The Indonesian Killings of

1965-1966
McGregor, Dr Katharine E.
Tuesday 4 August 2009

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The Indonesian Killings of 1965-1966

A Context
The 1965-66 Indonesian killings occurred against the backdrop of the Cold War, extreme political tension
and economic hardship. In 1959 President Sukarno implemented the system of Guided Democracy. He
claimed that since the Indonesian revolution against the Dutch (1945-49), the system of parliamentary
democracy had failed. Sukarno proposed an alternative in which the president would play a greater role. In
addition he called for a return to the rails of the revolution and began to focus increasingly on
implementing the next stage of the revolution, a form of socialist populism. During the period of Guided
Democracy Sukarno played a delicate balancing act by supporting both the largely anticommunist army and
the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI - Partai Komunis Indonesia).
The PKI was one of the few mass political forces whose influence grew during this period. By 1965 the
party claimed to have three and a half million members, thereby making it the largest Communist Party in
any non-communist country. The PKI offered a new modernist ideology and sought to address inequalities
and generate support among the people by exploiting existing fractures in society. The PKI pressured
Sukarno to move ahead in implementing the system of land reform. Following the governments delays in
implementing land reform, based on the 1959 Crop Sharing Law and the 1960 Basic Agrarian Law, the PKI
called for peasants to begin to implement their own land reforms. In regions such as East Java and parts of
Bali the land reforms were a major cause of conflict.
At an ideological level there were also growing tensions resulting from the increased influence of the PKI.
Although there were communist supporters in the military, the army had long standing suspicions of the
PKI, based on the perception that the communists had led a rebellion against the Republic in 1948 during
the struggle against the Dutch (known as the Madiun Affair). Religious groups ranging from Muslims to
Catholics were also suspicious of the PKIs stance on religion, fearing that with the increasing influence of
the party religious beliefs and practices would be marginalised.
Sukarno became increasingly strident in his condemnation of the Western powers and neo-imperialist
agendas in the 1960s, culminating in the 1963-65 military operation to crush the formation of Malaysia,
which in his view was a neo-colonial creation.
Sukarno focused intensely on the ideological direction of Indonesia, paying less attention to the economy.
He divided the world into NEFOS (Newly Emerging Forces) and OLDEFOS (Old Established Forces),
drawing sharp lines between neo-colonial and progressive world forces.
In the late 1950s Sukarno had nationalised many remaining Dutch assets, emphasising the need for
economic independence but producing no clear policies for the economy. This resulted in the deterioration
of infrastructure, a fall in agricultural production, escalating inflation and severe economic hardship for
most Indonesians. In 1965 he famously told the US to go to hell with its aid.
By 1965 rumours had begun circulating in Indonesias capital, Jakarta, that a group of senior army generals
were planning a coup against Sukarno. Fears intensified when Sukarno collapsed at an event in August due
to ill health. Early in the hours of October 1, 1965, members of an armed group calling itself the 30
September Movement kidnapped and killed six of the most senior army generals and one lieutenant,
dumping their corpses in an unused well at Lubang Buaya in East Jakarta. The 30 September Movement
was led by Lieutenant-Colonel Untung of the Cakrabirawa Presidential Guard, and was composed mostly
of disaffected officers from the Central Java Diponegoro military division. The movement seized the state
broadcasting service and made several announcements proclaiming a new revolutionary government.

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There are diverse interpretations as to who backed the 30 September Movement and these interpretations
have a crucial bearing on the killings which followed. The official Indonesian government version of the 30
September Movement laid the blame squarely on the PKI (Pusat Sedjarah Angkatan Bersendjata, 1965).
Soon after the coup attempt McVey and Anderson (1971) suggested the movement was an internal military
affair in which some communist leaders were co-opted. In the latest scholarly interpretation of the coup
attempt, John Roosa (2006) demonstrated that a few top leaders of the PKI, such as the Special Bureau led
by Sjam Kamaruzzaman and directed by PKI chairman D. N. Aidit played a role in the coup plot, but that
prior knowledge of the coup was limited to a very small circle within the party. Some members of affiliated
PKI organizations such as the Pemuda Rakyat (Peoples Youth) had been receiving military training and
were reportedly on stand-by to mobilize for some kind of action, but they were unaware of the planned
action against the military.
Suharto, then Commander of the Army Strategic Reserve, moved quickly to crush the 30 September
Movement and to control interpretations of these events. The army officially declared the movement a coup
attempt by the PKI. It quickly shut down Communist and other leftist publications, and pro-army papers
such as Angkatan Bersendjata and Berita Yudha began to dominate the media. These army newspapers set
about spreading grisly accounts of the murder of the army leaders, claiming their bodies had been mutilated
prior to and after their deaths. These stories included allegations of eye gouging and genital mutilation
performed by members of the Indonesian Womens Movement (Gerwani), which was closely-affiliated
with the PKI. Other key elements of the armys propaganda campaign of October 1965 were the emphasis
on the killing of General Nasutions daughter (her funeral was the spark that set off anti-PKI violence), and
the elevation of the murdered generals to the status of Heroes of the Revolution. The aim of the
propaganda campaign was to inflame public opinion against the PKI, thereby leaving President Sukarno
without a major ally.
Portraits of the Heroes of the Revolution displayed at the Sacred Pancasila Monument Museum in
Jakarta
Although there had been clashes between the PKI and its affiliated organizations, and non-communist
groups before October 1965, the actions of the 30 September Movement and the accompanying propaganda
campaign provided the trigger for the mass killings of 1965-66.

