horrific proportions. Soeharto used the event to sanctify Pancasila, effectively turning the state ideology into an instrument he could wield to justify his brutal policies. Officially, at least during the Soeharto years, the event was marked on Oct. 1, thus confining the tragedy solely to the killing of the six generals and, at least according to military historians, to the abortive coup by the PKI. What happened afterward was justified as a necessary evil, even a historical necessity, although the killing spree was not openly recognized.

There was no mention in the military-dictated official history books of the ensuing bloodshed, which according to international human rights organizations left at least half a million people dead. The precise figure will never be known precisely because we as a nation pretend it never happened. C. L. Sulzberger, writing in The New York Times from Jakarta on April 13, 1966, compared the Indonesian killings with other slaughters of the 20th century, including the Armenian massacres, Stalin's starvation of the Kulaks, Hitler's Jewish genocide, the Muslim-Hindu killings following India's partition and the purges following China's turn to communism. "Indonesia's bloody persecution of its communist rivals these terrible events in both scale and savagery," Sulzberger wrote. Four decades later the nation has not fully come to terms with the reality of these events. We barely know the truth. We only have the truth Soeharto's military wanted us to have. The worst part is that most of us do not seem to want to know what happened. We would rather bury this ugly past and forget it entirely. But here is the bad news: We can never bury the past. This dark page in our history will continue to haunt us for as long as we fail to get to the truth. As they say, only the truth shall set us free.

More than seven years since Soeharto left the political stage, surely the time has come for the nation to rewrite the history of what happened on the night of Sept. 30, 1965. History is always written from the perspective of the victors. Soeharto was the winner of the power struggle in the mid-1960s, thus he had his day. But as his legacy shows, there are no real winners here. The entire nation suffered, and continues

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*IBRAHIM ISA'S ---- VIEWS - 30 Sept 2005

FOCUS ON: - THE 30TH SEPTEMBER '65 EVENT –

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Can a religious nation be proud of butchering its own? Harry Bhaskara and Kornelius Purba, The Jakarta Post If ever they have the opportunity to read it, The New York Times' correspondent C.L. Sulzberger's report from Jakarta on April 13, 1966, might help three young girls understand why, on every Sept. 30, their father locks himself away. How well they know the grief that overcomes him as he shuffles to his room to shut himself in on the last day of every September. If they had the chance to read C.L. Sulzberger's report they would probably understand the source of his sorrow. In the report titled When a nation runs amok, Sulzberger said the Sept. 30 massacre was comparable to the world's worst killings, like Hitler's Jewish genocide. The article was written just seven months after the so-termed G30S tragedy. "The twentieth century grimly remembers many monstrous slaughters: Turkey's Armenian massacres; Stalin's starvation of the Kulaks; Hitler's Jewish genocide; the Moslem-Hindu killings following India's partition, the enormous purges after China's communization. Indonesia's bloody persecution of its Communist rivals these terrible events in both scale and savagery," Sulzberger wrote from Jakarta. Today, the girls' father will likely repeat his annual ritual. He has never told his daughters that his father was a victim of the Sept. 30 tragedy. Neither are they aware that their father finished his studies at the prestigious Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) under a name that was not his own. The children suffer from a stigma: They are the children of an Indonesian Communist (PKI) member. The children inherited the "sins" of their father.

"For 33 years until 1998 (Soeharto's fall), I and my other siblings had to hide our real identities. I don't want my daughters to suffer from the same 'disease' although the situation is rather different now," said the man who has a small construction company. The daughters do not know much about the massacre as, while they watched the same film every Sept. 30 until 1998, they were too young to understand it. It is hard for them to fathom why their father is reluctant to talk about his childhood in Medan, North Sumatra. Millions of innocent children lost their parents and have never been informed of their whereabouts. The state treated them like pariahs and gave them no protection, though it was their right to receive it. In the scenario that their parents were indeed PKI members and committed crimes, why does the state demand of children that they pay for the sins of their parents? September was the month when it was compulsory, under the New Order government, to view a film depicting the murders of seven generals in 1965.

