Abs 1965

The 1965-1966 Indonesian Killings Revisited (17-19 June 2009) Seminar Rooms A, B & C, Blk AS7 - Shaw Foundation
Building, Level 1, National University of Singapore Jointly organised by the Asia Research Institute and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore, & the Australian Research Councils Asia Pacific Futures Research Network (APFRN)
Revisiting the September 30th Movement John Roosa Department of History, University of British Columbia, USA jroosa@interchange.ubc.edu
Since the publication of my book about the September 30th Movement, Pretext for Mass Murder (2006), I have learned more about the movement and have thought more about my arguments in light of the comments and criticisms the book has received. In this paper, I will extend and refine the analysis of the movement that I presented in Pretext and then conclude by pointing out the key areas that require further research. The specific themes that I will address include, a) the conflict within the Indonesian military between pro and anti-PKI personnel from the late 1940s to 1965, b) the longer narrative of anti-communist attacks on the PKI (the Madiun affair of 1948 and the August 1951 razia), c) the movements actions in Central Java where the support for the PKI within the military was strongest (to remedy Pretexts focus on the movement in Jakarta), d) the PKI leaderships sense of international comparisons at the time it decided to back what it thought would be an internal military revolt, e) the connections between the movements personnel and Suhartos clique, and f) the precise manner in which the movement was a pretext for an attack on the PKI and the entire left movement.
John Roosa, Assistant Professor of History at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He is a member of Inside Indonesias editorial team, and the author of Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and Suharto's Coup d'tat in Indonesia (2006). He is coeditor of The Year that Never Ended: Understanding the Experiences of the Victims of 1965: Oral History Essays (Jakarta: Elsam, 2004).
The 1965-1966 Indonesian Killings Revisited (17-19 June 2009) Seminar Rooms A, B & C, Blk AS7 - Shaw Foundation Building, Level 1, National University of Singapore Jointly organised by the Asia Research Institute and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore, & the Australian Research Councils Asia Pacific Futures Research Network (APFRN)
Capitalists Come Back! The Political Economy of the 1965-1966 Killings Brad Simpson Princeton University, USA bsimpson@princeton.edu
This paper will explore the regional dynamics of the September 30th Movement and the killings that followed, focusing on US, UK and Australian reaction to and support for the mass killings. It will also situate the western response to the events of September 30th in the context of Western planning for a post-Sukarno Indonesia. It is drawn largely from my recent book, but incorporating some new US, British and Australian archival material. I demonstrate how, even at the height of the Army-led massacres, U.S. officials and their regional allies were weighing the conditions under which they would resume overt assistance to Jakarta and assist in the rescue, stabilization and rehabilitation of the Indonesian economy. I contend that U.S. aid to the Army in 1965 and 1966 masked deep reservations about the militarys willingness to enact the sweeping political and economic changes the U.S. and other future donor government believed were needed to extirpate the influence of Sukarno and the PKI and restore Indonesias ties to the West.
Brad Simpson teaches and researches twentieth century U.S. foreign relations and international history at Princeton University. His first book, Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968 (Stanford 2008) explores the intersection of antiCommunism and development thinking in shaping U.S. Indonesian relations. He is also founder and director of a project at the non-profit National Security Archive to declassify U.S. government documents concerning Indonesia and East Timor during the reign of General Suharto (19661998). This project will be used as the basis for a major study of U.S.-Indonesian relations from 1965 to 1999, exploring how the international community's embrace of an authoritarian regime in Indonesia shaped development, civil-military relations, human rights and Islamic politics.
Fifteen Hundred Assassinations per Day: Three Aspects of the Mass Killing in Indonesia in 1965-1966 David Jenkins Former Foreign Editor, Sydney Morning Herald, Australia tubbyjenkins@bigpond.com
This paper looks at three aspects of the 1965-66 mass killing in Indonesia. Drawing on declassified material in the Australian Archives in Canberra, and on material in the British National Archives at Kew, it examines first the way the Australian, British and Canadian Embassies in Jakarta reported, and commented on, the killing as the details began to come in. Second, based on Australian archival material, it says something about the role of the RPKAD commando regiment in the killings in Central Java in October-November 1965. Finally, drawing on a combination of archival material and interviews, it steps back from an orgy of killing which may have claimed the lives of between 200,000-500,000 people, and looks in detail at one particular killing that of D. N. Aidit, the PKI chairman and tries to establish who might have ordered his death, and why.
David Jenkins graduated in Law and Arts at Melbourne University. He was a member of an Australian student group which spent a month in China in early 1968 during the Cultural Revolution and was appointed the Melbourne Herald and Sydney Morning Herald correspondent in Indonesia in 1969-70. In 1973 he was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study the Communist insurgency in Northeast Thailand, after which he was the Associated Press correspondent in Laos (1973-75). After four years in Jakarta (1976-80) as the correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review, he spent 14 months at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, where he wrote a monograph, Soeharto and His Generals, Indonesian Military Politics 1975-1983, which was published by Cornell Universitys Modern Indonesia Project. After serving as the ASEAN correspondent, he was appointed Regional Editor of the Review in Hongkong, responsible for the magazines political, social and diplomatic coverage. In 1985, he joined the Sydney Morning Herald as Foreign Editor, later serving as Associate Editor and feature writer, covering Southeast Asian politics. He is currently writing a life-and-times book on President Soeharto and his rise to power.
Sarwo Edhies Travels in Java and Bali, OctoberDecember 1965 Douglas Kammen Southeast Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore seadak@nus.edu.sg
One of the most commonly cited statements regarding the mass killings in Indonesia following the failed Untung coup and Soehartos own coup is a remark made by Sarwo Edhie Wibowo to Permadi, a prominent psychic and later member of parliament: Pak Permadi, three million were killed. Most of them on my orders.1 The statement is remarkable not because the figure dwarfs all previous estimates, but because it was made by a man who, as commander of the elite Army Para-commando Regiment (RPKAD), was perhaps the single most important operative of the violence in Java and Bali. While there is no shortage of theories and, as John Roosas recent contribution shows, detailed new research on Colonel Untungs September 30th Movement, and while there is now renewed interest in the victims of the killings from 1965 through the end of the decade, we know far too little about the perpetrators of the violence. There are, to be sure, deep divisions within the scholarly community both inside and outside of Indonesia on this question. Some, typically on the right, see the killings as primarily horizontal conflict between competing social forces communists on the one hand, devout Muslims and nationalists on the other. Others, most commonly on the political left, see the military as the primary perpetrator. Any serious attempt to contribute to our understanding of the perpetrators must begin with what is known about the military itself. Which brings me to the second remarkable feature of Sarwo Edhies (alleged) statement: while it is generally agreed that, as commander of RPKAD, he played a central role in the violence, we know little about his and his troops movements. With this in mind, I thought it would be interesting, and perhaps useful, to see what can be gleaned from the Indonesian press and military publications about Sarwo Edhie and his troops during the initial violence from October through December of 1965. This paper, therefore, will use Colonel Sarwo Edhies travels through Java and Bali as a lens through which to examine (a) the political loyalties of military units and the movement of troops, (b) military operations against both the G30S conspirators and the PKI and its sympathizers, and (c) the mobilization of civilians. In doing so, I will also highlight a few of the most striking features of the reporting both as a record of and contributing factor in the violence.
Douglas Kammen obtained his PhD from the Department of Government, Cornell University in 1997. He has taught political science at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand (19982000), Universitas Hasanuddin in Makassar, (2000-2001), and Universidade Nacional Timor Lorosa'e (2001-2003). He has worked as a consultant for the Serious Crimes Unit and as a researcher for the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR).
Permadi SH, at the seminar "50 Tahun Indonesia Merdeka Dan Problem Tapol/Napol," 28 January 1995, according to who Sarwho Edhie told him: Pak Permadi, yang terbunuh adalah 3 juta, sebagian terbesar atas perintah saya.
1965 and the Ethnic Chinese in Medan Tsai Yen-ling Southeast Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore seatyl@nus.edu.sg
The political turbulence of 1965-66 brought about critical changes to North Sumatra. This paper is a preliminary attempt to examine the translation of these critical changes into the lives of the ethnic Chinese living in this region, especially its capital city, Medan. Drawing from documented accounts as well as in-depth interviews, the first part of the paper establishes a chronology of local events affecting the local Chinese community, including the wide-spread anti-Chinese violence happened in Medan on December 10, 1965, the large-scale demonstrations against Chinese schools by various youth fronts in the spring of 1966, and the eventual confiscation of these schools and other Chinese-owned community buildings by the regional military command in June, 1966. The second part of the paper focuses on the different life trajectories of several Medan Chinese Baperki leaders. While it is commonly understood that Baperki was a peranakan Chinese organization with few totok Chinese followers, the stories of these Medan Baperki leaders suggest a more complicated dynamics of political identification and affiliation within the North Sumatran Chinese community in the 1965 as well as between the Chinese, the military, and the emergent force of the preman organizations.
