“Dimensi Internasional Pembunuhan Massa di Indonesia, 1965-1966,” (The International Dimensions of the Mass Killings in Indonesia, 1965-1966) in Bernd Schafer, Ed., Indonesia and the World in 1965/1966 (Goethe Institut and Gramedia: Jakarta, 2012). (original) (raw)
Related papers
Esboços - Revista do Programa de Pós-Graduação em História da UFSC
http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-7976.2016v23n36p334This article explores how the local situation – politically, economically and socially – contributed to the occurrence in Indonesia of two crucial and interlinked Cold War events, the Indonesian coup and massacre. The article explains how an Indonesian army general, Suharto, was able to utilise Cold War narratives to instigate anti-communist fervour, which resulted in the massacre of more than half a million alleged communists. Suharto was able to gradually usurp power and eventually replace Sukarno as the president of Indonesia. It is argued that the convergence of domestic factors was critical to these events, which can be understood as a localised Cold War.
Indonesia 1965, Half a Century Later
Monthly Review, 2019
Andre Vltcheck has described Indonesia as an "archipelago of fear." 1 Much of that fear comes from one event: the mass killings of 1965-66. At least half a million people were killed-more than the U.S. losses in all wars up to that point. Most were beaten to death with logs and bricks, women had their breasts sliced off, and men were castrated. Bodies were piled up on rafts and sent down the river with the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) banner waving overhead.
2021
In its Cold War policies toward Asia, the United States aimed at seeking economic recovery and geopolitical stability while controlling the process. Along with securing Southeast Asia as an important market and source of raw materials for itself and its allies, the intent was also to rehabilitate Japan and other Cold War allies. In Indonesia these policies resulted in US support for the massive anti-communist purge that began in Indonesia in 1965. This paper intends to show that in Indonesia, the US these policies were a success, as shown by the ouster of President Sukarno and the massive purging of the alleged members of the Indonesian communist party (PKI), as well as the installation of a new and pro-Western government. These successes, along with the benefits that accrued, left the United States reluctant to press the Indonesian government to deal with issues related to the purge. The refusal of the Indonesian government to deal with the 1965 anti-communist purge, in turn, has m...
“Down to the Very Roots”: The Indonesian Army’s Role in the Mass Killings of 1965–66
Journal of Genocide Research
This article makes the case that the anticommunist violence of 1965-66 in Indonesia was neither inevitable nor spontaneous, but was encouraged, facilitated, directed and shaped by the Indonesian army leadership. It develops that argument in three parts. It shows first how the temporal and geographical variations in the pattern of mass killing corresponded closely to the varied political postures and capacities of army commanders in different locales, and how the mass violence everywhere depended on the army's substantial logistical assets. Next, it outlines how the army encouraged and directed mass killings by mobilizing militia groups and death squads, and encouraging them to detain and kill members of the PKI (Partai Komunis Indonesia-Indonesian Communist Party) and its allies. Third, it describes how the army provoked and legitimized mass violence by launching a sophisticated media and propaganda campaign that blamed the PKI for the kidnap and murder of six army generals on 1 October 1965, and called for the party and its affiliates to be physically annihilated. The army had allies in this effort, none more enthusiastic than the anticommunist religious and political leaders who fanned the flames of hatred and violence by allusions to long-standing religious and cultural differences. Mass violence was also fuelled by the wider international context of the Cold War and by the acts and omissions of key foreign powers. But without the army's orchestrated campaign to cast the PKI as evil, without the conscious decision to effect its physical annihilation, and without the mobilization of the army's considerable organizational and logistical capacity to carry out that decision, it is unlikely that any of those long-standing tensions or external forces would ever have given rise to violence of such staggering breadth and brutality.
Political economy of the Indonesian mass killing of 1965-1966
2015
This chapter sketches the build up to the mass killing (politicide) of communists and communist sympathisers in Indonesia, during 1965 to 1966. Our key contribution is to explain why ordinary individuals, not belonging to the elite, might wish to participate in the act of murder. The mass murder aided the consolidation of the new order autocratic regime of Suharto, but his ascension to power cannot be separated from the cold war politics of the time. Over three decades of authoritarian rule did bring about broad based economic progress. In time, the authoritarian contract sustaining the regime became untenable and the contract lacked credible commitment in the absence of the transfer of some political power to the new middle class. This mirrors the modernization theory of endogenous democracy, which states that at higher level of income, the pressure for democracy becomes inexorable.