This was its view of the events that preceded a year-long program that claimed thousands, perhaps, millions of lives. The film -- graphic scenes of the cruelness of the communists in the eyes of the New Order -- has not been screened since Soeharto fell from power in 1998. For more than two decades, millions of Indonesians watched it, without being able to question the historical accuracy of it under a dictatorship. What really happened on Sept. 30, 1965, remains a matter of controversy. Teachers are at a loss to explain the course of events to their students. History books were withdrawn and revised editions published. Only a few facts, however, are revealed in the revised histories, which has left many dissatisfied. Along with the film's presentation, there was an annual ceremony to remind the people of the murders of the generals and the dangers of communism. It was held at the Lubang Buaya (Crocodile Hole), presumably the site of these horrendous killings. This ceremony has been sporadically held in recent years. Former presidents Habibie and Abdurrahman Wahid skipped it, but not Megawati Soekarnoputri -- although many people hope she will be able to clear her father's name in the alleged coup attempt. Soeharto brainwashed Indonesians so thoroughly that, until now, many Indonesians believe that the PKI and communists are despised by God. Even as communism has lost its popularity in China, many Indonesians still believe that there is nothing worse in this world than communism. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is scheduled to preside over the ceremony at Lubang Buaya on Saturday, the day that has been called Pancasila Sanctity Day. He has promised the ceremony will reflect more willingness to reveal the historical facts. However as his own father-legendary Lt. Gen. (ret) Sarwo Eddie, played a decisive role in the rise of Soeharto to power, it is difficult to imagine he can distance himself from the official version of history

.We proudly call ourselves a religious nation. And apparently, as a nation, we are also proud to have killed hundreds of thousands ifin-law, the millions of people, whom we regarded as the enemies of God.

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Tragedy: Between amnesia and lustration

Mochtar Buchori, Jakarta

We all know what "amnesia" means, but "lustration" is a strange word to many Indonesians. "Amnesia" means "partial or total loss of memory". "Lustration" means "purification". The meaning of the verb form of the word, "lustrate", is "to purify". I came across these two words in an article about the former Federal Republic of Czechoslovakia. In his inaugural address as the first president of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel made an appeal to his people to forgive each other for the mistakes the nation made in the past. He asked his people not to distrust each other, not to hate each other and above all not to seek revenge. He stated that in his opinion every citizen of the country was guilty and responsible for the rise of a Communist government in 1948. He asked his people to concentrate their energy on the problems of the future, and not constantly to accuse each other for the past. This policy was called the "amnesty-and-amnesia" policy. It can be translated as the "forgive-and-forget" policy. This policy proved to be a failure. Under the protection of this policy bureaucrats from the old Communist regime remained in their positions, and they used these positions to obstruct any new policies that might jeopardize their personal interests. G-30-S tThe public became restless and a new movement was born under the name of the "lustration movement", aimed at "purifying" the government of the cronies from the old Communist regime. This movement also failed to achieve its goals. The end result was that the Federal Republic of Czechoslovakia was split into two independent republics, i.e. the Czech Republic and the Republic of Slovakia.

This story about Czechoslovakia, and the great leader Vaclav Havel, made me think of our own situation in Indonesia. Forty years ago, on Sept. 30, 1965, a national tragedy occurred. It used to be referred to as the "G-30-S affair", G-30-S standing for Gerakan 30 September, literally meaning "the September 30th Movement".

The political power that came out of this tragedy was called the Orde Baru -- meaning the "New Order" -- and it quickly proclaimed that the tragedy was an abortive coup d'etat by the now defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).In academic circles, however, there is a countertheory that it was a preemptive attempt by political forces rallying behind the PKI to abort an imminent coup by the Council of Generals (Dewan Jendral). Which of these two claims is closer to the truth is thus far unresolved. Historians must still complete their academic task of uncovering the mysteries that surround this affair.

Many changes have happened since this bloody political affair happened. But these changes have still not brought about a society that is close enough to the idea of a "just and prosperous society". In spite of all the economic progress made thus far, we still cannot call our society a prosperous one. There are still too many Indonesians who live below the poverty line. And in spite of all the legal reforms attempted thus far we still cannot call our society a just one. There are still too many injustices inflicted on the common people. This raises the question of whether we have learned enough from the horrible affair of 40 years ago, and from the tumultuous aftermath of this affair. Admittedly, we did learn a number of important things, but we failed to learn one very important lesson; i.e. the lesson about democracy building and about transforming our political culture.

We learned to reject totalitarianism, but we failed to prevent an authoritarian government. We are also not aware that we failed to learn that democracy is not only reserved for the political elite, but that it aims primarily to protect the interests of the common people. We have failed to learn that democracy cannot be built on the basis of force, but that it requires the consent of the people. Consent cannot be obtained by threat or intimidation. The genuine consent that is the basis of a lasting democracy can come only from citizens who are fully aware of their rights and obligations.

