by Jamie Maslin
Despite the rebellion spreading to several different regions, and the devastating effect of the bombing and strafing raids, the C.I.A.’s operations were soon curtailed, following an assault on the Indonesian island of Ambon. It was here, on May 15, 1958, that a C.I.A. plane bombed a marketplace, killing a large number of civilians making their way to church;50—not that this was a concern for the C.I.A., but rather what happened during a subsequent raid three days later, when U.S. pilot Allen Lawrence Pope was shot down. Quickly captured, Pope was paraded, along with incriminating documentation found on him, in front of the press, thus exposing the lie that had been fed to the world a couple of weeks earlier by U.S. President Eisenhower: “Our policy [on Indonesia] is one of careful neutrality and proper deportment all the way through so as not to be taking sides where it is none of our business.”51 Interesting to note that unlike Indonesia, supposed neutralism was a perfectly acceptable path for the United States to tread.
A month later the Indonesian army effectively crushed the U.S. and British sponsored rebellion. As for Pope, he spent four years in an Indonesian prison, before being released after an intercession by Robert Kennedy. Following release he stated of his time in Indonesia: “I enjoyed killing Communists . . . we knocked the shit out of them. We killed thousands of Communists, even though half of them probably didn’t even know what Communism meant.”52 In other words he enjoyed obliterating peasants; poor families aspiring for a better, happier, and more equitable life.
Sukarno had escaped the U.S. and British wrath for now, but his card was marked; they would soon try again, as shown by a C.I.A. memorandum of June 1962. According to the memo, President Kennedy and British Prime Minister Macmillan had agreed to “liquidate President Sukarno, depending upon the situation and available opportunities.” The memo’s C.I.A. author added, “It is not clear to me whether murder or overthrow is intended by the word liquidate.”53
Two and a half years later, Pakistan’s ambassador to France would send a secret report to his country’s Foreign Minister detailing a conversation with a Dutch intelligence officer attached to NATO, who had informed him that Indonesia was “ready to fall into the Western lap like a rotten apple.” But the real bombshell revelation regarded Western intelligence agencies, who, it was said, would organize a “premature communist coup . . . [which would be] foredoomed to fail, providing a legitimate and welcome opportunity to the army to crush the communists and make Sukarno a prisoner of the army’s goodwill.” The date on the report: December 1964.54 Less than a year later, an exact carbon copy of this prediction would come to pass, when, on September 30, 1965, six army generals were murdered by junior officers, who seized several strategic locations in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. The army quickly retook the captured points, and under the direction of General Suharto—a man who had served both the Dutch colonialists and Japanese invaders55—the junior officers were crushed and accused of staging a “coup attempt” on behalf of the Indonesian Communist Party. As investigative journalist John Pilger has remarked: “Certainly, if it was a ‘communist coup,’ it had the unique feature: none of the officers accused of plotting it was a communist.” But no matter, General Suharto’s version of events would be the one disseminated in the West. Suharto seized power from Sukarno, who was deposed and held “prisoner of the army’s goodwill” under virtual house arrest, until his death five years later.
