The Rise of the Suharto Regime and the Unimaginable Mass
Murder of Around 1,000,000 Indonesians
The Quagmire of Independence
The Indonesian people began
making huge leaps and bounds toward independence in one of the most tumultuous
centuries in recorded history—the 20th century. In that bloody span
of 100 years, there were two World Wars, a Cold War of ideologies, and numerous
contained wars, where the United States, the Soviet Union and China battled it
out within smaller, allied states, such as Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan. It
was a time when every nation believed their own philosophy to be superior, and
all countries were pressured to pick sides—Allies or Axis, NATO or Warsaw,
capitalist or communist. Unfortunately for Indonesia, this was the world stage
that their country was thrown into when they declared their independence.
(President Sukarno in Washington D.C. in 1956, photographed by Warren
K. Leffler, U.S. News & World Report [Public Domain in U.S.], via Creative
Commons)
As independence leaders go, the man who came to the forefront of the Indonesian Independence Movement was competent and promising. His name was Sukarno, also spelled Soekarno (lived 1901-1970). He had the looks and charisma to make people want to follow him, and learned around ten languages over his lifetime, allowing him to spread his message far and wide.
At the beginning of the 20th
century, the islands of Indonesia were controlled by the Netherlands. The land
was called the Dutch East Indies. In his late twenties, Sukarno was jailed by
the Dutch for his nationalist activism. Later, in his early thirties, he was
exiled from his homeland, and was only able to return when the Japanese seized
Indonesia during WWII.
The well-spoken nationalist
activist worked with, and advised, the Japanese in Indonesia during the war,
but by 1945, when Japan was clearly struggling against the United States and
the Allied Powers in the Pacific, Sukarno demanded that Indonesia be granted
independence from Japan. The war ended, however, before any agreement could be
made between Sukarno and the Japanese—Indonesia was, once again, put under the
authority of the Netherlands. Indonesian nationalists decided to move forward
with independence despite the setback. Independence was declared on August 17,
1945, but the Dutch tried, for several years, to reassert their power over
Indonesia until 1949, when they recognized their former colony as an
independent state.
A President on the Fence
Sukarno became the first
president of Indonesia. Unfortunately, like many leaders of fledgling
democracies and republics, President Sukarno fell to arrogance and greed. He
believed his presidential term to be for life, and he went on to be the only
president of Indonesia from 1949 to 1966.
As an independent country,
Indonesia and its charismatic president could not escape the events occurring
in the world. The Korean War, and especially the Vietnam War, put pressure on
Indonesia to choose a side in the global Cold War—the United States on one side
and the Soviet Union on the other. Indonesia, itself, was heavily split between
the factions of the Cold War. On one side, Indonesia held the 3rd
largest communist party (surpassed only by Russia and China). In contrast, the
military hierarchy and many influential religions in Indonesia were staunchly
anti-communist. President Sukarno attempted to maintain a neutral policy, but
his power largely rested in the political alliance between his Nationalist
Party and the local Communist Party of Indonesia, the PKI.
(World map showing the two blocs during the Cold War (NATO in blue and
Warsaw in Red) in 1959, created by Sémhur, via Creative Commons (CC 3.0))
Despite his political coalition
with the PKI, President Sukarno continued his policy of neutrality on the world
stage, attempting to balance himself and his country safely between the United
States, China and the Soviet Union. The United States received him well when he
traveled to North America to speak, but their good will toward Sukarno
disappeared when the Indonesian President flew to China, as well.
As the 1950s progressed, the
United States and its allies were yearning for President Sukarno’s downfall.
The U.S. backed an independence movement on the Indonesian island of Java
(1957-1958), but they were found out, the aid halted, and the independence
movement was crushed. The United States was not the only power that infuriated
Sukarno. The British founded the country of Malaysia on the northern outskirts
of Indonesia. Sukarno protested Malaysia’s legitimacy and attacked the new
country. When the United Nations upheld the creation of Malaysia, President
Sukarno responded by pulling Indonesia out of the U.N. With the United States
and its allies trying to dethrone him, Sukarno publicly began voicing his
preference for the communist side of the Cold War.
(Map of Indonesia (green) and Malaysia (orange), created by Gunkarta,
via Creative Commons (CC 2.5))
Coup and Counter-Coup
While the President of Indonesia
began to gradually lean toward the Communist side of the Cold War, the
Indonesian military remained, to its core, strictly opposed to communism. As
the cliché goes, the political situation in Indonesia was a powder keg ready to
be sparked.