Looking at the ways our political system works today, and the level of political literacy obtained by the people, it is really no wonder that we constantly repeat the mistakes of the past. To me, the important question in this regard is whether we will ever have the ability to learn from our past mistakes.Our failure to learn the important lessons of the 1965 tragedy may also be caused by the fact that so far there has been no sincere or honest historical account of the affair. What we have thus far is, to use the expression of Lord Michael Howard of Oxford, "instant judgment" rather than an "historical account". And instant judgment always tell us more about the parties judging than the situation judged.The task of our historians is not easy. For one thing, historians must distinguish between "the significant" and "the transitory", and determine whether an event is purely fortuitous or indicative of a long-term trend.

But no matter how difficult the task of historians may be, they are the only ones who can provide the nation with reliable guidelines regarding how the nation should proceed in the future to find true answers to our present problems. The writer has a doctorate in education from Harvard University.*

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September 30, 2005

*Forty years on, events of 1965 remain a mystery *

Hera Diani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Noted Muslim cleric Yusuf Hasyim held up a number of large mug-shots -- people whom he said were victims of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) scheme to take over the country four decades ago.

Yusuf, who was a young Muslim leader at the time, revealed the details of the assassinations during a book launch on Thursday. He argued that the PKI indeed masterminded two abortive coup attempts in 1948 and the Sept. 30, 1965, and was responsible for the killing of its opposition.

"There are two versions of the history. But by overlooking the involvement of PKI in the coup, we tend to whitewash a black part of our history," said the Nahdhatul Ulama (NU) cleric and an uncle of former

Known by Indonesian acronym as G-30S/PKI, the 1965 incident revolved around the killing of six Army generals. Another general was injured, while his daughter was shot and killed by the attackers.

With only a few key eyewitnesses of the incident left alive today, the 1965 coup attempt, which led to the widespread massacre of communists and the establishment of New Order authoritarian regime, has remained one of the most controversial events in the country's history.

Historians are still debating the role of PKI in the event, with some saying the party was only a scapegoat. Other versions say Gen. Soeharto, who assumed power following the incident, conflicting factions in the Army, or the CIA were the culprits of the murders.

During 32-year of Soeharto's rule, thousands of people linked to the party were jailed without trial, while their families and offspring were robbed of their civil, economic and political rights. Several historians have written revisionist histories, saying that old government line blaming the PKI was heavily biased. Meanwhile, the latest school history textbooks have left out completely the coup attempt and the 1965 bloodbath. These textbooks were later were pulled by the Ministry of National Education after numerous complaints from the public.

Earlier this month, the Central Jakarta District Court overturned a class action from a number of former PKI political prisoners who demanded the government apologize and restore their rights. The judge's unusual decision left the case to the administrative court, although that court could not hear the prisoner's suit because their arrests occurred outside of its time frame, a lawyer for the former prisoners said.

Historian Aminuddin Kasdi from Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada University said while he was not against the rehabilitation of former political prisoners, it didn't mean that the PKI was not culpable in the coup.

"Rehabilitation does not necessary means they (PKI members) are innocent. Facts and witnesses show that PKI was indeed the mastermind of the abortive coup. We cannot deny that," he said during the launch of his book titled G30S PKI/1965, Bedah Caesar Dewan Revolusi Indonesia (the Caesarean Section of the Indonesian Revolutionary Council).

In an interesting turn of events, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono plans to preside over a commemoration of the military crackdown on people behind the coup on Oct. 1. Such a ritual has been absent since Soeharto stepped down in 1998.

Historian Anhar Gonggong told The Jakarta Post recently that controversy over certain historical facts was inevitable, as happened with the holocaust in Europe or regarding Japanese abuses during World War II.

The education ministry, he said, needed to take a firm stance as to which version or which facts it would choose, to avoid confusion. "It's up to people to criticize," he said, adding that history (lessons) were aimed at imparting knowledge.

Meanwhile, noted cleric and human rights activist Solahuddin Wahid said that if historians could bridge the differences, they should agree to disagree.

"It seems that our historians are unable to shed the mystery of the 1965 event. Then give people both versions, as long as it is backed by strong evidence (each way). Let people decide which (story) is true."

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JKT POST 5 OCT 05

*Democracy takes root in largest Muslim country,*

M. Taufiqurrahman

In a period of less than eight months, Indonesia held this year an unprecedented three direct elections -- proving the skeptics wrong in their peaceful process and conclusion -- and heralding a new era in its political evolution.

First was the nationwide legislative election on April 5, which 24 political parties contested for a combined total of over 17,000 seats at the House of Representatives, the Regional Representatives Council and local legislative councils.