Violence in the Anti-Communist Tragedy in West Sumatra Narny Yenny Department of History, Universitas Andalas, Indonesia narnyyenny@yahoo.com
Following the 30 September Movement in Jakarta in 1965, anti-communist masses in West Sumatra perpetrated violent acts against members of the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI), PKI-affiliated organizations, and people allegedly involved in such organizations. These masses needed less than a month to organize their anti-communist power before pushing against the communist supporters. Reliable statistics on those who suffered the violent acts could not be secured, but it is certain that those violent acts brought about dramatic changes in the lives of the victims, such as social, political, and economical isolation during the administration of the New Order. Even today, despite the fact that the New Order has now been ousted, significant positive changes in the lives of those victims are yet to occur. In this paper, I examine the experiences of people in West Sumatra during the 1965-1966 events and their aftermaths, by focusing on the experiences of both women and men. I argue that it was not only the propaganda or the political situation of 1965 which played important roles in violence actions on the members of Partai Komunis Indonesia, (PKI, the Indonesian Communist Party), and the members of its related mass organizations, but it was caused more by the complexity of political and social situations which had occurred before 1965, especially in West Sumatra. This paper develops the approach designed by Robert Cribb which emphasizes four factors: the military complexities in investigating the events, extreme political tension at national events, local political and social tensions, and a more general culture of violence permeating Indonesian society. I argue that the combination of military agency and political tension at national and local political levels as well as social tensions before the killings of 1965-1966 were instrumental in what happened in West Sumatra and a culture of violence involving preman (tukang pukul, or thugs) had also had considerable impact on violence against women and men in this province.
Yenny Narny is a lecture at the Department of History, Faculty of letters, University Andalas, Padang, West Sumatra. She received her Bachelors degree in History from Andalas University and master degree in Australian National University (ANU) Australia. After getting the master degree at ANU, She become head of historical Laboratory at History Department and handle some courses that have focusing in gender, political violent in Indonesia and the history of southeast Asian She has done some research working together with the Indonesian Institute os Science, Indonesian Department of Religion, Department of Indonesia national Education, Lontar foundation as well as the Netherlands Instituut Voor Oorloog Documetatie.
Local Newspapers and Violence in Indonesian Journalism (1965-1975) Yudhi Andoni Department of History, Universitas Andalas, Indonesia yudhiandoni@fsastra.unand.ac.id
This paper discusses about hidden violence in Indonesian journalism, particularly local newspapers that published at Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia. They are Angkatan Bersenjata, Aman Makmur, Haluan, and Semangat. In west Sumatra, they are one of many generate of violence with their news and articles about communist party and its followers organization. This paper calls it a verbal violence. Their news and articles have gone down a lot of abhorrence into the communist, mainly on months before, the episode, and after The Movement of September 30th. Many words refer to drive the peoples into socials scream about communist. Atheist, betrayer of nation, killer of Muslims, a social treatment, etc, are idiom that they used. For the reader, those idioms have created negative stigma about communist and show them that revenge is a good way to erase the communist party in their land, especially after gloomy period of PRRI (The Indonesia Republic Revolutionary Government) in 1958. For the Minangkabau people, PRRI is a correction to Jakarta and they feel that they have moral task to remain Jakarta. History of PDRI (The Indonesian Emergency Government) has given them legitimatewasnt caused PDRI the republic still exist?to do it. However, PRRI had defeated, and the Minangkabau people becoming discourage by the communist. They hate the communist, but they also fear. The defeat brought them into a deep anger but powerless. In other situation, the traditional leaders (datuak), the mosleem natives, and nationalist local leaders are triumvirate in Minangkabau society, but they have been intimidating by Pemuda Rakyat (Communist Youth Organization). Because of had been beaten, for a lot of Minangkabau people, period of 1958-1965 had driven them to an abhorrence tradition, a tradition of violence to the communist components, but in silence. Nevertheless, months before The Movement of September 30th, physically and verbal violence became solution every conflict between most Minangkabau people and communist in sporadic, yet in the media. Soon Suharto announce to liquidate Communist Party and its component, in West Sumatra local newspapers are also energetic in writing to clear up them and provocation young people to destroy many symbol of communist in town. In ten year periods (1965-1975), Army and Muslim people whom anti-Communist are vital cause of killing hundred thousand of communist, including in West Sumatra occurred during the cleansing of PKI. And media, local newspapers, has caused the collective action and inspiring local people to become part of the systematic cleansing of the communist with words. For that goal, the media use many dirty words for Minangkabau people selves do not uses in daily. Many writings have talked about Indonesian killing in 1965-66, but little has revealed how the local newspapers play an important role on it. Analyzing four contents of local newspapers role in West Sumatra during 1965-1975, in this paper I argue the media contributed significantly to resurgence of violence with provocation words into communist.
Yudhi Andoni was born in Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia on June 12, 1978. I gain my first degree at 2004. Now, I am a junior lecturer of History Department of Andalas University. In my late years, along with my fellows, we established Centre for Cultural and Human Development Studies, a NGO and had involved in some local issues. Some of theme our concern are Islam, education, pluralism, democracy, conflict resolution and politics. I wrote it in local newspapers. My dedication about conflict can be seen in matters I teach; History of social Movement, and Social history of Indonesia. I also work as researcher at the Centre for History, Documentation,
and Information Studies, Andalas University. Peoples can contact yudhiandoni@fsastra.unand.ac.id or my cellular phone 081363443699.
me
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Anti-PKI Violence in Lampung Nasir Tamara Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore nasir.tamara@iseas.edu.sg
In the early twentieth century the Dutch government started a massive program of transmigration of Javanese people to Lampung. The Dutch direct administration of Lampung and the coming of Javanese immigrants were accompanied by the spread of political ideologies, including pan-Islamism, nationalism and communism. All major political parties in Indonesia, from the colonial times until today are very well represented in Lampung. Organizations such as Sjarekat Islam, Muhammadiyah and the Nahdatul Ulama, communist party had been present in Lampung prior to the famous communist rebellion in Banten in 1926. Historically the relationship between Lampung and Banten had always been close. Anti-colonial leaders such as Tan Malaka, Soekarno, Hatta, Amir Sjarifuddin and later Aidit, the PKI leader, all had strong followings in Lampung. The Dutch government and later the Indonesian government have given land to the transmigration to be cultivated. Both governments claimed the land given was belonging to them. However the indigenous people of Lampung contested these claims, arguing that this was adapt land. There were also numerous plantations in Lampung controlled by large private companies as well as the local capitalists. Soekarno had nationalized many of the plantations and the military had been given an upper hand to run the companies. The communist party PKI had become a prominent party since 1955 election in Lampung. In 1965 the party and its mass organization such as Barisan Tani Indonesia (BTI) have been even stronger. The party had a strong appeal on the Javanese transmigrates as the ethnic of Lampung, traditionally rich because of pepper, coffee and rubber trading were more a devout Muslims. In 1965, Lampung Province was governored by an ethnic Javanese considered to be close to the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the President Soekarno. At the time Sumatera was in the front line of the political and military confrontation with the British created Malaysia. The Indonesian military had a prominent role in Konfrontasi. On the eve of September 30th, 1965 or October 1st, 1965 tragedy, PKI was one of the most important political parties in Lampung. It rise had been spectacular. On November 1965, a big demonstration demanding the banning of PKI was organized by anti-communist forces in the capital city of Lampung. Later the military commander of Kodam IV/Sriwijaya decided to ban the PKI. As in Java, the killing and the massive arrest of PKI members also took place in Lampung. The PKI selected Lampung as a province to continue the partys struggle after the destruction of the PKI in Java. The paper will also discuss the origins of the killing, the actors, the process and the impact of the communist killing on the population of Lampung.