B. Decision-Makers, Organizers and Actors

Key Instigators - The Indonesian Army
The Indonesian army directed the killings with varying degrees of assistance from religious groups and
other enemies of the PKI. They targeted members of the PKI and its affiliated organizations, military men
sympathetic to the PKI, and Sukarno supporters. The areas of most intense conflict were often those in
which the PKI had strong political influence, for example Solo, where the Mayor was from the PKI. The
violence spanned the archipelago, but was particularly intense in Java, Bali and Sumatra where the PKI had
a larger following (see accompanying maps). Most of the killings took place between October 1965 and
March 1966. The killings were politically motivated and in the view of some authors also motivated by
related economic interests. Conflicts and resistance continued well after 1966, in some parts of Java until
1969, and many people who had either continued to resist or had gone into hiding were not arrested until
this later period.
At an institutional level, the Indonesian Army had clashed seriously with the PKI previously, most notably
during the 1948 Madiun Affair. The Madiun Affair involved an attempt by lower echelon Communist Party

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leaders, aggravated by plans to rationalise the military of left leaning troops, to seize control of the local
government in Madiun from the Republican government during the war of independence against the Dutch.
Anti-communist elements of the Indonesian army viewed this revolt as a great betrayal. In the 1960s there
were also strong differences of opinion over the issues of how far the anti-Malaysia campaign should be
taken. Proposals to arm and train peasants and workers and to increase the representation of communists in
the army, in accordance with Sukarnos support for representation of the three pillars of nationalism,
religion and communism in all organizations, generated significant conflict. Although these clashes in
opinion could not always be expressed openly in the context of the Guided Democracy period, they
nevertheless fuelled resentment towards the PKI.
Following President Sukarnos refusal to ban the PKI, Suharto dispatched the Army Para Commando Unit
(RPKAD) under the leadership of Sarwo Edhie to Central Java and then Bali to commence killing
communists in the districts in these two provinces. In most cases the killings began when RPKAD forces
arrived or when local military leaders declared that they sanctioned the killing of communists (Cribb,
2001a). In some regions military units played a major role in the killings, but they often relied on local
militia. Sensationalised reporting on the deaths of the six army generals at the hands of the PKI kindled the
hatred of military men and others towards the PKI.
The Indonesian military was not, however, united in its actions and several army battalions including the
Diponegoro division of Central Java and a significant number of airforce officers were in fact strongly
sympathetic to the PKI.
The Nahdlatul Ulama and other Religious Organizations
The army also played a key role in recruiting, arming and training militia units to carry out the killings.
These militia units were largely recruited from Ansor, the youth wing of the largest Islamic organization in
Indonesia, the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU - meaning awakening of the ulama or religious scholars). The army
probably turned to NU because of its extensive networks in rural communities and its demonstrated
commitment to opposing communists.
In 1962 Ansor had responded to the growing assertiveness of the PKI by founding Banser (Barisan
Serbaguna, or Multipurpose Brigade), an armed wing in preparation for confrontation with the PKI. Prior to
the 1965 coup attempt, members of Banser had clashed physically with members of the PKI-affiliated
Indonesian Farmers Union when they attempted to seize lands owned by Islamic boarding schools as part
of a broader program of land reform. In these clashes Banser was usually victorious.
In the months after the coup attempt, members of Banser mobilized, with varying degrees of military
assistance and direction, and rounded up and killed members of leftist organizations.
The NU was not the only civilian organization that supported killings. The second largest Islamic
organization, Muhammadiyah, also provided rapid support for crushing the PKI, with some leaders
declaring this a religious duty. For both the NU and Muhammadiyah, the PKIs alleged lack of commitment
to religion was a major concern.
The Catholic Party was similarly firmly anti-communist because of the perceived threat the PKI posed to
religion. Secretary-general of the Catholic Party, Harry Tjan Silalahi, was a key founder of KAP-Gestapu
(the Action Front to Crush the 30 September Movement). He helped mobilize youths from PMKRI
(Persatuan Mahasiswa Katolik Republik Indonesia) to join together with Ansor in the Action Front to
attack the PKI headquarters in Jakarta on October 8, 1965.