With General Suharto in control of the country, an unimaginable wave of killing was unleashed against anyone suspected of being a communist. So barbaric was the slaughter that followed, that it is no exaggeration to draw comparisons to the Holocaust. American historian Gabriel Kolko writes:
The “final solution” to the Communist problem in Indonesia was certainly one of the most barbaric acts of inhumanity in a century that has seen a great deal of it; it surely ranks as a war crime of the same type as those the Nazis perpetrated. No single American act in the period after 1945 was as bloodthirsty as its role in Indonesia, for it tried to initiate the massacre, and it did everything in its power to encourage Suharto, including equipping his killers, to see that the physical liquidation of the PKI was carried through to its culmination.56
To help kick start the massacre, which it is estimated extinguished the life out of between 500,000 and more than a million human beings,57 U.S. officials supplied comprehensive lists to the Indonesian army of “communist” operatives to be hunted down and killed.58 As the bodies piled up, U.S. officials checked their names off the list.59 “It really was a big help to the army,” stated Robert Martens, a former political officer of the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia, in an interview in 1990. “They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that’s not all bad.”60 From Suharto’s headquarters came confirmation of the killings. “We were getting a good account in Jakarta of who was being picked up,” revealed the C.I.A.’s former deputy station chief, Joseph Lazarsky. “The army had a ‘shooting list’ of about 4,000 or 5,000 people. They didn’t have enough goon squads to zap them all, and some individuals were valuable for interrogation. The infrastructure [of the PKI] was zapped almost immediately. We knew what they were doing . . . Suharto and his advisers said, if you keep them alive, you have to feed them.”61
In The New Rulers of the World, John Pilger details examples of some of the wholesale savagery visited upon Indonesia—of rivers jammed with bodies like logs; of village after village where young men were slaughtered for no reason, their murders marked by rows of severed penises; of people snatched in the night and beheaded; of men taken from holding cells in batches to be shot; of so many bodies that they were being washed up on the lawns of the British consulate; of British warships escorting ships full of Indonesian troops down the Malacca Straits so they could take part in the slaughter; of torture, mass graves and the systematic execution of teachers, students, civil servants and peasant farmers. Chronicling a typical case, Pilger reports on a primary school headmaster suspected of being a communist, who, in full view of the school’s children, was dragged into the playground and beaten to death: “He was a wonderful man: gentle and kind,” a former pupil told Pilger. “He would sing to the class, and read to me. He was the person that I, as a boy, looked up to . . . I can hear his screams now, but for a long time, years in fact, all I could remember was running from the classroom, and running and running through the streets, not stopping. When they found me that evening, I was dumbstruck. For a whole year I couldn’t speak.”
Such horror was commonplace; not that the United States, Britain or Australia cared; they approved. “With 500,000 to a million communist sympathisers knocked off,” remarked Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt, “I think it’s safe to assume a reorientation has taken place.”61 As the frenzy of killing reached its peak, General Suharto was told by America’s ambassador to Indonesia, Marshall Green, that “The U.S. is generally sympathetic with and admiring of what the army is doing.”62 Britain’s ambassador to Indonesia, Sir Andrew Gilchrist remarked in a cable to the Foreign Office: “I have never concealed from you my belief that a little shooting in Indonesia would be an essential preliminary to effective change.”63
Some change. In less than a year of the genocide, a corporate takeover of Indonesia would occur that saw the country’s vast hoard of natural resources—its minerals, nickel, tropical forests, bauxite, oil, etc.—essentially gifted to Western mega corporations, and the Indonesian economy rewritten in their favor. Described by President Nixon as “the greatest prize in south-east Asia,” Indonesia’s staggering natural wealth was divvied up at a remarkable three-day conference attended by major Western companies and banks. Professor Jeffrey Winters of Northwestern University, Chicago, has said of the conference: “They divided up into five different sections: mining in one room, services in another, light industry in another, banking and finance in another; and what Chase Manhattan did was sit with a delegation and hammer out policies that were going to be acceptable to them and other investors. You had these b
ig corporation people going around the table, saying this is what we need: this, this, and this, and they basically designed the legal infrastructure for future investment in Indonesia. I’ve never heard of a situation like this where global capital sits down with the representatives of a supposedly sovereign state and hammers out the conditions of their own entry into that country.”64
A bonanza of rapacious capitalist feeding began, a methodical vacuuming up of huge sections of the Indonesian economy out of the hands of the toiling local masses, into the claws of the moneyed foreign few—with generous kickbacks of course for Indonesian politicos brokering the deals. It was a blueprint for what would later gain the fluffy sobriquet, “globalization.” One of globalization’s early architects, Margaret Thatcher, would tell Suharto, “You are one of our very best and most valuable friends.”