Artist Registration and the 1965 Coup in the Cirebon Region, West Java Laurie Margot Ross University of California, Berkeley, USA maskertanz@yahoo.com
This paper examines the relationship between the registration of artists in the Cirebon region and Indonesias 1965 coup. The discovery of two artist identification cards found in Majalengka are central to the story: the arts membership card, kartu anggauta kesenian, was launched six months before Gestok; the second one, tanda kenjataan (certificate of proof), anticipated Gestoks first anniversary. Both cards were issued exclusively to village performers by Majalengkas education and culture department. With the separatist Darul Islam (DI) movement recently suppressed, two organizations were vying for power in the region during Sukarnos last years: Indonesias communist party, PKI and Indonesias nationalist party, PNI. The. These groups had compelling, interlocking motives to control performers, yet none claimed responsibility for the card. PKI Chairman Aidit, who spearheaded research in West Java in 1964, concluded that dalang topeng (master mask dancers) and other village artists were ideal messengers for his revolution. PNI alternately sought to maintain its supremacy over PKI by controlling the same artists, with membership dues providing a bonus during this period of hyperinflation. A wrinkle for both groups was DI, whose vision for an Indonesian Islamic State was anathema to the secular PKI and PNI. DI, which suspected PKI/artist collusion, strategically hired and then admonished dalang for wearing masks, which it perceived as a breach of Islams prohibition on human representation. All three groups were invested in controlling artists traction; however, the DI rebellion was eventually suppressed and PKI was cash poor. Only PNI, whose officials held key government posts, had the organizational and financial muscle to make the registry a reality. If the kartus function was to enroll artists in the proletarian cultural army or to create a cash cow for local officials, the tanda served the purely political function of clearing someone of suspicion, while establishing the parameters of the new militarys role. KOMEN Pancasila, the ideological branch of Soehartos feared security agency KOPKAMTIB, is printed directly onto the card. The new military had successfully armed pemuda gangs elsewhere in Java to kill suspected communists; nonetheless, a different strategy was required in the DI stronghold. Verbal intimidation in the form of musyawarah (friendly consultation) proved efficacious. Some Cirebon and Indramayu artists were imprisoned and/or tortured at the interrogations conclusion; however, most were cleared and granted the certificate, effectively muting all lingering dissident voices. This paper concludes with a postscript on post-reformasi attitudes about topeng. Panji Gumilang (alias Abu Toto), who has been linked with DI, embraces topeng as part of Indonesias cultural heritage today. His sprawling, ber-modern Pesantren Al-Zaytun in Indramayu (founded 1999) added topeng to its curriculum on the fortieth anniversary of Gestok. It is the only pesantren where masking is offered. The Soeharto family, Habibie, and other elite Golkar members are among Al-Zaytuns largest contributors. Gumilang is thus an enigmatic figure in Indonesias shifting political landscape, who is apparently forging an accommodating and modernizing path for former DI members, Golkar, and artists alike.
Laurie Margot Ross is a PhD candidate in South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation, Journeying, Adaptation, and Translation: Topeng Cirebon at the Margins, examines how topeng performers reconcile shifting political and religious tensions with public performance. Ms. Rosss research was made possible by a Fulbright Islamic Civilization fellowship, Fulbright-Hays DDRA, and the Deans Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship, University of California, Berkeley. She was formerly a topeng practitioner and also holds a MA in Performance Studies from New York University. Ms. Rosss research interests include visual culture, Islamic performance narratives in Southeast Asia, human rights in Indonesia and East Timor, and constructions of nationalism in Southeast Asia. Ms. Ross is the Treasurer and Board member of the Indonesia and East Timor Studies Committee (IETSC) of the Association for Asian Studies.
Detentions and Violence in Solo, Central Java Theodora J. Erlijna Institut Studi Sejarah Indonesia, Jakarta erlijna@gmail.com
Before the events of 1965-66, Solo was an important base of the left movement. Various branches of leftist mass organizations organized activities in the citys kampongs, and became popular among the lower and middle classes. This situation assured PKIs victory in Solo in the 1955 general election. The leftists not only dominated the civilian government, but also wielded a strong influence within the military. After G-30-S broadcast their announcements, the left-wing organizations, the mayor of Solo, as well as several young military officers, declared their support to the movement. However, during the anti-communist attack led by the RPKAD there was no sign of resistance whatsoever from either the partys civilian masses, the mayor, and the leftwing officers. They became easy targets of the armys massive and systematic violence. In this paper, I would like to discuss what had happened in Solo in the first three weeks of October 1965 before the arrival of RPKAD, what happened to the supporters of the left movement during the anti-communist attack, and what they experienced afterwards.
Nahdlatul Ulama and the Killings of 1965-66: Religion, Politics and Remembrance Greg Fealy Australian National University, Australia greg.fealy@anu.edu.au Katharine McGregor The University of Melbourne, Australia k.mcgregor@unimelb.edu.au
This paper examines the nature of NU's involvement in the anti-communist killings of 1965-66, with particular emphasis upon how NU members perceived and articulated a spectre of PKI threat to the Muslim community and also to Islam itself. We begin by tracing sources of antagonism between the NU and the PKI dating back to the Madiun Revolt of 1948. In the wake of the Madiun revolt against the Republic Islamic leaders from Masyumi were targeted by leftist troops for reprisals and this aroused deep Muslim suspicions of the PKI especially in East Java. Stories about the alleged barbarity of the PKI have continued to circulate in this region for the last sixty years and these stories also played a part in fuelling the violence of 1965. The paper will then recapture the politics of the 1960s and detail splits within the NU on how to deal with the rising popularity of the PKI in the early 1960s. We will chart the formation of Banser, the armed wing of Ansor, the NU youth organisation and provide insights into the functioning and methods of this organisation and outline key pre-1965 clashes with the PKI, particularly regarding rural land reform in East and Central Java. We argue that the NU in fact overcame most threats in these areas prior to the coup attempt. Despite this, NU members perceived the continuing threat as mortal, frequently claiming that when it came to the killings it was a case of 'kill or be killed'. We will address the issue of the larger role of the NU in the 1965-66 killings. Drawing on interviews and NU documents we will argue that although there were differences of opinion within the NU, the leadership was determined to carry out the killings with or without army support. We will share insights into the way in which Banser worked together with the Army and other groups, including non-Muslims, in carrying out the killings. We will assess the degree of central coordination in NU in connection with the killings and offer preliminary reflections on the role of the NU in different regions. Finally we will reflect on how the NU and individuals within the NU have dealt with the legacy of 1965 and the conflicts that different views about this past have sparked within the NU in the last ten years. We will trace efforts to make amends for this past, personal expressions of remorse in addition to vehement protest against efforts to challenge the necessity of the violence.
The 1965-1966 Mass Killing in South Sulawesi Taufik Ahmad Universitas Hasanuddin, Indonesia taufik_mukarrama@yahoo.com
Different from the Island of Java, the historiography of the 1965-1966 mass killing in South Sulawesi is still hidden even until present time. This article is intended to open the underside of history of the 1965-1966 mass killing in South Sulawesi. The 1965-1966 mass killing in the region cannot be separated from social-political-economic conditions between various social groups in local society. The long conflicts between various social groups in the region are layered by other conflicts between National Army force and DI/TII army, between pros and cons of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). After the event of September 30, 1965, all these conditions have smoothed a way to the outbreak of the 1965-1966 mass killing in the region. Thousands of people were killed in that time but unfortunately, this history are still very far from historians attention. The impact of mass killing is situation appearance of fear in society and arrest of members of PKI so that increasing number of political detainees in 1965-1966 which demanded a greater budget while the fund allocated by the state is insufficient. Hunger strike performed by the political detainees in the prisons was a form of protest against the state control. This condition was soon realized by Peperda Sulselra therefore an exile policy was issued to isolate those communities in Moncongloe. The policy was meant to reduce the states burden and to cut communist teaching. This policy is in line with the state hegemony. The state control through the military over the detainees since the captivity, imprisonment, and exile was mixed with the exploitation of the detainees for private or military institution. The control was implemented into social relationship either in vertical or in horizontal link. Various political detainees resistance and accommodation were done by the detainees as a survival strategy amongst the strong military control. This may indicates heterogeneity among the political detainees in Moncongloe. The problem of the detainees did not last when they had been realized. They were faced with the state control through constitutions and laws that referred them as unclean. This condition marginalized them from social, political and economic aspects. This paper tries to see first, the background of the mass killing in the region; second, to explain the pattern of mass killing and third, the impact of mass killing on the local society.
