After that, Suharto controlled all mass communications. He accused the PKI of shocking crimes, using deliberate and incendiary falsehoods to whip up hatred against the left across the country.
The military spread the story that the PKI was the mastermind of a failed communist coup. Suharto and his men claimed that the Indonesian Communist Party had brought the generals back to Halim Air Force Base and begun a depraved, demonic ritual. They said members of Gerwani, the Women’s Movement, danced naked while the women mutilated and tortured the generals, cutting off their genitals and gouging out their eyes, before murdering them. They claimed that the PKI had long lists of people they planned to kill, and mass graves already prepared.59 They said China had secretly delivered arms to People’s Youth Brigades.60 The Army paper, Angkatan Bersendjata (Armed Forces), printed photos of the dead generals’ bodies, reporting they had been “cruelly and viciously slaughtered” in acts of torture that were “an affront to humanity.”61
As the first news of these developments came in, US Under Secretary of State George Ball reportedly called CIA Director Richard Helms to ask if they “were in a position where [they] can categorically deny this involvement of CIA operations in the Indonesia situation.” Helms said yes.62 Ambassador Green was probably not expecting anything to happen on October 1, and all the State Department documents now public indicate the embassy was confused by the events for the first few days of October. It’s unclear whether, as was the case with Howard Jones seven years previously, information was being kept from the new ambassador.
Soon after the initial confusion, the US government assisted Suharto in the crucial early phase of spreading propaganda and establishing his anticommunist narrative. Washington quickly and covertly supplied vital mobile communications equipment to the military, a now-declassified October 14 cable indicates.63 This was also a tacit admission, very early, that the US government recognized the Army, not Sukarno, as the true leader of the country, even though Sukarno was still legally the president.
The Western press did its part too. Voice of America, the BBC, and Radio Australia broadcast reports that emphasized Indonesian military propaganda points, as part of a psychological warfare campaign to demonize the PKI. These broadcasts reached inside the country in Bahasa Indonesia as well, and Indonesians remember thinking that the credibility of Suharto’s narrative was more trustworthy because they heard respected international outlets saying the same thing.64
Every part of the story the Indonesian Army told is a lie. No Gerwani women participated in any killings on October 1.65 More than three decades later, Benedict Anderson was able to prove not only that the account of the torture of the generals was false, but that Suharto knew it was all false in early October. He himself ordered an autopsy that showed all the men were shot except one, who may have been stabbed with a bayonet in a fight at his home.66
But by 1987, when Anderson’s proof was published, not much of that discovery mattered anymore. The story of a demonic communist plot to take over the country by mutilating good, God-fearing military men in the dark of night had become something like part of the national religion under the Suharto dictatorship. Not long after he took over, Suharto erected a monument to the men killed that night, just like the Brazilians erected a monument at Red Beach in Rio de Janeiro celebrating their fallen heroes. The two structures are even similar—at both, steps lead up to a white marble slab, with a bronze figure, or figures, of the military victims standing in front. Just as with the Intentona Comunista in Brazil, Indonesians celebrated the anniversary of the event each year as a kind of anticommunist national ritual. But the Indonesian monument is bigger. And Suharto took this propaganda a bit further than statues and annual speeches—he ordered the production of a gruesome, three-hour film depicting his version of events, which was broadcast on September 30 each year on public television. The Army still screens it.
The story spread by Suharto hits on some of the darkest fears and prejudices held by Indonesians, and indeed men in general—around the world. A surprise night raid on your home. Slow torture with blades. The inversion of gender roles, the literal assault on strong men’s reproductive organs carried out by demonic, sexually depraved communist women. It’s the stuff of a well-written, reactionary horror film, and few people believe Suharto came up with it himself.
The similarities with the Brazilian legend of the Intentona Comunista are striking. Just a year after a coup in the most important nation in Latin America was inspired partly by a legend about communist soldiers stabbing generals to death in their sleep, General Suharto tells the most important nation in Southeast Asia that communists and left-wing soldiers whisked generals away from their homes in the dead of night to be murdered slowly with knives, and then both Washington-aligned anticommunist military dictatorships celebrated the anniversary of those rebellions in very much the same way for decades.
Historian Bradley Simpson at the National Security Archives in Washington, DC, notes, “Though we lack access to many of the classified US and British materials, it is highly likely that a key element of US and British covert operations in this period involved the creation of ‘black’ propaganda inside Indonesia,” with the goal of demonizing the PKI.67
There are many ways Suharto’s propaganda team could have taken “inspiration” from Brazilian anticommunist legend. Maybe some US official handed Suharto the idea or helped craft his narrative for him. Thousands of Brazilian and Indonesian military officers studied at Leavenworth over the same period of time, and maybe someone talked about the Intentona there. Perhaps Indonesian officials simply grabbed at, and hyper-amplified, anticommunist tropes that were floating out there in the global consciousness, in the international anticommunist movement that was already large, well-organized, and interconnected. By then, there was already the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, made up largely of far-right Eastern Europeans; there was the Asian People’s Anticommunist League, a kind of counter-Bandung group led by Taiwan and South Korea; and there was the Mexican-led Inter-American Confederation for the Defense of the Continent. Because of the intervention of a Brazilian anticommunist, all three groups had met in Mexico City in 1958, and had stayed in contact afterward.68 Even regular North Americans knew about those old, absurd references to “reds under the bed.” Or perhaps it’s just a coincidence.
