Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

INDONESIA, MASS KILLING OF SUSPECTED COMMUNISTS
In December 1975, under President Mohamed Suharto (b. 1921), Indonesia’s military
forces invaded the former Portuguese colony of East Timor and annexed it in a brutal show
of force. Between 1975 and 1999, when East Timor finally gained its independence, the
Indonesian military murdered approximately one-third of the tiny territory’s population.
In 2006, citizens of the Indonesian province of West Papua (formerly known as Irian
Jaya), which has been under Indonesian control since 1969, began fleeing to Australia,
claiming massive human rights abuses (including politically inspired deaths) by the
Indonesian military. However, as of this writing (mid-2007), it is too early to assess
whether this is a genocidal campaign against the native Papuans and thus a return to
Indonesia’s earlier genocidal practices.
There are numerous and complex reasons why Indonesia has not yet been condemned,
including but not limited to the following: its friendship with the West within the earlier
Cold War environment; its population as the largest non-Arab Muslim constituency in
the world (and thus a supposed bulwark in the new, as of 2001, so-called war on terror);
more recently, its perception within the global environment as a bastion of democracy in
Asia; and its continuing denial of genocide.
Indonesia, Mass Killing of Suspected Communists. On October 1, 1965, six senior
Indonesian generals were kidnapped and murdered by junior officers. The Indonesian
Communist Party (PKI) was blamed for this act, which was portrayed by the military and
its leading spokesman, Major General Mohamed Suharto (b. 1921), as an attempted coup
d’état designed to entrench the power of left-leaning President Ahmed Sukarno
(1901–1970). Suharto led a successful countercoup, resulting in widespread reprisals
against the communists—even though the role of the PKI in the coup attempt, at the
time and since, was unclear. On October 16, 1965, Sukarno appointed Suharto as minister
for the army and army commander in chief, after which General Suharto ordered his
forces to destroy the PKI and the threat it allegedly represented. In the months that followed,
an unprecedented explosion of violence swept the country as PKI members (many
of whom were, coincidentally, ethnically Chinese) were rounded up, tortured, and executed.
Families of suspected communists were also targeted by the military, militaryendorsed
militias, and even civilian mobs. Estimates of the number killed varies widely;
most accounts put the number at about half a million, though some have speculated that
it was as high as 2 million. Hundreds of thousands more were imprisoned without trial,
often for periods of twenty years or longer.
Under Suharto the military forces were purged of what were viewed as pro-Sukarno elements,
and Sukarno’s power base effectively collapsed. On March 11, 1966, Suharto
assumed supreme authority throughout the country, displacing Sukarno, and introduced
what became known soon afterward as the New Order (Orde Baru). The next day, the PKI
was officially banned, PKI members of parliament were purged, the press was gagged, and
trade unions were forbidden. The upshot of what became known as “The Year of Living
Dangerously” was that, between 1966 and 1998, Indonesia was basically ruled as an
authoritarian quasi-democracy, with one president, one ruling party, and few elections.
The country became increasingly militarized, and the military forces received a permanent
place in the running of the country. Suharto’s rule possibly saved Indonesia from
going communist (the certainty of this will never be truly known); but, by doing so, the
Indonesian people suffered over thirty years of repression, censorship, and state-sanctioned
violence.
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