Three months later on July 5, voters cast their ballots once again to choose their leader from among five candidates in the first direct presidential election -- complete with campaigns of a distinctly Indonesian flair, featuring dangdut artists and colorful party T-shirts, and another first, televised debates, or "dialogs".

With no candidate garnering a clear majority, the stage was set for an election runoff on Sept. 20 between then incumbent Megawati Soekarnoputri and her key rival, former security chief Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Might up to the moment the General Elections Commission (KPU) announced the country's sixth president and vice president, Susilo and Jusuf Kalla, not a single case of violence was reported within the eight months of the official election period.

However, in the lead-up to the election year, supporters of the Golkar Party and Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) clashed following a district Golkar meeting in northern Bali, killing x and injuring dozens.

Nevertheless, the peaceful and democratic elections was a noteworthy feat that was lauded internationally, not the least because the country and its people had only just rid themselves of a dictatorial regime through the reformasi movement less than six years earlier.

Under Soeharto's iron-fisted rule, the "electorate" was herded once every five years to the polling booths under the guise of a general election to endorse the autocrat's continued reign.

Following the demise of the dictatorship, all hell broke loose, most visibly as communal and religious conflicts in several regions. In Maluku and Poso, Central Sulawesi, Muslims and Christians clashed bloodily, while in West and Central Kalimantan, native Dayak and migrant Madurese lynched one another.

The transitions during and after the first democratic presidential? legislative? election in 1999 were also painful. Rioting erupted following Megawati's defeat in her bid for the presidential seat, which was put to the vote in the People's Consultative Assembly, and PDI-P supporters took the streets and went on a rampage.

A similar incident occurred when former president Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid was impeached by the Assembly the same year, with his supporters cutting down trees and ransacking the offices of a political party thought to be responsible for their patron's ouster.

All the turmoil raised concerns that in Indonesia, where Islam is the predominant faith, that the religion's values were simply incompatible with democracy. Firebrand Muslim groups often reject democracy outright, as they view it as a Western concept.

At the outset, a peaceful election year seemed improbable amid heightened tension and sporadic violence in several regions, as well as the undercurrent of possible terror since the Bali bombings of 2001.

However, voters were enthusiastic and went to the polls in an orderly, sometimes festive, manner, voting for their preferred candidates independent of any directives or advice from political machinery.

Among the indicators of this was the voter turnout: 82 percent for the legislative election; 78 percent for the first-round presidential election; and 76 percent for the runoff.

The result of the election also showed that voter preferences were largely moderate, as the bulk of them voted for nationalism- oriented parties and the Justice Prosperous Party (PKS) -- considered the standard bearer of Islamic values -- because of their anticorruption stance.

Analysts have said credit should go to Megawati for drawing up and conducting a peaceful and fair elections. However, these analysts have not pointed out Megawati's direct contribution to the successful election, apart from being the incumbent at the time.

In fact, Megawati was busy, focusing on her campaign and traveling extensively throughout the country to woo voters, sometimes during official visits.

As for the parties, nothing much could be expected from them in terms of keeping the peace among the electorate, as they had a tendency to exploit voters' differences of opinion to bolster their own chances.

The media, on the other hand, which should have played an indispensable role in educating voters, instead showed a degree of partiality. A report from the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU-EOM), for example, revealed that a number of prominent media were biased in their reporting on presidential candidates.

Thus, voters were left to their own devices to make an independent and informed choice, and in the end, surprised the elite with their political maturity.

Megawati lost her reelection bid with under 40 percent of votes against more than 60 percent for Susilo, as voters judged that her administration had delivered nothing significant in its three years in power as a transitional government from the reform era toward democratization.

In short, voters had punished her for this gross shortcoming. "This election demonstrates a very strong popular rejection of selfish political elites within the political parties," political observer of the now-defunct Far Eastern Economic Review Michael Vatikiotis said.

Vatikiotis, who traveled extensively through Java's rural regions ahead of the runoff, said he found voters at the grassroots level tolerant and respectful of each other's choices.

A member of the General Elections Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu), perhaps summed up the election year best: The people proved their maturity, showing the country and the world that the nation was ready for democracy.

The peaceful elections has thus shown that at least in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, Islam and democracy are a natural fit and can coexist in harmony.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 6, 2005

AS-103-2005

A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) Rehabilitation and redress for massacre victims essential for true commemoration

Forty years have passed since the occurrence of one of the largest and least known crimes against humanity of the twentieth century: the 1965-66 massacre of some half a million to a million unarmed civilians in Indonesia, who were alleged to be communists. In addition to those killed, hundreds of thousands more were tortured and imprisoned, including political opponents of the ruling regime. The families of those killed or imprisoned were also victimized through a programme of institutional ostracism that denied them the opportunity to engage in normal economic and social life.