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Militias attached to non-religiously aligned parties such as the Partai Nasional Indonesia (PNI - Indonesian
Nationalist Party), also participated in the violence. In Bali the PNI-affiliated vigilante group Tameng
Marhaen played a key role.
Explanations for the Killings
The Indonesian militarys role was central in instigating and coordinating the killings, but they also relied
on participation from broader sections of society. Explanations focusing on elite political rivalry, ideology,
or different institutional interests do not, however, capture the reasons why people at a village level, for
example, were willing to participate in the killings.
In some areas there was a strong perception that the PKI had overstepped the boundaries of acceptability
with regard to the land reform actions, but also in increasingly assertive attacks on religious leaders, who
were branded as one of the seven village devils due to their land holdings. Seven village devils was a
term the PKI used in its propaganda to denote forces deemed to be detrimental to the peoples interests. In
his recollections of this period Yusuf Hasyim, the religious teacher and former leader of the military wing
of Ansor in East Java, recalled how he had received information from the military about the existence of hit
lists from the PKI of Islamic figures who were to be killed. Although these lists were probably a military
fabrication, Hasyim claims that this led to a perception that there was only two choices: kill or be killed
(Hasyim, 2005). This is a frequent justification offered by those who participated in the killings.
In addition to local factors and specific sources of political or ideological grievance at the elite levels, the
economy was in ruins and many people were struggling to survive. Cribb (2002) suggests that these dire
economic conditions perhaps fueled an acceptance of the idea that the PKI were the culprits for both the
failing economy and the murder of the army generals and that they should therefore be punished and
prevented from coming to power.
The army encouraged a belief in the barbarity of the PKI by means of its propaganda campaign, but it also
set about training and mobilising people to take part in the arrest and killing of PKI members and those of
affiliated organizations. There was also a degree of coercion in this process such that some people felt that
if they did not participate they would be targeted (Sulistyo, 1997). The military thus deliberately co-opted
other groups to participate in the killings. Cribb (1990) believes that they did so to ensure broad support for
blocking a PKI come back and should they do so, the army would not be the only ones blamed.

C. Victims
As noted above, the PKI claimed a membership of 3.5 million people by 1965. In addition it had another
23.5 million members in affiliated organizations. These affiliated organizations included a wide range of
interests including the Barisan Tani Indonesia (BTI - Indonesian Farmers Union), The Indonesian Workers
Union (SOBSI), Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat Indonesia (LEKRA - The Indonesian Peoples Culture
Institute), Gerwani (The Indonesian Womens Movement) and the youth organization Pemuda Rakyat (The
Peoples Youth). Members of these organizations shared a broad political agenda with the PKI. In some
cases, however, they joined for very specific reasons rather than an overarching commitment to communist
ideology. Some illiterate farmers, for example, were attracted to BTI because of the potential to gain their
own land holdings or the promise of fairer wages. The army condemned members of these affiliated
organizations alongside the PKI for their alleged involvement in the 30th of September Movement.
Members of the PKI, BTI, Pemuda Rakyat, Gerwani, SOBSI and LEKRA were all targeted in the initial
arrests and imprisonments. They were identified by means of organizational lists compiled by the army, or

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in the case of local communities, by means of general knowledge of peoples alliances.

The PKI remained a legal party until 1966 because President Sukarno refused to ban the party. Despite this,
repression of PKI members and members of affiliated organizations began in the weeks after October 1.
Members of the Cakrawirawa guard and members of the two battalions that supported the 30 September
Movement, the Diponegoro and Brawijaya divisions from Central Java, were also targeted. The air force,
which was the force most sympathetic to the PKI, was also subject to purges. In addition, there was a split
within the Indonesian National Party and some of those on the left, who were most supportive of President
Sukarno, were also purged from both the military and the government.
The ethnic Chinese were not especially targeted in the violence of 1965-66. Historically the ethnic Chinese
have frequently been persecuted in Indonesia and as a result of this and other discriminatory policies they
were concentrated in the cities in the 1960s. Because the killings were most intense in rural areas they were
not especially targeted, although many suffered property loss or damage (Cribb, 2001a and Coppel, 1983).
Members of the PKI and its affiliated organizations sometimes reported directly to authorities and were
detained, others were arrested at their homes and taken away by members of the military or religious
vigilantes for interrogation, often involving torture. They were commonly detained first in temporary
prisons and later taken to the forests to be killed with knives, clubs, bayonets, firearms or were beaten to
death. Their bodies were disposed of in mass graves. In other cases the corpses were dumped in the sea,
caves, major rivers, left on main streets or mutilated and strung up for public display as a further form of
terror.
Estimates of the number of people who died range from 100,000 to 2 million people. There is such a wide
range of estimates because there was little record keeping at the time and no serious attempt afterwards to
reconstruct what had happened. President Sukarno ordered a Fact Finding team to investigate the killings in
December 1965, but it completed its work before the killings finished. A KOPKAMTIB (Komando Operasi
Pemulihan Keamanan dan Ketertiban - Operations Command to Restore Order and Security) survey in
1966, still not available to researchers, is said to have estimated that a million people had been killed. There
are serious doubts about the reliability of this report because there were motivations for both over and
under reporting the killings. Because the corpses were disposed of in numerous ways and due to the climate
of Indonesia, which promotes rapid decay, remains were not frequently discovered in ensuing years. In
addition, there was no political will or interest in uncovering mass graves until the late 1990s and the end of
the Suharto regime. Acknowledging the many difficulties of arriving at an accurate estimate, Robert Cribb
(2001b) suggests a figure of 500,000 as most accurate.
In addition to those killed, 600,000-750,000 people were also imprisoned for periods of between one and
thirty years (Fealy, 1995). The military categorised prisoners into three groups. Group A consisted of the
highest ranks of the PKI, those for whom there was allegedly evidence of planning and leading the 30
September Movement. These prisoners were held for long periods until a military trial could be scheduled.
Of those tried no-one was acquitted and many received the death penalty.
Group B consisted of people who were the rank and file of the PKI, whom the military deemed indirectly
involved. Category B prisoners were sent to penal colonies in remote areas like Buru Island in the Maluku
region where they were set the task of opening up agricultural lands while remaining isolated from the rest
of society. To survive, they were forced to establish self-supporting communities with their own sources of
food. During the period of imprisonment some prisoners also carried out forced labour to build roads and
infrastructure.