All the chaos began on
September 30th, 1965. A small coup (uninspiringly, called the
September 30th Movement) targeted seven high-ranking generals of the
Indonesian military. six of these men were successfully kidnapped and murdered
by the coup. Despite the death of the generals, the rest of the Indonesian
military rallied behind army chief of staff, General Suharto (not President
Sukarno), in a counter-coup that quickly eradicated the rogue soldiers of the
September 30th Movement. From this point on, President Sukarno was a
puppet to General Suharto, until 1966, when Suharto formally succeeded Sukarno
as president. Despite his democratic title, Suharto was no president—he was a
dictator of a military regime.
(Suharto in his office as the commander of Kostrad, 1963, [Public
Domain in Indonesia] via Creative Commons)
The coup and the counter-coup
were both military matters. Suharto knew he needed a scapegoat to keep and
justify his new dictatorial regime. He understood, immediately, where he could easily
place the blame. He also knew his personal choice in scapegoat could gain his
regime huge foreign aid. Therefore, immediately after Suharto put down the
small coup, his regime fabricated an elaborate story of communist involvement
in the murder of the generals.
(Monument of Revolution Heroes (Monumen Pahlawan Revolusi a.k.a. Sacred
Pancasila Monument) Location- Lubang Buaya Subdistrict, Cipayung District, East
Jakarta Picture taken in April 2011, via skycrapercity.com)
Suharto’s false account of
the coup went like this: First, the communist PKI orchestrated the murder of
the generals. The communists did not only murder the generals, but a group of communist
women lured them away from safety, mutilated their genitals, and executed the
men. Finally, Suharto claimed that the murder of the generals was the first
step of an imminent communist revolution in Indonesia. This story was published
in the Indonesian press and made into a film that had to be watched on an
annual basis. Even the United States, British and Australian press and radio
helped spread the false story.
The Indonesian military used
the false account of the coup to mercilessly arrest, imprison and execute as
many communist leaders as they could find. The United States and its allies
provided the Indonesian military with money, weapons and lists of suspected communists—It
was the Vietnam War, after all, and the U.S. needed an anti-communist Indonesia.
The western press (or the countries they served) censored and edited news
coming out of the region; slaughter was described as policing, and the victims
of death squads were reported to have been casualties of civil war. Though the
actions of the Indonesian military until this point was shameful, far worse was
what Suharto’s regime encouraged in the Indonesian population and culture.
Mass Murder and Celebrity Psychopaths
The PKI and anyone who had
even a hint of affiliation with communism were hunted throughout Indonesia for
a coup they did not commit. What resulted from the Cold War tensions and
Suharto’s propaganda was an enormous bloodbath, littering Indonesia with mass
graves. One of the most repeated statistics is that from October 1965 to April
1966, approximately 500,000-1,000,000 people were executed (Chris Hilton’s Shadow
Play). That high figure did not satisfy one of the leading military officers of
Indonesia, named Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, who estimated that 3,000,000 may have been
killed in the aftermath of Suharto’s rise to power.
After the coup and
counter-coup, the military moved quickly to establish its presence in cities
and villages. By November 1965, the military had a tight grip on the main
island of Java. By December, the troops moved across the water to the island of
Bali. In Bali, 80,000 were executed within the short timespan of 2 weeks. Wherever
the Indonesian military marched, mass murder was sure to follow.
(Gen. Suharto of Indonesia attending the funeral of generals slain in
30 September Movement, c. 1965, [Public Domain-Indonesia] via Creative Commons)
The murders, however, were
not only carried out by the military. The Suharto Regime hired and directed
local gangs and paramilitary groups to harass and kill suspected communists. Joshua
Oppenheimer’s disturbing documentary from 2012, (The Act of Killing), contains
a scene where a national T.V. host in an Indonesian show called “Special
Dialogue” interviews one of these gangster-turned-executioners named Anwar Congo.
In the interview, the host states the following, blandly and directly from a
sheet of paper, as if it was a speech delivered to her by the government:
“Anwar and his friends
developed a new, more efficient system for exterminating communists. It was
more humane, less sadistic, and avoided excessive violence. But you also just
wiped them out!” (1:47:38 from The Act of Killing: Director’s Cut).
The paramilitary groups that
aided in the extermination of around a million Indonesians are still popular
today. One of the biggest is called the Pancasila Youth, with more than 3
million members. In Oppenheimer’s 2012 documentary, (The Act of Killing), the
leader of these orange camouflage-clad ruffians, named Yapto Soerjosoemarno,
stated boldly, “They say Pancasila Youth is a gangster organization. If we’re
gangsters, I’m the biggest gangster of all” (24:30 from The Act of Killing:
Director’s Cut).