Lahir di Kabupaten Bone Sulawesi Selatan. Menyelesaikan pendidikan dasar dan menengah di Pesantren Asadiyah Sengkang Kabupaten Wajo Sulawesi Selatan. Menyelesaikan studi di Jurusan Pendidikan Sejarah, Universitas Negeri Makassar tahun 2005 dengan judul penelitian Permesta: Perjuangan Mewujudkan Otonomi Daerah (1957-1961). Pada tahun 2009 menyelesaikan Studi Program Magister Ilmu Sejarah di Universitas Hasanuddin dengan judul Thesis Komunitas Tahanan Politik PKI Moncongloe Sulawesi Selatan: Kontrol Negara Yang Berlapis (1960-1977), kemudian diterbitkan oleh Desantara dengan judul buku Kamp Pengasingan Moncongloe. Sekarang sedang merampungkan esai-esai sejarah lisan tahanan politik dan mempersiapkan penelitian mendalam tentang komunitas tahanan politik untuk daerah Sulawesi Selatan dan Tenggara. Minat penelitian penulis utamanya sejarah orang-orang yang termarjinalkan atau mereka yang terlupakan (Hidden History).
The PKI in West Timor and Nusa Tenggara Timur, 1965 and Beyond Steven Farram Faculty of Law, Business and Arts Charles Darwin University, Australia steven.farram@cdu.edu.au
Hundreds of people were killed in West Timor and NTT in the period following the 30 September 1965 coup, throughout 1966 and well into 1967. The final death toll is considered by some to be 2,000 or even higher. Immediately following the coup prominent PKI members were taken away to Bali or Java and never seen again, although the local PKI head is said to have returned to NTTs capital, Kupang, in the 1990s. Other PKI activists were detained for a short period then taken to unknown locations where they were killed and buried. The killings in West Timor and elsewhere in NTT were mainly co-ordinated and carried out by the army. A senior army commander later wrote that the PKI in NTT was wiped out down to the village level, by the government and army with the help of the people. It is said that leaders of other political parties and heads of government departments were ordered to attend the executions, presumably to spread the guilt. PKI members from Solor Island were beaten by the army and then returned to their community for punishment, where they were beheaded. On Rote Island the police supplied the army with a list of communists who were captured and shot, but the army had been given a quota by Jakarta and in order to make up the numbers some Chinese merchants were also killed and their names added to the list. Some Chinese victims from NTT are said to have been simply moneylenders who were killed with a view to clearing outstanding debts. In one case, a Timorese man who was in the middle of a land-ownership dispute was accused of PKI membership by a mob including a policeman who was the brother of the plaintiff in the dispute. The man was to be executed, but escaped and remained a fugitive for over thirty years. Relatives of those accused of PKI involvement found that they were barred from promotion or dismissed from government posts with no hope of re-employment. Others found that they were denied rights, such as the ability to obtain travel documents. Reprisals against those accused of PKI involvement continued into the 1970s and 1980s, with many civil servants being dismissed from their positions. As late as 2000, six teachers were trying to have their cases reviewed and be reappointed. Fear of the PKI has not yet died in West Timor; in general elections in 2004 members of the Golkar party accused members of opposition parties of being communists in order to scare away voters. Also in 2004, in what may or may not be a related incident, unknown persons placed numerous PKI posters along Kupangs main roads. These were immediately removed by the police so that noone will see them. The matter was reported in the local press with a photograph of the offending posters.
Steven Farram received his doctorate in history from Charles Darwin University in 2004. His thesis title was From Timor Koepang to Timor NTT: A Political History of West Timor, 19011967. He works at Charles Darwin University as a research associate. His main research interests are the politics and history of Indonesia, East Timor and the Northern Territory of Australia. He has published widely in these fields.
Sexualised Violence Against Women During the 1965-1966 Massacres in Indonesia Annie Pohlman The School of Languages & Comparative Cultural Studies, The University of Queensland, Australia a.pohlman@uq.edu.au; anniepohlman@yahoo.com.au
The aftermath of the 1 October 1965 coup in Indonesia saw the murder of an estimated five hundred thousand 'suspected Communists' and the mass political detention of a further one-anda-half million. The violence perpetrated during the terror that followed the coup included many forms of sexualised violence against men, women and children. This paper examines forms of this violence carried out against women by analysing the testimonies of survivors and secondary accounts. I discuss three themes in this violence; (a) lethal and non-lethal sexualised violence as part of assault, mutilation and torture; (b) women's experiences of sexual assault following the death or detention of male relatives, paying particular attention to narratives of 'istri diambil' (wife-taking); and (c) the strip-searching of women and girls for Communist Party brands, marks or tattoos. This analysis of sexualised forms of violence against women draws attention to how women's bodies and sexual identities are located at the centre of violent conflicts. The ubiquity of sexual violence speaks to the necessity of examining the killings of 1965-1966 from a gendered perspective that traces the production of sexed vulnerabilities. I argue that such a perspective should be central to understanding the massacres and their legacy in Indonesia.
Annie Pohlman is currently completing her PhD at the University of Queensland, entitled Ashes in My Mouth: Women, Testimony and the Indonesian Massacres of 1965-1966. Her research interests include comparative genocide studies, torture, gendered experiences of violence and Indonesian history.
Womens Sexuality Defamed; The Communist Threat and Womens Political Agency after the 1 October 1965 Murder of the Generals in Indonesia2 Saskia Eleonora Wieringa University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore saskiaew@yahoo.com
By 1965 the Indonesian Womens Organization Gerwani (Gerakan Wanita Indonesia) was one of the largest womens organizations in the world. Based on a nationalist, socialist and feminist ideology they opposed the restoration of the traditional roles of Indonesian women as loyal wives, homemakers and devoted mothers, and demanded space for women in the public sphere. This abruptly ended in October 1965. In one of the most grotesque demonstrations of mass manipulation they were accused of being involved in the murder of the generals who were the victims of a putsch planned by leftist colonels. Several of their members were accused of having danced an erotic dance, castrated the generals and gouged out their eyes. This argument was used to stir up the mass hysteria that led to the murder of many hundreds of thousands of leftist activists, and the real coup, the replacement of President Sukarno by General Suharto. Since then womens political agency has been severely curtailed, as it became associated with sexual debauchery and social turmoil in general. State womens organizations were set up and existing womens organizations were reformed to mobilize to help build a stable Indonesian society. More independent womens groups were afraid to be called new Gerwani. That term was still used by the then minister of Womens affairs, Tuti Alifiah in a Cabinet meeting in 1999, where she discussed her worries about the establishment of the KPI (Poskota chck date) This paper analyses the above events and discusses their implications in the present post-1998 period, of Reformasi. A second objective of this paper is to discuss the way these developments are dealt with in the literature about the events of 1965, its aftermath and the present period.
Saskia Eleonora Wieringa holds the chair of Gender and Womens Same-sex Relations Crossculturally at the University of Amsterdam. She is also the Director of the Amsterdam Womens Library and Archives She has done extensive research on sexual politics and womens same-sex relations in Indonesia and in other parts of the world, notably Japan and Southern Africa. She is co-founder and secretary of the Board of the Kartini Asia Network. She has (co) authored and edited over 20 books and published over 100 scholarly articles or chapters of books. Her recent books include Sexual Politics in Indonesia (2002), Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men and Ancestral Wives (with Ruth Morgan, 2005), Engendering Human Security (with others, ed 2006), Traveling Heritages (ed, 2008). She is presently writing a book on heteronormativity in Asia among other projects.
This paper draws from material presented at the Wertheim Centenary , 4 June 2008, Amsterdam (IISH)
Political Resistance of the Left and Military Responses: South Blitar and the 1968 Trisula Operation Vannessa Hearman The University of Melbourne, Australia vhearman@unimelb.edu.au
In the period following the 1965 coup attempt, Indonesian newspapers reported attacks on army and police installations, theft of weapons and munitions, and assassinations of suspected anticommunists. The government blamed these attacks on remaining members and supporters of the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI) and pointed to a communist resurgence. Scholars writing at that time such as van der Kroef and Brackman seemed to have largely accepted the government version of events. In the context of these security disturbances, this paper examines the question of how the post-coup period played out in East Java, in terms of any resistance from leftists to the anti-communist purges. In particular, the paper analyses the PKIs establishment of bases in the South Blitar area in East Java following the coup attempt until the end of the Trisula Operation, an operation led by the armys Brawijaya Division in 1968. Members and sympathisers of the PKI in Java who had not been captured or killed in the 196566 purges proceeded to the South Blitar region, after having been in hiding and on the run for some time. The New Order regimes construction of history has focused on the Trisula Operation carried out in mid-1968 as an important military victory, which was supported by the local people and succeeded in smashing the last remaining communist bases in South Blitar. Many of those imprisoned in connection with South Blitar served long years of imprisonment and several were executed. The East Javanese civilian administration transformed South Blitar into a politically compliant region using a combination of strategies, such as the resettlement of the population and reconstruction of villages in a way that facilitated easier surveillance and control. Drawing upon interview material with then-Brawijaya commander, Muhammad Jasin, PKI Central Committee member Rewang and other leftists who were imprisoned for their activities in South Blitar and with villagers in South Blitar, the paper also canvases military and government sources such as publications of the Brawijaya Division and government studies about the Blitar area. Looking at the case study of South Blitar in 1968 and the Trisula Operation, this paper will attempt to contribute some responses to unanswered questions about South Blitar: was it a case of attempted communist comeback, a defensive move, or a combination of both? What did South Blitar signify in the broader context of post-purge resistance? What was the impact of the Trisula Operation on South Blitar and how did it lay down foundations for future counter-insurgency operations carried out by the New Order regime?