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Third came category C prisoners, including those who supported the PKIs 26 mass organizations. Most
category C detainees were detained closer to home where their families could provide supplies and were
released by 1972. Once they were released they faced severe restrictions on their employment, compulsory
registration and monitoring by local officials and loss of voting rights.
Prisoners were often subject to torture when they were first detained and sometimes long after this. During
these torture sessions their captors sought to extract confessions from prisoners as to their involvement in
the 30 September Movement and as members of the Communist Party, they were also asked to name other
people in the party or its affiliated organizations and reveal their locations. Gaol rations were minimal and
many men and women died of hunger and related illnesses.
Due to the propaganda surrounding Gerwani and their alleged debauchery in the events of the 30
September, Gerwani women and other women affiliated with the PKI were subject to intense stigmatization
and sexual abuse including rape inside the prisons (Wieringa, 2002). Women were detained in either mixed
or womens only prisons such as Bukit Duri in Jakarta and the more isolated Plantungan prison in Kendal,
Central Java.
In some cases, when women had young children or were pregnant their children went to gaol with them. In
other cases, women had to ask for help from their wider family to adopt their children. Sometimes children
were also left orphaned by the killings or forcibly removed from the families of alleged communists.
Families left behind also suffered due to the intense stigmatization of communists.
The houses and property of those killed or detained were sometimes burnt down or seized by the military.
Some became temporary detention centres.
From the 1980s onwards, after the release of most political prisoners, the New Order government applied a
form of screening called the clean environment policy towards appointments to certain professions such as
teachers, lawyers, journalists, civil servants and in the military. According to this policy former political
prisoners and the children and grandchildren of those allegedly connected to the 30 September Movement
were barred from working in these professions.

D - Witnesses
Most Indonesians, particularly in Bali and East Java would have witnessed incidents of killings or other
violence during the 1965-66 period. However, until the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998, there were only
a handful of published accounts by survivors about what they had witnessed in 1965-66.
Since 1998 several former political prisoners have published their memoirs, focusing on their experiences
inside gaol. These works include accounts of torture, beatings and murder inside the gaols as well as
accounts of prisoners being taken away never to return (see for example Sulami, 1999).
Several researchers have also collected oral testimonies from survivors of the violence, which include
recollections of witnessing killings.
There are a number of published accounts by witnesses and perpetrators available in English. The first
major edited book on the killings by Cribb (1990) includes a translated report from the army history
division on crushing the PKI in Central Java, an anonymous report on the killings in East Java, two reports
on the killings in 1969 in Purwodadi and three short reports on the violence in Bali.

