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Original Articles

Indonesia’s original sin: mass killings and capitalist expansion, 1965–66

Pages 3-16 | Published online: 17 Aug 2006
 

Abstract

Following an aborted coup attempt in October 1965, the Indonesian military organized what turned out to be one of the most horrifying massacres of the twentieth century. More than half a million people were killed while hundreds of thousands of others were detained for years in prison camps throughout the country. There are two major points that this paper attempts to make. First, that the killings are in fact a case of state violence despite of the efforts to make it look like spontaneous violence. Second, that the killings are crucial to the expansion of capitalism in Indonesia. Using Marx’s concept of ‘primitive accumulation’, it attempts to show that the mass killings and arrests, the expropriation of people from their houses and lands, and the elimination of working‐class political formations, are integral parts of an economic strategy of the New Order.

Notes

In this connection, one topic that merits further research is Suharto’s self‐fashioning as a meticulous follower of legal procedure. He never terrorised people by boasting of how many people he killed. Instead, the efficacy of his image worked the opposite way: much of the public knew he had killed many people (it was an open secret) and felt terror in seeing the ‘smiling general’ behave as if he had not (Ayu Ratih Citation1997).

This point became clear when reading documents of the US embassy in Jakarta from 1965 to 1966. See Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, vol. 26, Indonesia: Malaysia‐Singapore; Philippines (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 2001).

This operation was designed more to bring the troops under the command of Suharto and put the pro‐Sukarno officers on the defensive. Many officers and troops were detained for months and even years on the flimsiest of evidence, often just the suspicion that they were not sufficiently supportive of Suharto. This kind of cleaning operation was continuously employed by Suharto in the following period to destroy every form of resistance towards his rule, including the one from the officers who used to be his close allies during 1965–66.

The ban was lifted on 6 October 1965 but the newspapers considered leftist were never published again and, in effect, remained under a ban.

We now know for certain that these stories were lies (Anderson Citation1987). We do not know exactly who invented them but we can reasonably assume the authors were army intelligence officers engaged in psychological warfare. There are many indications that there was a psychological warfare operation underway in October. The US ambassador, Marshall Green, suggested on 5 October that there should be a covert operation to ‘spread the story of the PKI’s guilt, treachery, and brutality’ (US embassy to Department of State, 5 October 1965, cited by Brands Citation1989). The CIA was extensively involved in many other anti‐Communist propaganda campaigns in the world (McGehee Citation1990).

In 1968, NU wrote a report about 60 cases of murder and assault against its members and sympathizers (Feillard Citation1999: 76–77). In the same year, a number of PKI leaders and members organized an armed resistance that appeared more as an attempt to save themselves rather than a movement to seize power (Liem Citation2004). It is possible that the 60 cases mentioned above were part of the activities of this group. Nevertheless, it has to be remembered that, at the same time, the Army was conducting a ‘second cleaning operation’ against its allies who were demanding compensation for their ‘services’.

In Central and East Java, Nahdlatul Ulama was directly involved in the mass murder. In Bali, a similar role was played by Tameng Marhaen, an organization under the PNI (Indonesian National Party), while in Flores and Timor it was Catholic Youth. All of these organizations were closely connected to the military in launching their actions. Some of them even congregated in ‘laskar’ (troops) under direct supervision from the military.

Karl Polanyi developed this thought by highlighting various social processes and strategies that are intended to remove the arrangement protecting the society from the market (Polanyi Citation1944). That process did not occur only once in history but keeps repeating, along with the dynamics of capital expansion on the one hand and various forms of social resistance on the other.

Businessmen often used the allegation ‘PKI’ to hinder the activities of worker activists at the workplace or industrial site. Among the workers themselves there was a bitter joke about willingness ‘to be PKI‐ed’ (treated as PKI) if they join the activities of a workers union.

The logic of forced labour was extended to imprisoned artists as well; painters, especially the well‐known ones, were forced to produce paintings for free, paintings that their army masters sold on the market.

In 1986–87 when Indonesia went through a crisis, tens of thousands of government officials from various departments were laid off due to ‘unclean environment’ violations, that is, they were related to a political prisoner. But according to several interviews, this mass dismissal was a pre‐planned effort to minimize the number of state workers. The ‘unclean environment’ justification freed the government from its responsibility to provide compensation for the workers and ensured they would not be confident to resist. A similar strategy was often employed in the private sector towards workers who were involved in political activities.

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