People who fell into the
hands of the gangsters or the paramilitaries usually did not receive any sort
of fair trial. Ibrahim Sinik, a newspaper publisher who also served as an interrogator
of suspected communists, stated simply: “Whatever we asked, we’d change their
answers to make them look bad. As a newspaper man, my job was to make the
public hate them” (21:00 from The Act of Killing: Director’s Cut).
In Joshua Oppenheimer’s
documentary, the executioner, Anwar Congo, brings the filmmaker to a rooftop
where, in 1965 and 1966, Congo murdered countless people. First, he claims he
beat his victims to death, but the broken bones and bashed brains proved too
messy. Congo then pulls out, and displays, a metal wire attached to a wooden
handle to demonstrate his more efficient method of execution. With a happy
voice and a playful smile, Anwar Congo tells the filmmaker that he anchored the
wire to a pole, looped the wire a single time around the victim’s throat, and
pulled on the wooden handle to strangle the suspected communist. He reminisced
that the wire was thin and could not be grasped and pulled away from the throat
by the one being strangled. Congo later told the filmmaker that he was inspired
to use wire through Hollywood films:
“When I grew up, I watched a
lot of American movies. And I imitated them carefully. As if I played in those
movies myself. I always watched gangster films. The cruel ones. And I enjoyed
watching them killing people. Those films inspired me, where they always kill
with wire” (1:13:42 from The Act of Killing: Director’s Cut).
(Yapto Soerjosoemarno (left) shaking hands with Anwar Congo (right),
from Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing)
Suharto’s Downfall
The western blindness toward
the atrocities happening in Indonesia began to clear away once the Cold War
dwindled from a inferno to an ember. In 1991, the Indonesian military, along
with paramilitary forces, were caught on film attacking the people of East
Timor. This time, the press was not interfered with, and the Indonesian
military received worldwide criticism.
Later in the same decade, the
Indonesian economy began to plummet. One of the reasons the mass murders in
Indonesia were condoned was the healthy economy—it made the Indonesian people
more compliant, complacent and willing to put up with the Suharto Regime. With
the collapse of the Indonesian economy, the people (and the military) were more
than willing to abandon Suharto. In 1998, Suharto stepped down from the
Presidency, which he had held since 1966.
Today, Suharto’s Regime is
gone and a democratic parliamentary government is in place; but some
Indonesians (hopefully a minority) still find a wide variety of left-wing
ideologies to be intolerable and damnable, all the while tolerating, and
praising, gangsters and mass murderers. If the same mold of person as Suharto
continues to rule Indonesia, the future of Indonesia looks grim. In (The Act of
Killing), multiple powerful and influential people were recorded in speeches
and interviews that are shocking. Yapto Soerjosoemarno, leader of the Pancasila
Youth paramilitary group stated, “We have too much democracy. It’s chaos. What
is this ‘democracy’? Things were better under the military dictatorship. Better
economy. More security. Gangsters are free men. They want to enjoy life in
their style. Relax and Rolex” (25:30 from The Act of Killing). Governor Syamsul
Arifin of North Sumatra stated it even more clearly, “Communism will never be
accepted here, because we have so many gangsters, it’s a good thing” (15:00
from The Act of Killing).
There are plenty of great
documentaries about the horrible events that occurred in Indonesia during and
after 1965. Among them are (The Act of Killing) and (The Look of Silence) by
Joshua Oppenheimer, released in 2012 and 2014, respectively. These two are more
journalistic in approach, letting the victims tell of their own experiences and
provoking the killers to incriminate themselves. There is also (40 Years of
Silence) by Robert Lomelson and (The Shadow Play) by Chris Hilton, where a more
historical approach is taken, giving more details on the events themselves and
voicing open condemnation of the Suharto Regime. All of the above documentaries
are great pieces that should be checked out by anyone interested in the topics
of this article.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
thehistorianshut.com
Sources
- Act of Killing: Theatrical Cut, by Joshua Oppenheimer (Documentary), 2012.
- The Look of Silence, by Joshua Oppenheimer (Domumentary), 2014.
- Robert Lomelson’s 40 Years of Silence (Documentary)
- The Shadow Play by Chris Hilton (Documentary)
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sukarno
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Suharto
- https://www.britannica.com/event/September-30th-Movement
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