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Pipit Rochijat, a graduate in electrical engineering, provided an account of the killings in Kediri, East Java
in a piece titled Am I PKI or non-PKI? (Rochijat, 1985). At the time of the killings Rochijat was a student.
He witnessed the killings, in which his friends participated. He recalls that troops from nationalist and
religious youth groups, including recruits from Islamic boarding schools, would surround a village
suspected of being communist such as Pare in East Java. The next day he would see corpses, sometimes
mutilated, floating down the Brantas river often tied to or impaled with bamboo sticks so they would float
and be visible to others. He also recalls the road west of Kediri being decorated with PKI heads and male
genitals being hung outside brothels. He recalls watching people die and beg for mercy, the image of heads
being decapitated, the screams of a Gerwani woman as her vagina was pierced with a bamboo pole. As a
member of a PNI youth group he also was targeted for arrest in a later wave of army-directed arrests.
In 1989 an unidentified member of a leftist youth organization, possibly Pemuda Rakyat, who escaped
death recorded his memories of witnessing some killings from hiding. His work was published in English
under the title By the Banks of the Brantas . In this piece, republished in Cribb (1997), he recounts his
experiences of avoiding capture and viewing the slaughter and decapitation of several men and women.
Yusuf Hasyim also published a short account of Ansors role in opposing the communists before and after
the 30 September Movement in a larger volume on the New Order period (Hasyim, 2005).
In 2008, shortly after the death of former president Suharto, journalist Anthony Deutsch published some
interviews with people who recalled the violence of 1965. In one interview in Blitar, East Java, Markus
Talam, a former member of a left-wing union for park rangers who was gaoled for ten years on suspicion of
being a communist sympathiser, recalls seeing soldiers herding prisoners from trucks, lining them up and
shooting them with automatic weapons (Deutsch, 2008a).
In another rare interview, four perpetrators in Bangil, East Java, expressed no remorse for the killings.
Sulchan, who is now a preacher and was a former member of Banser suggested the order to kill
communists came through Islamic clerics within the Nadhlatul Ulama. Sulchan admitted to leading the
killings in his local area and recounted how his men killed a school teacher with a sledgehammer, how they
decapitated one man and hung his head in the town square. On another night they took 20-30 prisoners to
an execution site, dumping the bodies in a ditch (Deutsch, 2008b).
Both military official histories of particular regiments and histories of Ansor and/or the NU include
accounts of the killings throughout Indonesia (see for example Semdam VIII, Brawidjaja, 1969 and Anam,
1990).
In addition to these first hand accounts there are several fictionalised accounts of the killings (see for
example Aveling, 1975).

E - Memories
Official history during the New Order period
For the duration of the Suharto New Order regime, the 1965-66 killings were described obscurely in school
history textbooks under the generic term of crushing the PKI, which could have been interpreted as the
suppression of those directly involved in the 30 September Movement. The military regime used its version
of the coup attempt to deflect attention from the killings. Within forty days after the coup attempt the
military produced the first white book on the events, emphasising PKI culpability and their alleged
depravity during the kidnapping and killing of the seven army martyrs (Pusat Sedjarah Angkatan

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Bersendjata, 1965). It then set about memorialising the site, Lubang Buaya in Jakarta, at which the bodies
of the martyrs were found. Over time, an elaborate monument and museum complex was built.
The Sacred Pancasila Monument, featuring the Pancasila emblem and statues of the seven army victims of
the 30 September Movement
From the mid-1980s a propaganda film including a re-enactment of the kidnapping and killing of the army
men was screened repeatedly on all television stations. In addition, the regime began to commemorate
October 1 each year as Sacred Pancasila Day (McGregor, 2002). The name of this day suggested that the
day the coup attempt was suppressed the national philosophy, Pancasila, had been saved. The overarching
narrative was thus that the Indonesian people had been saved on October 1 from a communist betrayal, that
for this reason the day should be commemorated and the military victims mourned as martyrs to this cause.
Commemoration of October 1, 1997, at the Sacred Pancasila Monument, Jakarta.
For thirty two years, on October 1, Indonesian newspapers continued under tight press controls to faithfully
replicate the official version of the coup attempt and made little or no mention of the killings that followed.
In military histories and histories compiled by religious organizations involved in the violence, the killings
were generally referred to by the military term penumpasan , meaning crushing. Both these groups
recorded their participation in the killings with pride, as part of their service to the nation. In communities
in which the violence had taken place many people were afraid to speak out or write about the violence
because of an enduring campaign of anti-communism and the possible consequences of being labelled a
communist even thirty years after the coup attempt.
One reason that the government kept anti-communism alive was that the Suharto regime feared
communism as a political force. The New Order regime placed severe restrictions on the employment,
movement and political activities of former political prisoners thereby restricting the capacity of these
people to seek redress for past violence. In this climate it was difficult to express public sympathy for
victims of this violence.
Contested Memories of the Killings
The collapse of the Suharto regime in May 1998 ushered in a period of openness and a new curiosity about
the events of the 1960s emerged. After restrictions on the media were lifted, discussions began about the
official version of the coup attempt and then eventually the 1965-66 killings and imprisonments.
Former political prisoners seized this opportunity to publicise their experiences. Some began to publish
memoirs of their prison experiences emphasising their suffering. A common trend in these stories is to
begin narrating ones experiences from the moment of arrest in a way that obscures the authors
involvement in politics and indeed the militancy of some PKI affiliated organizations (Watson, 2006 and
McGregor and Hearman, 2007). The intention is to generate sympathy for this group of people and demand
their rehabilitation in addition to seeking justice by more formal means. Some former political prisoners
have also made, or provided testimony, in documentary style films about the violence of 1965-66 to help
raise public awareness about what happened.
Survivors also joined together to form a number of victims organizations. One of the most active victims
organizations in the first years after Suharto was the YPKP (the Foundation for Research into Victims of
the 1965-66 Killings) founded by the famous novelist and former prisoner Pramoedya Anata Toer and
former Gerwani leader Sulami. YPKPs initial activities included collecting testimonies, investigating and
exhuming mass graves and producing publications with the aim of challenging the orthodox history of the