To this day, September 30 is officially commemorated in Indonesia by mourning the six generals killed during the purported leftist coup attempt that General Suharto used as the means to seize state power in 1965. By contrast, nothing is officially said of the millions murdered afterwards. In fact, the survivors and family members of those targeted during the massacre continue to be discriminated against in every aspect of their lives. They have been imprisoned, dismissed from their jobs, denied access to education and faced social ostracism by having ex-tapol (ex-political prisoner) put on their identification documents. This is the case seven years after the downfall of Suharto and his New Order regime, who were responsible for the atrocity. Indonesia is at present being governed by its first elected president. There can be no legitimacy to a government that ignores the massacre of a million of its citizens.

Elected representatives have a responsibility to the people; by ignoring evidence painstakingly compiled by victims' families and concerned groups, eyewitness reports and the uncovering of mass graves, the Indonesian government is blatantly shirking this responsibility. By continuing the institutional ostracism of the survivors through legal and social regulations that prevent them from enjoying their fundamental human rights, the present government is perpetuating the atrocities committed by its predecessors, rather than upholding its reported commitment to human rights and democracy.

This year, a week of activities was initiated by numerous groups to commemorate the massacre and inform the public of a truth that is still not officially being told. The activities included public discussions, the viewing of documentary films, launching of books of victim testimony and a demonstration to the president's residence, demanding that the victims be compensated and rehabilitated with dignity and honor. The focus of these activities continues to remain the same: the truth be told, enabling the victims to shed the stigma they have lived with for four decades.

This truth must begin with the revision of school textbook contents. Indonesian students are learning the same lessons of history as they did under the New Order. They learn that the country was threatened by communism and saved by quick army intervention. They learn a mythological account of the events surrounding September 30. They learn nothing of the millions murdered in the bloodbath that followed. Although these textbooks were earlier exchanged for ones that made no mention of the coup attempt and subsequent atrocities, they are in use again after the new ones were removed from school curriculums by the Ministry of National Education due to public > complaints.

Like the education system, the country's legal system is also discriminatory in nature, leaving it unable to serve justice to the victims of the massacre. A class action lawsuit by a group of individuals imprisoned after 1965-66 was recently heard in court against the current and former presidents of Indonesia. The victims, demanding the restoration of their honor and compensation for the discrimination they experience to date, were harassed and threatened when they appeared in court. The judge decided the case purely on jurisdictional issues, not on merits; the court can apparently only hear cases that are filed within a certain period of time after the

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission bill, passed by the government in September 2004, is yet another act of injustice delivered to the victims. The bill omits any definition of who is a perpetrator and further forces the victims to forgive their perpetrators if they want compensation; according to the bill's provisions, only when the perpetrators are given amnesty by the government can the victims be given compensation, and amnesty is given after the victims grant forgiveness. While the Commission is at present in the process of being established, it has understandably little support from victims and other concerned groups. Without provisions for genuine justice--which would include legal remedies for the prosecution and punishment of the perpetrators as well as compensation for the victims--the Commission is a tool to whitewash the massacre, rather than an attempt at reconciliation

Genuine national reconciliation is possible only when the truth is told. To this end, the AHRC urges that school textbooks be immediately rewritten with accurate accounts of the events of 1965-66 and that legal mechanisms be established for the purpose of giving redress to the victims, as well as to monitor and investigate the existing forms of discrimination suffered by the survivors and family members. To aid these mechanisms, it is necessary to enact the witness and victim protection bill that is currently pending in parliament. All concerned groups and individuals should urgently take these issues up with the relevant government agencies.

# # #

About AHRC The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.

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Asian Human Rights Commission

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998 Canton Road, Kowloon, Hongkong S.A.R.

Tel: +(852) - 2698-6339 Fax: +(852) - 2698-6367

From: JoyoNews@aol.com

To: undisclosed-recipients:

Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 9:23 AM

Subject: The Mass Killings in Indonesia After 40 Years

[By John Roosa & Joseph Nevins]

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Oct05/Roosa-Nevins1031.htm>
Dissident Voice October 31, 2005

>From ETAN

(East Timor & Indonesia Action Network)

The Mass Killings in Indonesia After 40 Years

by John Roosa and Joseph Nevins *)

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'état 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 labelled 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 30^th 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' 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. mbassy 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'État 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).