For the next thirty years General Suharto would rule Indonesia with an iron fist, a period of governance he referred to as the “New Order,” hallmarked by brutality and rampant corruption. His ousted predecessor, Sukarno, had attempted to deliver economic independence for Indonesia, by holding the Western corporations at bay, incurring little in the way of debt, and showing the door to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Under General Suharto these twin agents of the world’s wealthiest nations were welcomed back, bringing with them an influx of loans, a result described by an official of the bank as “the best thing that’s happened to Uncle Sam since World War Two.”65
And so Indonesia, a country that at one stage owed nothing, was swamped in a burden of debt of enormous proportion, and Suharto and his cronies became fabulously wealthy. A World Bank internal report on Indonesia reveals that somewhere in the region of 30 percent of all loans made by the bank to the country were siphoned off by the Suharto regime. “At least 20–30% of government of Indonesia development budget funds are diverted through informal payments to government staff & politicians,” states the incendiary document.66 It is estimated that Suharto stole more from his country than any other leader in history.67
Suharto attempted to legitimize himself on the basis of supposed economic progress, but in 1997 his economic house of cards based on debt, plunder, and a vast pool of dirt-cheap sweat-shop labor, came tumbling down. Short term capital fled the country, the stock market crashed, currency imploded—losing 84 percent of its value over a short period68—and those living in absolute poverty hit 70 million.69 Ordinary Indonesians lucky enough to keep their jobs saw their real wages plummet: by 40 percent for agricultural workers, and by 34 percent for those in urban areas. Unemployment went up tenfold.70 Suharto was forced to resign, doing a runner with an estimated 15 billion USD, roughly 13 percent of his country’s foreign debt, a large portion owed to the World Bank. Regardless of where it went, the Indonesian people still have to pay it back, with crippling interest, of course. Today Indonesia spends around eight times as much on debt repayments as on either health or education spending;71 39 million Indonesians exist in appalling poverty, struggling to live on less than one dollar a day, while another 140 million scrape by on less than two dollars a day.72
But that’s not all bad, at least if you’re the foreign C.E.O. of a company exploiting the labor “market,” or if you’re a Western consumer buying products made there. Poverty equals cheap labor, which means bigger profits and artificially low prices on the high street. Everyone’s a winner; except of course if you’re one of the millions of invisible “unpeople” toiling away in sweat-shop misery. But, hey, out of sight out of mind.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nature Bares Her Teeth
Unlike Bali where the majority of inhabitants are Hindu, on Java they are Muslim, a change in religion made obvious by several roadside mosques, and by the set of Islamic prayer beads that dangled from the windshield mirror of the aged farming truck that picked me up after a hectic morning of hopping on and off multiple bikes. The driver was a kindly old fella called Muhammed, with a weathered face and a warm smile, who chain-smoked the entire way, holding his cigarettes in a curious manner—between his ring and little finger. He spoke no English, so I took in the view and by early afternoon we were winding our way together through a forested, twisting mountain gorge.
Stationed at intervals along the side of the road, about a minute’s slow drive apart, were utterly demoralized-looking people waving the traffic along, despite there being no discernible reason for doing so. Some didn’t even put on the pretense of assisting traffic, and instead just stood with an outstretched palm and a forlorn expression. There were men and women, young and old, able-bodied and disabled, even a mother cradling a child. Some sat beneath basic self-made shelters, little lean-tos no more than a couple of feet off the ground that had been thrown together with old bits of bamboo and jungle leaves to provide shelter when the ferocious tropical rains arrived.
My heart went out to them. I might know something of what it is like to stand on the side of the road, but not like this. Whenever I waited it was with a sense of optimism at the adventure ahead and of the progress I would make. How demoralizing it must have been to wait, rooted to the same spot, staring day after day at approaching traffic, hoping for a hand out. My life had incomparably more opportunities than theirs, simply through the nationality on my passport; an accident of birth that I felt both thankful and guilty for.
Muhammed dropped me by a gas station in an unknown minor town, from where it took me multiple rides, and plenty of walking in between, over several hours, to reach the small remote village of Sukapura, about eleven miles from the volcano Mt. Bromo. Bromo still remained unseen, hidden behind distant, gradually climbing, green terrain. With roughly an hour of sunlight left I began to wonder if I would catch a glimpse of it before nightfall.