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killings and bringing perpetrators to account. In the early years of its operations the activities of YPKP and
the split off group LPKP (Institute for Research on Victims of the Killings) prompted sporadic protests, and
their branches repeatedly received threats from organizations such as the Front Pembela Islam (Islamic
Defenders Front).
In addition to these efforts a number of NGOs and independent research groups such as ELSAM, Kontras,
the National Commission on Womens Rights, and Institut Sejarah Sosial Indonesia (ISSI - Institute for
Indonesian Social History) began to research the mass violence of 1965-66. ISSI has collected oral histories
of over two hundred people affected by the violence of 1965 and published a collection of these stories
(Roosa, Ratih and Farid, 2004). ISSI has also been involved in efforts to promote greater awareness about
the violence of this period among younger Indonesians.
At an official level, responses to efforts to address this past have been mixed. The first president after
Suharto, Bacharuddin Habibie, released all remaining political prisoners, cancelled the tradition of
screening the propaganda film about the coup on the 30 September and promised revisions to school history
textbooks that had previously encouraged hatred towards all alleged communists. In 2000, President
Abdurrahman Wahid, who was the former leader of Nahdlatul Ulama, suggested lifting the long standing
ban on communism and proposed a judicial investigation into the killing. In response there were mass
rallies of protest from Islamic groups.
The reaction to this proposal was a precursor to a looming backlash against all efforts to address this past.
In 2001, members of the group Forum Ukuwah Islamiya Kaloran (Kaloran Islamic Fraternity Forum)
violently obstructed a YPKP coordinated reburial of remains of victims from 1965. The remains had been
recovered from a mass grave in Wonosobo. Prior to the 2004 elections the government lifted the ban on
former political prisoners standing for elections. In August 2005 a number of anti-communist groups also
protested outside the Central Jakarta State Court against a class action brought by ex-political prisoners
from LPKP. The action, against the current President and his predecessors including Suharto, sought to
repeal the 1966 decree banning the Communist Party, historical correction, compensation and rehabilitation
of the names of victims.
By 2004, approved textbooks included alternative versions of the attempted coup. The propaganda about
communist barbarity was discarded, but no mention was made of the post-coup killings or the mass
imprisonments that followed. Even these tame revisions, however, prompted protest. In 2005 the Attorney
General called the authors of these textbooks to explain why they had not described 1965 as a communist
coup attempt. In 2004 the push for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) encompassing the
1965-66 killings also gained momentum, but in 2006 the idea was abandoned.
Opposition to both the revised textbooks and the TRC was particularly strong from the NU elder Yusuf
Hasyim who formed part of an anti-communist coalition. In 2001 and 2003 he organized exhibitions
devoted to the theme of PKI treachery and barbarity. Another polemical anti-communist is Taufiq Ismail,
whose poetry was popular in the anti-communist student movement of 1966 of which he was a part, has
repeatedly published accounts alerting Indonesians to communist crimes in history and the alleged fate they
were saved from in 1965 (Ismail, 2004).
There are different views, however, among Indonesian Muslims concerning this past. One Islamic
organization Syarikat, which is composed of NU youth, is working hard towards community level
reconciliation between ex-political prisoners and members of Nahdlatul Ulama on the basis of a belief that
members of the NU participated in the killings only because they were manipulated by the military.

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F - General and Legal Interpretation of the Facts