Vannessa Hearman is a PhD candidate, research assistant and tutor in the School of Historical Studies at The University of Melbourne. In her thesis, she is researching the political history of East Java in the period between 1965-1968 with a focus on the 1965-66 mass killings and imprisonment in that region. In 2008 she was awarded an Australia-Netherlands Research Collaboration Travel Fellowship; in 2009, she was the recipient of a Norman MacGeorge Travelling Scholarship, and the inaugural Prue Torney Memorial Award for fieldwork in Asia in the School of Historical Studies of The University of Melbourne. Her article The Uses of Memoirs and Oral History Works in Researching the 1965-66 Political Violence in Indonesia, International Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies, vol. 5, no. 2 will be published in July 2009. She is a nationally-accredited Indonesian interpreter and translator in Australia, with work experience in aid, elections and human rights in East Timor and Indonesia. She is also a member of the International Oral History Association and the Asian Studies Association of Australia.
Communism in West Kalimantan: 1965 and Beyond Hui Yew-Foong Institute of South East Asian Studies, Singapore yfhui@iseas.edu.sg
In the aftermath of the alleged coup of September 30, 1965, hundreds of thousands of Communists and alleged Communists were massacred in Java and Bali. In West Kalimantan, the provincial Indonesia Communist Party (PKI) went underground and began to organise an extensive network and a guerrilla force. The province enjoyed relative calm till the latter part of 1967, when the military began to be involved in armed clashes with the PKI guerrillas. Subsequently, Dayaks violently evicted Chinese from the hinterland and the authorities imposed a reign of terror upon the Chinese communities on the premise of suspected Communist sympathies. This paper seeks to elucidate the resistance movement of the underground PKI from 1965 to 1974, when most of the leaders were executed or captured, leading to the disintegration of the underground PKI network. The movement will also be examined in the transnational context of Konfrontasi (1963-66), in terms of its links with the parallel communist movement of Sarawak that was then active in West Kalimantan. Finally, I will explicate the appeal that the underground PKI posed to the Chinese communities, in particular as an avenue of resistance against ethnic violence and discrimination at that time.
Hui Yew-Foong completed a PhD in Anthropology at Cornell University in 2007. His dissertation is entitled Strangers at Home: History and Subjectivity among the Chinese of West Kalimantan, Indonesia. He is currently a Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.
Only Now Can We Speak: Remembering Politicide in Yogyakarta Mark Woodward Arizona State University, USA; Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University & Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies, Graduate School, Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia mark.woodward@asu.edu
This paper examines the ways in which the mass killings of 1965 and 1966 were disremembered and not spoken of in one kampung in Java over thirty years. Only now a decade after the perpetrators of these crimes were forced from office, can people begin to speak of, remember and attempt to come to terms with trauma that has influenced the lives of four generations of Indonesians. To protect the privacy of all concerned I cannot reveal the location in this community. I speak of the process here in the most general terms possible. The paper will include case studies involving accounts not only of forgotten killings but also of family members who were systematically forgotten and of mosques built to rehabilitate communists. Only now can these stories be told. My analysis draws primarily on the work of Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman, who is among the worlds most renowned experts on the psychological and social consequences of mass violence and on my own previous studies of state sponsored or condoned violence in Indonesia and Burma. Indonesians who can remember the slaughter often speak of headless corpses floating in streams and the stench of decaying, unburied bodies. This is a powerful symbolic statement to Muslims because of the requirement that corpses be ritually purified and buried quickly. The desecration of corpses robs them of their Muslim identities. It suggests that victims were apostates deserving of death. It also denied the families of the victims the ability to mourn in culturally and religiously appropriate ways and to perform pilgrimage to their graves. This is an important element of the local Islam practiced by most of the victims and their families. The killings were, in a perverse way, religious acts. Denying victims proper funerals was a ritual of negation. Many Javanese affirm this negation by avoiding sites associated with the killings in fear that victims have become dangerous ghosts. Some of the victims families now attempt to negate the negation by describing the dead as martyrs. More than forty years later Indonesians continue to struggle to come to terms with this slaughter. As Herman observes The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. 3 The New Order did not encourage collective amnesia about the violence that accompanied its birth. Indeed, it constantly reminded Indonesians of its own mythologized version of it. This misremembering has had profound impacts on many whose friends, neighbors and relatives are portrayed, almost literally, as archetypes of evil, inhuman monsters and enemies of the nation and whose murderers are depicted as national heroes. Most have suffered this terror in silence, some with pent up rage and bitterness. Others suffer from survivors guilt, asking why they should have lived or avoided the stigma of being labeled X (PKI) on their national identity cards. Tragically, some victims even believe the lies of the New Order. This is denial at a national level. Herman has also show that denial does not bring healing and that remembering and truth telling are essential for the restoration of genuine social solidarity at the national level and psychological healing for individual victims. The politics of post 1965 Indonesia and the complicity of the military in the killings made truth telling impossible for thirty three years. The process has now only begun. To carry it forward will require not only telling the truth of about the killings, but also about the lies that were told about them for more than a generation.
3
Herman, Judith, Trauma and Recovery: The aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror New York: Basic Books, 1997, pg. 6.
Mark Woodward has been conducting ethnographic research on in Java for more than thirty years. His work includes Religious Conflict and the Globalization of Knowledge: Indonesia 19782004, in Linell, Cady and Sheldon, Simon (eds.) Religion and Conflict in South and Southeast Asia. Disruption Violence London: Routledge 2006 and other works on religious violence and Javanese Islam. His current research focuses on processes through which trauma is remembered in religious and social contexts.
Sing Wis Ya Wis: The Yogya Kembali Monument Rob Goodfellow Principal Consultant, Cultural Consulting, Australia robgoodfellow@ozemail.com.au
The trauma associated with the intense violence that engulfed Indonesia between October and December 1965 is not enough to explain how an open history of the killings was silenced for over thirty-three years. Likewise, the New Order governments power to suppress competing historical accounts cannot fully elucidate this enduring silence. History is a story about who controls the means of historical consciousness as well as the production of narratives. Therefore, part of the answer of what enabled the forgetting of the Indonesian killings can be found in an examination of the Suharto regimes propaganda project. This established communism as a social evil and New Order military authoritarianism as the antidote. An assessment of this narrative demonstrates how officially generated anti-communist ideology created silences in the process of historical production, and how forgetting the violence became a powerful determinant of local historical consciousness. Anti-communist ideology emerged very early in the New Order story in the days following the attempted coup of 30 September 1965 and was characterised by three stages. First, the swift destruction of the senior organisational and cadre structure of the Indonesian Communist Party and the mass killings of leftists by the Indonesian military in collaboration with a broad coalition of anti-communist forces. Second, by the use of anti-communism as a point of ideological linkage between anti-Sukarnoist allies; and third, when the New Order no longer required the support of this coalition, the promulgation of anti-communist ideology as a weapon of intimidation. This ideology was then directed against most forms of dissent, especially any suggestion of an alternative to the official history of 1965. A pre-occupation with historical correctness was in fact to characterise New Order rule right up until the resignation of President Suharto in May 1998 (and continues to the present day). However, the explanation for why the killings were silenced and forgotten extends beyond social trauma, propaganda, official ideology, and state power. In addition to all of these factors, a type of state-sponsored memory-manipulation facilitated the exclusive commemoration of the 30 September coup attempt and the military counter-coup that began on 1 October 1965. This was partly achieved through the medium of memory templates. These guides to officially acceptable remembering filled the historiographical vacuum left by the almost unthinkable pace of social and political transformation from Sukarnoist populism to Suhartos military authoritarianism. This occurred over a period of weeks and months and was associated with a deluge of information about the military response to the coup attempt, and almost complete silence regarding the extent of the killings that followed. The success of this project was contingent on the key co-ordinates of New Order legitimacy, namely that the Indonesian military had rescued the people from the menace of communism, that Marxism was an ever-present threat to the stability of the nation and that individual communists, sympathisers, or in fact anyone who was like a communist, were beyond political, social, moral and especially historical, redemption. This was synonymous with a historiography that invented new chronologies, or politically-mediated versions of the coup attempt, and then sought to impose and celebrate them, while almost all unmediated, or durational remembering associated with the killings remained suppressed and silenced. Historical templates, which were primarily concerned with the role of Suharto in the story of the Indonesian Revolution, the 30 September coup attempt and the restructure of Indonesian economic and political culture, while never systematic or convincing at an lite level, nevertheless had a profound affect on village communities. The memory of the killings in the immediate post-Suharto period was therefore less influenced by raw military repression than by the far-reaching and still lasting indoctrination.
