Vol. 79/No. 43      November 30, 2015

 

Indonesian government bans
discussion on 1965 massacre

 
 
AUCKLAND, New Zealand — On the 50th anniversary of the October 1965 military coup and slaughter of hundreds of thousands of workers, peasants, students and other supporters of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), authorities there closed down a number of commemorative events and ordered literature about it be suppressed.

“We have been told to remove all programs to do with ‘1965,’” Janet DeNeefe wrote to participants in the Oct. 28-Nov. 1 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival on Bali. The five-day event drew 30,000 people. Authorities across Indonesia have stepped up attacks against any exploration, analysis or remembrance of this history. Tom Iljas, a 77-year-old Swedish citizen who visited “a mass grave of 1965 victims in West Sumatra, in search of the final resting place of his father” was deported, the Oct. 27 Guardian reported.

Police in Central Java destroyed 500 copies of the September issue of the university magazine Lentera documenting murders of PKI supporters and members in the area.

One hundred and thirty-six Indonesian and foreign writers and academics published a letter Oct. 24 condemning these and other attempts to close down discussion.

Counterrevolutionary massacre

The slaughter was the most devastating defeat for the working class since the fascist victory in Germany in 1933. To get the full picture, get a copy of the Education for Socialists bulletin Maoism vs. Bolshevism from Pathfinder Press. The pro-Maoist Indonesian Communist Party’s course of subordinating the struggles of workers and farmers to the regime of then-President Sukarno left party members completely unprepared in face of the bloody assault.

The bloodletting was a calculated move by the military, led by Gen. Suharto, to crush spreading mobilizations by Indonesian workers and peasants. In the eyes of the generals and the imperialist powers supporting them, Indonesia was a huge prize in a revolution-infected region. They feared that the nation of 105 million people would go the same way as Vietnam, where Washington was fighting a losing battle against workers and peasants.

Indonesian workers and peasants had waged a long-running independence struggle, culminating in victory in the 1945-49 war against Dutch colonial rule.

Sukarno, a founder of the Indonesian Nationalist Party, sought to defend capitalist rule while presenting himself as a crusader for democracy and progress. He ruled by playing the military brass to the right off against the PKI to the left.

Acting in the interests of the Stalinist regime in Moscow and “peaceful co-existence,” the PKI leadership backed Sukarno, seeking to restrain resistance by the toilers. As differences emerged between Moscow and the Chinese Communist Party, reflecting the counterposed national interests of Stalinist leaders in both parties, the PKI shifted and backed Beijing.

Party membership reached 3 million by the early 1960s with support from many peasants and workers, including those on the plantations of north Sumatra.

In 1965 peasants in Central Java and Sumatra seized massive tracts of land from wealthy landowners in several provinces. The PKI pressed them to pull back, but the deepening class struggle convinced the landlords, sections of the military and Washington that a showdown was inevitable.

Gen. Suharto moved decisively in late 1965, quickly executing the central PKI leaders and rival officers. Military forces carried out mass killings and unleashed rightist thugs. The goal was to destroy the Communist Party and put an end to actions by workers and peasants.

Once Washington was convinced that Suharto and his cronies meant business, the U.S. Embassy supplied them with equipment and lists of PKI members.

After keeping a now-powerless Sukarno for a couple years, Suharto declared him unfit for office and took over as president. Sukarno was forbidden to speak in public until his death in 1970.

‘We keep speaking out’

A jump in investment from Japan, the U.S. and other imperialist countries, no longer fearing loss of their capital, led to increased industrialization. The working class increased in weight and numbers, and began to resume labor and political action. Beset by growing protests and increasingly isolated, Suharto lost backing from both Indonesian capital and Washington. He stepped down in May 1998.

The space won and defended by working people in the fall of Suharto remains contested ground, as shown by the censorship of events marking the anniversary.

“Even though the programs [about 1965] were removed, everybody is talking about it,” DeNeefe said at the Ubud Festival.

Kadmiyati, one speaker whose program was cancelled, had been detained in the district military headquarters in Banul, near Yogyakarta, when she was a young teacher in 1965 and again in 1966. “I am used to it,” she told the Guardian’s Galuh Wandita when asked if she was disappointed at the cancellation of her talk. “It does not mean we stop speaking out.”  
 
 
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