The most prolific writer on the Indonesian killings is the Australian based historian of Indonesia, Robert
Cribb. Cribb edited the first scholarly book on the killings in 1990, in which he attempts to survey patterns
in the violence of 1965-66. Since this publication he has published several articles on the killings (Cribb,
1997, 2001a, 2001 b, 2002).
From the 1980s, some scholars began to regard the Indonesian killings as genocide because of the scale of
the killing, but this interpretation was rejected by other scholars on the grounds that the United Nations
definition of genocide does not mention the targeting of political groups. Cribb (2001) has since argued that
ethnic and political identities can overlap so strongly that excluding mass political killing from the
definition of genocide is no longer tenable. Another term sometimes used to describe politically motivated
killings is politicide.
Some observers have suggested cultural explanations for the killings. The journalist Frank Palmos (1966),
for instance, drew on the fact that amuck (amuk in Indonesian spelling) is an Indonesian word to suggest
that Indonesians had run amuck or participated in a wild frenzy and killed other Indonesians in a form of
psychopathology. Yet there is no evidence of such a frenzy and serious sociological studies of amuck as a
phenomenon show that it is a response to defeat and humiliation, never carried out by those who have the
upper hand in a conflict. Other observers have suggested (e.g. Hughes, 1967) that Javanese and Balinese
cultures place unusually high value on social harmony and that social forces take revenge on anyone seen
as disrupting that harmony. This explanation, however, is based on an orientalist view of traditional
Javanese and Balinese cultures which ignores the elements of conflict and violence that have consistently
been present.
Scholars differ in the emphasis they place on certain factors in contributing to the killings. Cribb (2001)
argues that the killings were directed by the military and fuelled by economic and political tensions. He
stresses military agency as one of the most significant factors driving the killings, yet he qualifies this
stating that the military often co-opted civilian vigilantes to do the killing. Most serious studies of the
killings acknowledge that the military played a central role in the killings.
Cribb (1990) has argued that only Islam provided an ideological justification for the killings. Fealy (1998)
further notes that in Islam the concept of bughat revolt against a legitimate government provides a
rationale for taking action against those who have revolted against a legitimate government. Caution is
however required in assuming a causal link between religious devotion, theological justifications and
participation in the killings. Robinsons (1995) work on Bali offers a useful way of interrogating the
assumed casual link between religious identity and the killings. Importantly, he notes that although religion
was often used as justification for the killing, the military 'actively shaped and encouraged a popular
discourse of anti-communism based on exacting religious ideas and cultural analogies' (1995: 279). He
claims that those who directed their members to participate in the violence were driven primarily by
political, rather than religious, considerations. In the case of Islam, McGregor (2009) argues that ideas of
Islam were similarly exploited to further political agendas.
There are several detailed studies of regions affected by the violence and these studies also point to
different contributing factors. The results from the 1955 elections, the last and only democratic elections
prior to the coup attempt (see maps below ), indicate where the PKI had the greatest following.
Map showing the results of the 1955 elections, reproduced with permission from Robert Cribb, originally
published in Cribb (2000).

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East Java was a stronghold for both the Nahdlatul Ulama and the PKI. Violence in this area was
particularly intense and the NU youth organization Ansor was at the forefront of the killings. Fealy (1998)
has provided one of the most detailed accounts of the involvement of Ansor in this violence.
Young (1990) offered the first attempt to weigh up the influence of local and national factors in explaining
the killings based on his research in Kediri, East Java. He argued that it could not be assumed that patterns
in the frequently cited case of East Java were universally applicable. He points to the specific impact of
land reform and a unique social history in this region.
In his study of the killings in Jombang and Kediri, two areas where there are many Islamic boarding
schools and hence devout Muslims, Sulistyo (1997) points to long standing social conflict, clashes in
political views and the key role played by Muslim youths in the killings, giving some specific examples of
the impact of peer pressure on participation in the violence. He suggests the military played a relatively
passive role in this region.
In his research on East Java and Bali, Sudjatmiko (1992) emphasizes the policies and practices of the PKI
and affiliated organizations as central to the revenge enacted upon them. He represents the PKI as
deserving of their fate.
Robert Hefner (1990), who researched the killings in the upland area of Pasuruan, East Java, notes that
Ansor did not wait for the military to act in this area. Here, there were complex social relations and Ansor
targeted not just the PKI, but also the PNI, which were supportive of Hindu-Buddhist religious practices
and antagonistic to Islamic groups.
There is little research on Central Java. There were extensive killing in the areas of Solo-Klaten, Pati and
Banyumas. Here RPKAD, under Sarwo Edhie, played a dominant role (Cribb 1990).
Violence was less widespread in West Java. One explanation put forward by Cribb (1990) for this is that
the army had only recently suppressed the Darul Islam (House of Islam) revolts and was thus reluctant to
rearm and use people involved in this rebellion to counter the communists.
Map showing the results of the 1955 elections, reproduced with permission from Robert Cribb, originally
published in Cribb (2000).
In Bali, where approximately 80,000 people died, Robinson (1996) notes that tensions resulted from the
PKIs encouragement of changes to rigid social relations connected to the caste system and because it
challenged the authority of Hindu religious leaders. The BTI was also very active in implementing land
reform resulting in disquiet amongst those who lost land. Robinson stresses the central role played by the
military in Bali in encouraging militia linked to the PNI to take revenge against the PKI. He also notes that
there was a delay in killing in this region due to the closeness of the governor to the PKI and a period of
waiting to see how things played out in Jakarta.
Most explanations use historical and political perspectives to explain the violence of 1965, but in recent
years anthropologists have added new insights into the dynamics of the killings and the lasting effects of
the killings. Based on their field research in Bali, Dwyer and Santikarma (2007) have, for example,
examined how the violence of 1965-66 has continued to impact on local level social relations and the
resultant reluctance of some survivors to openly remember the past and engage in forms of internationally
sanctioned reconciliation or peace making processes.
Map showing the results of the 1955 elections, reproduced with permission from Robert Cribb originally

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published in Cribb (2000).