By now traffic had all but ceased to exist. If need be, then from here on in I was willing to walk to Mt. Bromo. It seemed likely to be a difficult hike, especially given the incline and how ridiculously heavy my backpack was, which still held all the superfluous items hastily packed in Hobart that I had yet to jettison. After plodding my way towards the end of the village, I came upon three middle-aged guys loading up an old black four-wheel-drive Mercedes SUV, who looked like they were just about to depart, and in the direction I needed.
“Hi, there,” I said waving in their direction. “Do you speak English?”
None did, but the ball was rolling. A bit of gesturing, with the occasional inquisitive “Mt. Bromo?” dropped in, and it soon became apparent we were all heading to the same place and they were willing to take me for free. I was back on the road and my timing couldn’t have been better. Soon after squeezing on board between assorted mechanical knick-knacks and two humongous canisters of gasoline it began to rain. Contained within it was a dark sludge that built up on the windows and the windshield beyond the area reachable by the wipers. It was laden with volcanic ash. The sky began to darken prematurely, throwing the interior of the vehicle with its exposed jet-black metal panels and identically colored seating into near total darkness. I clambered over to the window and squinted out into the slashing deluge. The landscape had turned black too, blanketed by a thick slushy coating as if covered in a layer of satanic snow. I’d never seen anything like it, and as we climbed in elevation, bumping our way along a twisting mountain path with fear-inducing drops, my heart began thumping hard in anticipation. What on earth awaited me at our final destination?
Then I caught sight of it. An enormous dark-gray volcanic dust-cloud rising ominously into the sky, riding eastward on the prevailing wind, mutating as it went. There was still no sign of the volcano it came from, but the cloud itself was epic. It looked like something out of an apocalypse movie, bestowing a truly foreboding beauty on an already eerie landscape. A bolt of lightning flashed within it.
“Wow!” I cried, unable contain my excitement.
The guys were pleased I liked it, and began pointing its way with enthusiastic musings. I watched, transfixed as the cloud grew larger and more daunting the further we drove.
This was real adventure hitchhiking. This was living.
When we pulled up in the village of Cemoro Lawang and as I stepped from the SUV, I was on a high, nearly shaking with excitement. The rain had stopped now, and in the open-air the eruption cloud looked even more impressive. Its turbulent beginnings rose just over the brow of a distant hill, past homes caked in ash, providing a ghostly backdrop to the village. Mt. Bromo itself was still out of sight, making it look like a giant warhead had detonated nearby.
Gesturing to a little café, the guys invited me to join them for some food. Waiting outside, propped up against the wall, was their friend Gondo, an excellent English speaker.
“You are extremely lucky to be here at the moment,” he told me. “Bromo is very active, the best for many years. The nighttime lava viewing area has been amazing.”
The viewing area, Gondo explained, was a location with clear views of the volcano, where, come nighttime, the bright red lava would be clear; something you could see being thrown hundreds of feet into the air.
This I had to witness.
Gondo led me inside the café, whose interior was near pitch-black.
“Power cut,” he stated.
A couple of candles soon solved the problem, their gently pulsating light revealing little more than a cramped low-ceilinged room with a bare concrete floor, tiny windows, a solid counter around its walls, and several plastic stools. We all settled down to some food, with me going for a chicken broth that also contained a boiled egg, chunky noodles and tofu. It was delicious, as was the cup of vanilla tea I washed it down with.
The bill came to just seventy cents.
Stepping outside again I shook my head in disbelief at the sight that had gone unseen indoors—the volcanic cloud, writhing only a few hundred feet above the village. Through Gondo, the guys offered to drive me further up the hill to a budget hotel on the outer edge of the village. I accepted, and minutes later was bidding them farewell and checking in. There was no time to hang around inside. Dumping my pack in a tiny room barely big enough to accommodate its single bed, I immediately headed out to find a spot where I could finally gaze upon Mt. Bromo, to see where the fury was coming from before the last of the daylight slipped beyond the horizon.