Rob Goodfellow B.A hons., PhD., (University of Wollongong) is a Principal Consultant with the international consultancy group Cultural Consulting. Rob is an author, journalist, researcher and history academic who has been active in Australia, Indonesia and China in the broad field of cross-cultural studies, project development and client representation for both the business and not-for-profit sectors. Robs doctoral research was conducted through Gadjah Mada University Yogyakarta, in the field of the relationship between memory and history.
September Affair in History Courses Asvi Warman Adam LIPI, Indonesia asvi@cbn.net.id
Konseptor militer Orde Baru seperti Jenderal Nasution menulis tentang perlunya melihat peristiwa G30S dari tiga fase: proloog, peristiwa itu sendiri dan epiloog. Namun ketiga aspek itu dijelaskan secara tidak tepat dan tidak berimbang. Tentu saja rangkaian peristiwa sebelum meletusnya G30S dan konteks perang dingin kala itu penting. Selain itu saya melihat G30S sebagai pancalogi (logi di sini dalam pengertian seperti buku trilogi Motinggo Busye atau quatrologi novel pulau Buru karya Pram) yakni 1) peristiwa 30 September 1965, 2) pembantaian massal 1965/1966, termasuk penangkapan dan penahanan ratusan ribu orang di seluruh Indonesia. 3) eksil di luar negeri, 4) pembuangan dan kerja paksa di pulau Buru, 5) politik ingatan tentang 65. Buku apa saja yang pernah terbit di Indonesia sejak 40 Hari Gagalnya G30S yang dikeluarkan kelompok Nasution secara kilat sampai dengan buku John Roosa, Dalih Pembunuhan Massal (2008). Apa kecenderungannya secara umum ? Bagaimana proses pengulangan yang dilakukan Victor Fic (1968 dan 2005) dan Antonie Dake (1973, 1974 dan 2005). Bagaimana pula transformasi buku putih (Samsudin, Sulastomo, Hendro Subroto dan Aco Manafe) ? Pembantaian massal di Jawa dan Bali telah diuraikan dalam tulisan Robert Cribb dan Geoffroy Robinson. Tema ini paling sedikit dikerjakan di Indonesia. Sudah ada laporan tentang beberapa daerah lain (seperti Sumatera Barat termasuk Painan (oleh alm Bakri Ilyas) dan Lombok. Pengakuan dari pelaku pembunuhan sangat jarang didapat. Sejarah lisan tentang penangkapan dan penahanan pasca G30S telah dibuat oleh ISSI, tim Lontar/Ford Foundation, Syarikat Yogyakarta dan lain-lain. Para eksil yang sebagian berada di Tiongkok, Rusia, Eropa Timur tahun 1965 dan sebagian kemudian hijrah ke Eropa Barat telah menulis biografi dan pengalaman mereka (melalui prosa dan puisi). Kisah di Korea Utara (Walujo Sejati) sudah ditulis namun belum terbit. Penderitaan di pulau Buru terekam dalam buku Pram, Hersri Setiawan dan beberapa orang lainnya. Kasus ini sengaja digolongkan secara tersendiri, karena memiliki peluang kuat untuk diajukan sebagai kasus pelanggaran HAM Berat. Politik ingatan di masa Orde Baru tergambar secara kuat dalam buku Kate McGregor dan juga Ariel Heryanto (tentang terror Negara). Apa yang dilakukan pemerintah melalui film, pembuatan monumen, museum, peringatan hari bersejarah? Sebaliknya bagaimana korban 65 menyikapi stigma yang ditanamkan rezim berkuasa sebagaimana tergambar dalam sejarah lisan yang dilakukan sejak 1998? Mengapa pembentukan KKR sangat lambat dan kemudian digagalkan? Mengapa pengadilan HAM tidak berhasil ? Kebebasan pers memberikan peluang munculnya film cerita dan film dokumenter tentang masalah 65 yang ditonton secara luas di televise (swasta). Bagaimana perkembangan kurikulum dan pengajaran sejarah di sekolah (kurikulum 1994, 1999, 2004, 2006) terutama setelah pelarangan buku oleh Kejaksaan Agung tahun 2007? Tulisan ini akan ditutup dengan kecenderungan penelitian selama ini dan sebaiknya bagaimana di masa yang akan datang.
History is Not on Her Side: The Discourses of G30S/PKI and the Killings aftermath in Contemporary Indonesian Literary Writings Diah Ariani Arimbi Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia diaharimbi@yahoo.com
The fall of Soehartos authority in 1998 has indeed impacted numerous sides of Indonesian life: political, social and cultural. The shifting of authoritative government to the state of reformation and democratization has forced the nation to redefine its authority to its members. Authority never comes in a single reducible shape, instead, it is manifested in various forms and definitions. In Althusserian framework, authority may be recognized as repressive and ideological, and the most apparent of these apparatuses is Indonesians notions of G30S/PKI and the killings aftermath. The horror of such atrocities somehow has been engrafted in the Indonesian mind that the 1965 incident is largely a latent danger posing an extreme threat to Indonesian civil and cultural society. This papers aims to look at these public responses which are narrated in contemporary Indonesian fiction. Although fiction may be seen as imaginative production, discursive ideologies can be examined clearly. By examining narratives about G30S/PKI and the killings aftermath (which even nowadays are not many) in several literary writings published in post 1998, this paper serves to look contested views of the past by contemporary Indonesia writers, who are known as the Generation 2000 writers (who were mostly born in 1970s at least 5 years after the 1965 incident). It will also answer whether or not this generation, through their writings, present shift and create its own notions but also to adapt existing or (half) forgotten notions to its own goals and, by using new shades of meaning based on its newly formed understandings, to channel them into its desired directions.
Diah Ariani Arimbi lectures in English literature at the Airlangga University in Surabaya, Indonesia. She received her Ph.D from UNSW, Sydney, Australia in 2006. Her current researches include images of women and the conception of beauty in teenage magazines, and the ways women are portrayed in Orientalist discourses.
Frames and Public Reasoning: What Do Debates about the Coup and Killings Tell Us about Indonesian Public Culture? Adrian Vickers School of Languages and Cultures The University of Sydney, Australia adrian.vickers@usyd.edu.au
Since the fall of Suharto, the 1965 Coup and the subsequent anti-Communist massacres have become major points of contention in Indonesia. Public presentations of the debates have focused either on basic documentation, or on interpretations of causality. They coexist with a series of other polemics about aspects of Indonesian history, covering such topics as the nature of Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms; the coming of Islam to Indonesia; the effects of colonial rule; the nature of the nationalist movement; and the leadership of Sukarno. Such debates and polemics tend to be inter-related, and demonstrate a highly politicised and conflicted public culture in Indonesia. This paper will use case studies of book, film and television discussions of the 1965 events to examine their relationship to wider structures of public debate in Indonesia. It will show how post-1998 discussions of the 1965 events have tended to be caught up in the framework of historical understanding established by the New Order regime. In particular, this paper will examine the rhetorical bases by which claims to legitimacy are established. This analysis will show how traditional or regional rhetorical modes interact with attempts to form a national culture.
Adrian Vickers is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Sydney, where he is also Associate Dean, International in the Faculty of Arts, and Director of the Australian Centre for Asian Art and Archaeology. He is the author of many works on Indonesian history, historiography and culture, including A History of Modern Indonesia (Cambridge University Press, 2005). The research for this paper was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant.4 He is currently researching the history of Australian-Indonesian relations, and writing a history of Balinese painting.