Suharto managed to give official legitimacy to a wildly anticommunist narrative, an absurdly fanatical and exaggerated version of global right-wing ideology. This was an astonishing turnaround from just weeks earlier. But Sukarno was still technically the president, and there were still a whole lot of people in the country who were communists, or broadly tolerant of communists. Over the next six months, the Army took care of both problems.
7
Extermination
THEY SAY THAT TIME FEELS like it slows down in revolutionary or historic moments. And we know that in moments of trauma or violence, time can nearly come to a stop. When eyewitnesses and victims talk about the six months after September 30, 1965, they speak differently. Elderly men and women who talk about other parts of their lives in terms of years, or decades, begin to talk about weeks, specific dates, hours, and minutes.
The now-public US government communications reporting on the same events are also very specific about dates. In deference to the manner that these two very different types of voices can now speak to us, what follows is a selected timeline of these months.
October 5
Jakarta—October 5 is Armed Forces Day in Indonesia. In the capital, the Army usually holds a parade. In 1965, it held a state funeral for the fallen generals and a demonstration of the military’s new dominance.
Sukarno refrained from attending, out of fear for his safety. The president now had to publicly back the new military leadership or appear to support the defeated and discredited, indeed apparently demonic, September 30th Movement.
Defense Minister Nasution gave an impassioned speech condemning the treachery of the communist rebellion and reco
gnizing Suharto’s leadership.
Around the archipelago, local chapters of the Indonesian Communist Party participated in the festivities as they always would, proudly waving their hammer-and-sickle flags alongside the military celebrations.1
Washington, DC—The State Department received a cable from the US embassy in Jakarta on October 5, signed by Ambassador Howard Green.
Green outlined the situation in Indonesia:
Following guidelines may supply part of the answer to what our posture should be:
A. Avoid overt involvement as power struggle unfolds.
B. Covertly, however, indicate clearly to key people in army such as Nasution and Suharto our desire to be of assistance where we can, while at same time conveying to them our assumption that we should avoid appearance of involvement or interference in any way.
C. Maintain and if possible extend our contact with military.
D. Avoid moves that might be interpreted as note of nonconfidence in army (such as precipately [sic] moving out our dependents or cutting staff).
E. Spread the story of PKI’s guilt, treachery and brutality (this priority effort is perhaps most needed immediate assistance we can give army if we can find way to do it without identifying it as solely or largely US effort).
The new ambassador sent another, more direct summary of what lay before Washington in Indonesia that same day. He wrote, “The Army now has the opportunity to move against Communist Party if it moves quickly,” he wrote.
“It’s now or never.”2
October 7
Banda Aceh—The Province of Aceh, at the top of the large, rich island of Sumatra, has a history of both communism and fervent Muslim faith. Indeed, they often overlapped in the days when Indonesia had a flowering of Islamic communism, and most PKI members in the region were devout believers.3 Aceh, hot and dense and dark green, is the westernmost point of Indonesia, with Malaysia to its east across the Straits of Malacca. The Armed Forces had organized a number of civilians there as part of Sukarno’s Konfrontasi with that young nation. According to interviews with Acehnese peoples at the time, the PKI did not have a bad reputation, even among very conservative Muslims, until the anticommunist propaganda started arriving after October 1.4
Aceh’s military commander in 1965 was Ishak Djuarsa, an avid anticommunist who had studied at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.5 On October 7, he left the capital, Banda Aceh, for a whirlwind tour of the province, giving speeches to quickly assembled crowds.
“The PKI are kafir [infidels],” he announced, according to eyewitness reports. “I will destroy them down to their roots! If in the village you find members of the PKI but do not kill them, it will be you who we punish!”
Djuarsa led the crowd in a chant. “Crush the PKI!” “Crush the PKI!” “Crush the PKI!”
Locals in Central Aceh understood, they recall, that they were being instructed to help kill the communists, or be killed themselves.6
It is believed the mass murder started that day, on the island of Sumatra. Some of the killings were “spontaneous,” carried out by civilians acting on their own after receiving orders like this. But that was not the rule. The military and police started arresting a huge number of people. Many leftists turned themselves in, thinking it was the safe and prudent thing to do.