In West Kalimantan, ethnic Chinese involved in the Malaysia campaign were targeted by the indigenous
Dayak people, with encouragement from the army. The killings began here at a later stage (Coppel, 1983).
Map showing the results of the 1955 elections, reproduced with permission from Robert Cribb originally
published in Cribb (2000).
The killings were also intense in North Sumatra. There is not much published research on this area, yet we
know there were many plantation and industrial workers in North Sumatra who had joined the PKI and
affiliated organizations in response to efforts by the party to improve their lot (Stoler, 1995). In North and
South Sumatra party membership was also strong amongst migrant laborers from Java, another group the
PKI had become advocates for. In Aceh there were only a small number of PKI and the killings occurred
quickly. According to Kahin (1999) the British Consul estimated there were 200,000 deaths throughout
Sumatra.
Webb (1986) notes that in West Timor the Protestant Church supported land reform and its members were
subsequently targeted. In Lombok, Muslim Sasaks were involved in the killing of Balinese and Chinese.
Despite its anti-communist stance, in Flores, the Catholic Church forbade the killing of communists. On the
killings in West Timor, Farram (2002) also emphasizes that the PKI had successfully attracted members of
the Christian Church, supporters of animist belief and challenged traditional authority, leading to a broad
cross section of people being killed.
Several authors such as Roosa (2006), Farid (2006), Hadiz (2007) and Simpson (2008) place greater
emphasis on the alliance between the US government and the Indonesian army as a crucial determinant to
the actions of the Indonesian military. They emphasize the joint agenda of building a capitalist economy
founded on Western aid and continued access to Indonesian natural resources and markets. Roosa (2006)
argues that as a consequence of all their grievances against the PKI, the military, with Western backing,
were looking for a pretext to crush the PKI. The actions of the 30 September Movement provided this
pretext. These authors argue that by killing members of the PKI, trade unions and farmers who pushed for
the nationalization of assets, labor and land reforms, the army also paved the way for implementing this
new economic system. These interpretations, however, also focus on elite motives and do not explain why
the killings reached the scale they did.
In the context of the Cold War and especially the Vietnam War, which had been underway for three years
by 1965, the US government was deeply afraid of the possibility of a communist victory in Indonesia. In
this context the army leadership courted Western powers and the US supported, pro-Western sections of the
army in coming to power by any means possible. Western governments were also largely pleased when the
army began moving against the PKI in October 1965. Time Magazine reported the rise of Suharto as The
Wests Best News for Years. There was limited sympathy for the victims of the violence because they were
communists and also because of racist assumptions about the lower value of life placed on Indonesian
people.
Legal Issues
In the ten years since the end of the Suharto regime there have been some state level initiatives to address
the human rights abuses of 1965-66. The National Commission on Human Rights was given a mandate to
investigate the detention and treatment of prisoners sent to Buru Island. This was, however, a very narrow
investigation and commissioners were given a very short time to complete their research. In addition there
was no follow up to their findings.

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In 2004 the parliament passed a law enabling the formation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(TRC) and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono began to consider a list of potential commissioners.
However, the commission was abandoned in 2006 after the Constitutional Court declared the TRC law to
be unconstitutional. The Court was responding to objections human rights groups had raised against
proposed amnesty provisions that would have given impunity to those who confessed crimes. There was
also pressure exerted by sections of the NU in co-operation with the military.
In 2008 the Indonesian Commission on Human Rights began investigating the 1965-66 killings by
collecting evidence and testimonies from individuals and organizations throughout Indonesia, in order to
compile a report about the killings and recommend judicial action by the Indonesian government. However,
the Commission continues to receive regular threats. Whenever NGOs or surviving victims have attempted
to open this past to public scrutiny or stake claims for justice, protests, instances of direct intimidation, and
violence have followed.
In the case of the 1965-66 killings, there are no powerful or significant lobby groups either inside or outside
Indonesia pushing for justice on this case. In addition, there is no consensus that the New Order's origins
were a shameful period in Indonesian history. For this reason there has been no significant progress in
efforts to address this past by legal means.

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CRIBB, Robert (ed.), 1990, The Indonesian Killings of 19651966: Studies from Java and Bali . Clayton:
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MCGREGOR, Katharine E. and HEARMAN, Vannessa, 2007, The Challenges of Political Rehabilitation
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SUNYOTO, Agus, 1990, Banser Berjihad Menumpas PKI (Banser Undertakes Jihad to Crush the PKI) ,
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Websites
Ensiklopedi Tokoh Indonesia available at http://tokohindonesia.com/ensiklopedi/
YPKP (Indonesian Institute for the Study of the 1965-66 Massacre) homepage available at
http://www.wirantaprawira.de/ypkp/award_engl.htm

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