My thanks to Rumekso Setyadi and Safrina Thristiawati for their assistance on this project.
Seda Gestok: Reconstituting Human Subjects Who Were Victims of the 1965-66 Anti-communist Purges in West Bali Mary Ida Bagus CAPSTRANS, The University of Newcastle, Australia jeromade@hotmail.com
The Balinese phrase seda Gestok is a simple and misleading gloss for someone who died (seda) as a result of the anti-communist purges (Gestok). Over the last twenty-five years I have heard this expression many times, usually whispered in the privacy of our family compound in Bali for fear of being overheard and accused of subversive politics. With Reformasi the phrase entered the public domain, appearing in conversations with strangers with alarming regularity. The inherent shame, danger and secrecy encapsulated in the phrase have finally been superseded with blunt discussion of murder, torture and suffering. The correlation between Gestok and death has new meaning and its significance for families and communities is inestimable. People didnt just die during Gestok they were methodically located, detained and murdered. This paper discusses strategies that enabled some individuals to be reincorporated into their communities in West Bali in the aftermath of Gestok. The male and female voices represented here are those of communists, spouses of communists and non-communists who married the widows of communists. Their common experience is that they managed to overcome heavy social sanctions and survive within communities where death had been deemed appropriate punishment for members of the Communist Party (PKI). I will argue that after the initial pressures that tested kinship relations throughout the tense times leading up to and during the killings, extended families managed to reintegrate some of their estranged members. The remarriage of younger widows and transmigration enabled identities to be rehabilitated and reinscribed. Older widows and particularly those of local PKI leaders were cast out to the fringes of communities and, along with their children, struggled to survive. Conversely as time went by the most eager perpetrators of anti communist violence and their spouses suffered the disdain of their communities whilst some victims regained their currency as worthwhile members of society. With generational and regime change Gestok has become a hotly contested topic for local people in West Bali. Since the fall of Soeharto and the period of Reformasi those who are said to have seda Gestok have gained new status within their communities. In some cases they have been reclaimed as local heroes as the New Order regime has been increasingly demonised. Some people who experienced the horrors of Gestok first hand compartmentalise their lives as pre-Gestok (setonden Gestok) and post-Gestok (suud Gestok). The Balinese expression suud Gestok implies that Gestok is understood as a series of finite actions, arrests and murders and detentions, which finally stopped (suud). These actions within village communities are described locally as the world destroyed (gumi uug). This paper will illustrate the tensions and strategies involved in reclaiming identities as members of families and village communities in the aftermath of Gestok.
Mary Ida Bagus received a PhD in anthropology from the University of Newcastle, Australia in 2006. Her thesis was an ethnographic history of the Jembrana region of West Bali. She received an MA in anthropology from the University of Melbourne for a thesis on mixed marriages in Melbourne between Balinese and local Australians. She has presented many conference papers and published some articles dealing with migration, acculturation, marriage, gendered discourse, Ajeg Bali, ethnic movements, Gestok, West Bali, and cultural authenticities within the Indonesian Nation State. She is currently a Conjoint Fellow at CAPSTRANS, University of Newcastle.
Berjuang Melawan Dehumanisasi Ciptaan Orde Baru Putu Oka Sukanta Writer and Activist, Indonesia poskanta@indo.net.id
Sebagai seorang yang pernah ditahan selama 10 tahun tanpa proses pengadilan, dan diawasi dengan peraturan diskrimantif yang sitematis sesudah dibebaskan, harus menyusun sebuah strategi agar bisa menjadi survivor. Sebagai seorang penulis dilarang menulis, sebagai bekas guru dilarang menjadi guru kembali dan banyak lagi peraturan yang lainnya yang membelenggu. Orde Baru menciptakan lingkaran pembatas imajinatif untuk memisahkan bekas tahanan dan keluarganya dengan masyarakat sekitarnya. Penguasa resmi dan tidak resmi di masyarakat diinstruksikan untuk mengawasi the branded people dan memberikan laporan tentang tingkah laku mereka kepada penguasa. Pernah ada isu pemerintah meluncurkan upaya Rekonsiliasi politik. Sejak awal banyak TAPOL tidak yakin bahwa gagasan rekonsiliasi tersebut akan berjalan dan akan mendapat dukungan dari penguasa yang diuntungkan oleh adanya peraturan yang diskriminatif tersebut. Selain juga, tidak mungkin akan terjadi rekonsiliasi dari dua kelompok masyarakat yang tidak mempunyai posisi nilai tawar yang setara. Sampai sekarang rekonsiliasi tersebut belum terwujud. Untuk melawan dehumanisasi yang sistematis dan berstruktur tersebut perlu disusun sebuah strategi perlawanan. Menciptakan kegiatan bawah tanah yang damai untuk memecahkan tembok isolasi dan menerobos peraturan yang diskriminatif. Walaupun tembok isolasi semakin rapuh, peraturan yang diskriminatif belum juga dicabut dan belum terselesaikannya masalah pembunuhan rakyat secara hukum, karena kekuatan demokratis dan pendukung Hak-Hak Azasi Manusia belum berhasil menjadikan peristiwa 65/66 sebagai masalah kemanusiaan secara global.
The Role of Komnas HAM in Conducting an Inquiry of the 1965-1966 Killings Nurkholis Commissioner, The Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights (KOMNAS HAM), Indonesia Nurkholis70@yahoo.com
My paper will explore the role of Komnas HAM in conducting an inquiry into the 1965-1966 killings. The Indonesian National Commisson on Human Rights ,known as KOMNAS HAM, is an independent institution equal with other state instituions and its roles are to conduct reasearch, increase public awareness and monitor and mediate in cases related to human rights. Based on Law Number 26 year of 2000 Concerning Human Rights Court, Komnas HAM is the only institution tha has a mandate to conduct projustitia inquiries into gross violations of human rights. The results of Komnas HAM inquiries are legally binding, meaning that after Komnas HAM makes an inquiry the results are submitted to Attorney General and followed up with investigations and prosecutions. The Attorney General then passes this on to a Human Rights Court. We have two kinds of Human Rights Court an ad hoc Human Rights Court and permanent Human Rights Court. The Ad hoc Human Rights Court has the authority to proceed with cases that occurred before 2000 and Permanent Human Rights Court as the authority to proceed cases happened after 2000. I will explain the process of establishing an ad hoc team of inquiry for the 1965-1966 killings which resulted from study and reasearch about cases of human rights abuses under the Soeharto Regime. The results of this study and reasearch indicated gross violations of human rights in the case of the 1965-1966 killings. Based on these results, it was recomended at a Plenary Session of Komnas HAM that an ad hoc team of inquiry into the 1965-1966 killings be established. To follow up the decicion of the plenary session of Komnas HAM, Komnas HAM then established an ad hoc team of inquiry comprising the Commissioner and staff of Komnas HAM in addition to representatives from the society (NGOs). The team of Inqury started their research in June 2008 and until now the inquiry is stil ulnderway. The team has already visited areas in South Sulawesi, North Sulawesi, North Sumatera, Central Sulawesi, Bali, Central Java, East Kalimantan and the others place. In the process of the inquiry, the team has gathered the testimonies of more than 200 victims and witneses.
Nurkholis is Commissioner of Komnas HAM for the period of 2007 2012. He as a Masters from Sungkong Hoe University, Seoul, Korea. Before joining Komnas HAM, he was a human rights activist and also a lawyer at the Legal Aid Foundation in South Sumatera and also as a member of WALHI.
Advocacy on Gross Human Rights Abuses Committed as Part of the 1965/1966 Tragedy Winarso Lembaga Pengabdian Hukum YAPHI (LPH YAPHI) Solo, Indonesia diddyahsr@yahoo.co.id
The events of 1965/1966 was a dark history for the people of Indonesia, as more than a million people were massacred. There were widespread arrests, imprisonment without due process, rape, denial of political and economic rights, and the manipulation of history. This could accurately be termed a humanitarian tragedy. The struggle of SEKBER (Sekretariat Bersama, Joint Secretariat) 65 is for there to be a state acknowledgment that the tragedy of 65/66 was a gross human rights abuse. Because of political interests at work, the state has thus far refused to do so. For this reason, SEKBER 65 is actively gathering data and documenting mass graves. SEKBER 65 functions as a coordinating body. It holds meetings once a month in the areas of the (former) residency of Surakarta, (former) residency of Kedu, Magelang and Banyumas. In our work, Sekber 65 has encountered continuing strong repression from the bureaucracy, military, police and so-called religious groups.