The military put to use civilian structures it had created during the anti-Malaysia campaign. During Konfrontasi, the military had built up paramilitary organizations that could be used to implement martial law and repress the communists.7
The phrase used by Djuarsa, “down to the roots,” had already been used once before, at midnight on October 1, by Mokoginta, another commander in Sumatra who had studied at Leavenworth. These words would become a constant, public refrain of the mass murder program.8
October 8
The Army newspaper Angkatan Bersendjata published a cartoon of a man striking a tree trunk with an axe. On the tree is written “G30S,” the Indonesian-language acronym for the September 30th Movement, and the roots spell “PKI,” the Communist Party. The caption reads: “Exterminate them down to the roots.”9
Internally, however, the Indonesian Army had a different name. It called this Operasi Penumpasan—Operation Annihilation.10
October 19
Jakarta—Magdalena barely noticed that there had been a bit of political chaos in early October in the capital. She certainly didn’t know things back in Central Java, where she grew up, were much worse than they were in Jakarta.
Her grandmother had fallen ill, so she got time off from her job at the T-shirt factory and took a train back to her village to visit her. Health problems had plagued her family her whole life. By the time she arrived, her grandmother had already passed. The plan was to attend the funeral and spend a week, maybe two, grieving with the family, then get back to work in Jakarta. She went to bed in her childhood home in Purwokerto.
October 20
Washington, DC—The State Department received a cable from Ambassador Howard Green. Green reported that the PKI had suffered “some damage to its organizational strength through arrest, harassment and, in some cases, execution of PKI cadres.” He continued: “If army repression of PKI continues and army refuses to give up its position of power to Sukarno, PKI strength can be cut back. In long run, however, army repression of PKI will not be successful unless it is willing to attack communism as such.”
Green concluded: “Army has nevertheless been working hard at destroying PKI and I, for one, have increasing respect for its determination and organization in carrying out this crucial assignment.”11
Purwokerto, Central Java—In the early afternoon, two police officers arrived at Magdalena’s family home, less than twenty-four hours after her arrival.
“You’re coming with us. We need some information from you,” they told her.
The entire house erupted, crying, screaming. Magdalena’s family had heard some people were arrested recently in the neighborhood, but they didn’t know she was a member of a SOBSI union in Jakarta, and neither they nor Magdalena knew that could ever be a problem in the first place.
At the police station, officers began to yell at her, interrogating her. They told her they knew she was a member of the Gerwani, the Women’s Movement affiliated with the Communist Party. She wasn’t. She didn’t know what to say to them, except that she wasn’t. According to the mythology spread by Indonesia’s new command, this meant she was part of the group that danced naked while mutilating the military high command’s genitals. She was in Jakarta, they said. Maybe she was even at the slaughter. She didn’t know anything about this, she told them.
These interrogations started, and stopped, and started again, for seven days. Then the officers took her to another police station, in Semarang. As soon as she arrived, she collapsed. She was sick, or overwhelmed. She was dizzy all over. She was seventeen years old.
She’s not sure how long she was at the second police station before two police officers raped her. She was Gerwani, in the minds of the police, which meant that she was not a human being, and not a woman, but a sexually depraved murderer. An enemy of Indonesia and Islam. A witch. These men were in charge of her now.
October 22
Washington—The State Department received detailed reports of the extent and nature of the Army operations as killings began in Java. A “Moslem Youth Leader” reported that “assistants” were accompanying troops on sweeps that led to killings.12
National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy wrote to President Johnson that events in Indonesia since September 30 “are so far a striking vindication of U.S. policy towards that nation in recent years.”13
The same day, Ambassador Marshall Green sent a cable to the State Department: “As yet, there is no indication Army incapable… we agree that it would be virtually impossible to keep secret any direct USG [US Government] assistance… if assistance were given and it became known, we question whether army would be helped rather than hurt.… We suspect that if military authorities
ever really needed our help in this matter they would let us know.”14
Two weeks later, the White House authorized the CIA station in Bangkok to provide small arms to its military contact in Central Java “for use against the PKI” alongside medical supplies that would come in from the CIA station in Bangkok.15
But after seven years of close cooperation with Washington, the military was already well equipped. You also don’t need very advanced weaponry to arrest civilians who provide almost no resistance. What officials in the embassy and the CIA decided the Army really did need, however, was information. Working with CIA analysts, embassy political officer Robert Martens prepared lists with the names of thousands of communists and suspected communists, and handed them over to the Army, so that these people could be murdered and “checked off” the list.
As far as we know, this was at least the third time in history that US officials had supplied lists of communists and alleged communists to allies, so that they could round them up and kill them. The first was in Guatemala in 1954, the second was in Iraq in 1963, and now, on a much larger scale, was Indonesia 1965.
“It really was a big help to the army,” said Martens, who was a member of the US embassy’s political section. “I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that’s not all bad.”16
October 25
Purbalingga, Central Java—Sakono woke up early, and rode his bicycle six kilometers toward the local police station. He arrived, walked in, and signed his name on a little piece of paper. The officers were casual about the whole thing, and basically polite. This was routine by now.
The Jakarta Method Page 17