Winarso is an organiser at the non-government organisation, Lembaga Pengabdian Hukum YAPHI (LPH YAPHI) in Solo, Central Java. His work experience is in victim accompaniment, working with 1965-66 victims. He began working in this capacity in 1998, starting with YPKP 1965-66 (Foundation for the Investigation of the Victims of the 1965-66 Killings). Since 2005, Winarso has been working with the victims group SEKBER (Sekretariat Bersama, Joint Secretariat) 65. He is also active in campaigning with street vendors, urban poor, inter-religious groups, students and mass organisations.
Still Seeking Truth and Reconciliation for the 1965 Victims: Is it possible? Priyambudi Sulistiyanto Flinders University, Australia Priyambudi.Sulistiyanto@flinders.edu.au Sentot Setyasiswanto Elsam, Indonesia sentot@elsam.or.id
This paper examines the causes and consequences of the failure to establish the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Komisi Kebenaran dan Rekonsiliasi, KKR) on the quest for truth and reconciliation in Indonesia. It provides critical reflections on the failure of state-sponsored reconciliation initiatives as a way of dealing with the legacies of human rights abuses. It aims to answer questions such as: what went wrong with the reconciliation initiative? Who opposed and supported it? Was it legally and politically unpalatable? Was it too ambitious in the context of Indonesias new democracy? Did the decision by the Constitutional Court to abolish the Law on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (No. 27/2004) end the 1965 victims quest for truth and reconciliation? Is there any other way to some form of closure for them? In this paper we will trace back the origins of the idea of KKR during the Habibie period giving attention to the debates among state actors and non-government organizations about the strengths and weaknesses of a truth-seeking mechanism to deal the past human rights abuses. We will examine the views of the presidential office, the military headquarters, the National Commission on Human Rights, Kontras, Elsam and the victims, and public intellectuals. We will also examine the political dynamics of the legislation of the Law on Truth and Reconciliation Commission which occurred in parliament during the Wahid and Megawati periods and, subsequently, the delay of the establishment a truth commission during the SBY government period. We will examine the diverse and divergent views on a truth commission carried out by major political parties such PDIP, Golkar, PPP, PKB, PAN and PBB. We will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the strategies applied by the 1965 victims coalition group to lobby government and parliament to establish a truth commission. We will also analyze the implications of the verdict of the Constitutional Court in 2006 and its consequences for the 1965 victims quest for truth and reconciliation in Indonesia. In this analysis we will address the unwillingness of the government to end discrimination experienced by the 1965 victims. Finally, we will examine the new draft Law on Truth Commission which is currently being prepared by the Ministry of Law and Human Rights. We will offer some thoughts on ways in which those who seek truth and reconciliation can still find their ways in the future.
Priyambudi Sulistiyanto is a lecturer in Asian Studies and convener of the MA program in Asian Governance at the School of Political and International Studies, Flinders University, Adelaide. Sentot Setyosiswanto is a researcher working with Elsam in Jakarta. He has attended and presented papers in international forums held in Toronto, New York City and Adelaide. He is currently researching ethnic conflict and reconciliation in West Kalimantan.
Mass Graves, Memory and Meaning: Disputes over How to Remember the 1965-66 Killings5 Katharine McGregor The University of Melbourne, Australia k.mcgregor@unimelb.edu.au
In the last ten years since the end of the Suharto regime some Indonesians have seized the opportunity provided by new democratic spaces to condemn the violence of 1965-66. Some survivors have chosen to write or speak about their experiences. Others have joined survivor organisations such as the YPKP, later also the LPKP. Founded in 1999, Yayasan Penelitian Korban Pembunuhan 1965-66 (YPKP- Foundation for the Investigation into Victims of the 1965-66 Killings) initially aimed to collect testimonies and exhume mass graves. Focusing on the initiatives of the YPKP and NGOs this paper traces efforts identify and exhume mass graves and wider responses to these efforts. One of the most vocal advocates of justice for the dead and the recovery of the remains of those killed was Sulami a co-founder of the YPKP. She organised several mass exhumations before her death in 2002 with the stated purpose of collecting evidence of the violence. Some NGOs such as Kasut Perdamaian (Shoe for Peace) have also been involved in exhumations. They are variously motivated by the goals of collecting legal evidence of atrocities or simply restoring the dignity of victims. They believe that the exhumation of these graves is necessary for the purposes of acknowledging this past and moving forward. In many local communities people know about the location of mass graves, but due to the ongoing strength of anti-communism they have been a forbidden space. The exhumation of graves leads to physical and undeniable evidence of what has passed, yet due to the deterioration of peoples remains over forty years it has been very difficult to proceed with any kind of identification of victims. Although remains may constitute evidence of crimes, a further difficulty arises in connecting these remains to specific perpetrators years after the event. Despite these obstacles, exhumations and reburials serve a symbolic purpose for survivors and for the families of victims. They also serve the purpose of re-humanising the victims. On the other hand some groups including the military and organisations connected to the violence of 1965-66 reject the exhumation of mass graves for the very reason that this process effectively redeems victims. Opponents of exhumations perceive the reinstatement of the humanity of the victims as a serious threat. Because of the risk of future prosecution, but also loss of institutional or personal legitimacy some believe that mass graves, as physical sites of violence, should be off limits and that grave exhumation and reburial are too confrontational. In 2001 this clash of opinions resulted in a violent confrontation in a small town in Central Java. A group calling itself Forum Ukuwah Islamiyah Kaloran (Kaloran Islamic Fraternity Forum) violently obstructed the YPKPs attempt to rebury the remains of victims of 1965 uncovered in a mass grave on the grounds that it was not a PKI area. In 2002 Yayasan Kasut Perdamaians efforts to create a memorial at the site of the Luweng Tikus, a cave which became a mass grave, were similarly opposed by the local government in Blitar, East Java. The paper will conclude with some reflections on the significance of mass graves in processes of remembering
This research was supported under Australian Research Council's Discovery Projects funding scheme (project number DPO772760). Thanks to Vannessa Hearman for her assistance with interviews for this paper.
Katharine McGregor is a Senior Lecturer in Southeast Asian history at the University of Melbourne. Her first book is entitled History in Uniform: Military Ideology and the Construction of the Indonesian Past (Singapore University Press 2007). She is currently working on a research project entitled Islam and the Politics of Memory in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia, which is funded by the Australian Research Council. She has published several articles from this project to date including: The 1965 Indonesian Killings, Case Study for the On-line Encyclopaedia of Mass Violence, http://www.massviolence.org/. Confronting the Past in Contemporary Indonesia: The Anti-Communist Killings of 1965-66 and the role of the Nahdlatul Ulama, Critical Asian Studies, 41(2), 2009, pp 195-224. A Bridge and a Barrier: Islam, Reconciliation and the 1965 Killings in Indonesia in Birgit Brauchler (ed.), Reconciling Indonesia: Grassroots Agency for Peace Routledge, London, pp. 214232. with Vannessa Hearman, The Challenges of Political Rehabilitation in Post New Order Indonesia: the Case of Gerwani (the Indonesian Womens Movement, Southeast Asia Research, Vol 15, No. 3, November 2007, pp. 355-384
Building a Monument: The Intimate Politics of Reconciliation in Post-1965 Bali Leslie Dwyer Haverford College, USA ldwyer@haverford.edu Degung Santikarma Haverford College, USA
On September 30, 2005 40 years after an alleged communist-backed coup attempt provided the pretext for the state-sanctioned slaughter of some 500,000-1,000,000 Indonesians a small group of children and grandchildren of survivors of the violence prepared to inaugurate a monument to victims of 1965-66 within their family compound. This site, the Taman 1965 or 1965 Park, and the vociferous debates that emerged from it, provides an entryway into understanding how local semiotics of terror and ethics of knowledge intersect with post-Soeharto discourses of reconciliation to shape the limits and possibilities of political subjectivity in postmassacre Bali. Drawing on 48 months of collaborative ethnographic research on the aftermath of 1965-66 in Bali, we call for attention to complex forms of post-conflict narrative that exceed opposition between speech and silence, grounding political claims to representation of the past. While stressing the particularities of the violence and its aftermath in Bali, we also raise more general questions about the relations between history and memory, the work of ritual as a technology of managing terror, the intersections of globally circulating human rights discourses and local claims to justice, and the production of political affect in contemporary Indonesia.

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The 1965-1966 Indonesian Killings Revisited (17-19 June 2009) Seminar Rooms A, B & C, Blk AS7 - Shaw Foundation

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