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Understanding the 1965 Indonesian Coup

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By George Loh

Image credit: Kawan Kawan Media

The 12th DMZ International Documentary Film Festival screened Director Fanny Chotimah’s debut film, “You and I”. It features the story of two elderly women, Kaminah and Ksdalini who have grown old since their ordeals following their jail term in 1965 (The film later won the Asian Perspective Award in the same Festival). The decision to feature a documentary outlining the effects of the 1965-1966 period, according to Fanny, was to educate the audience on the continued significance of this period to Indonesian history. Until Fanny’s expose on this issue, this controversial piece of history had been arguably blindsided amongst Indonesian media sources, despite the horrific death tolls and the curious rise of President Suharto, whose role throughout the period will be examined.

Context

Kaminah and Ksdalini were the victims of a failed coup, also termed the “September 30 movement”, which occurred after leftist leaders and Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) youth members abducted and killed 6 out of 7 Indonesian generals en route to Halim Air Base. The junior officers argued that they did so to forestall a military coup planned for 5th October, but upon carrying out the killings, they proceeded to seize power in Jakarta in the name of a Revolutionary Council. The movement was very poorly planned, and was quickly stopped, according to official accounts of the story, by General Soeharto who assumed command of the military. Under Soeharto’s control, the soldiers attacked Halim Air Base, where the movement leaders were based. Meanwhile, President Sukarno moved from Halim to Bogor Palace. Soeharto’s swift response sent the coup leaders to flight early on 2nd October, and the coup attempt was over in less than two days. This led to a pogrom (mass riots targeted towards an ethnic/religious group) against the PKI, where mass roundups of PKI members and sympathisers took place. The two women featured in the film are falsely accused of their involvement with the Communists, and the documentary recounts how the sequence of events set in stone the overthrow of the Sukarno regime and the eventual installation of Soeharto into power. This ushered in the famed “New Order” which lasted for decades. More importantly, the subsequent purge of the PKI between 1965-1966 resulted in the deaths of approximately more than 500,000 people (with many more unreported killings).

The coup took place during a precarious time in Indonesian politics. By 1965, the only significant powers at the centre of Indonesian politics were the President, the PKI and the military. Under Sukarno’s “Guided Democracy,” presidential authority was supreme, but his ailing health meant increasing tussles for power between these three forces. Furthermore, President Sukarno’s increasingly anti-American foreign policy rhetoric, and warm ties with China had also led to American concerns that Indonesia may become a communist state. According to a memo released on 29 September 1965 (one day prior to the coup), the CIA had received intelligence that Indonesia was looking to attain nuclear weapons from China, a significant Communist threat. This accentuated the CIA’s involvement with the September 30 movement, given that they were already involved in previous regional rebellions around Indonesia in 1958.

Lingering controversies

Today, the motivations behind the 1965 coup remain a mystery, with several different popular interpretations of why the coup came about. The first version, the official version maintained by the Government and taught in Indonesian history textbooks, is that the coup was used by the PKI as an institution to seize state power. Declassified CIA documents have shown that the US Embassy supplied the army with a list of thousands of PKI cadres for targeting following the attack, which made convenient the narrative that the PKI as an institution was responsible, much like their involvement in Madiun in 1949. The second, proposed by the likes of Anderson and McVey, argued that it was an internal army push by junior officers who were disgruntled with the corruption and mismanagement by top military officials (Anderson and McVey, 2009). The third version, according to Crouch, was that the coup was the work of different discontented military officials but that the PKI played a key supporting role (A movement where PKI, Sukarno and Soeharto became entangled.) More recently, the fourth version, according to W.F. Wertheim was that Soeharto and other anti-communist army officials organised the movement through double agents in order to provide a pretext for attacking the PKI and overthrowing Sukarno (Wertheim, 1966).

As the differing accounts show, there are obvious loopholes in the way the coup materialised. The leftist soldiers and PKI youth members had not kidnapped Soeharto, despite his prominence in the military leadership. Soeharto was also exceptionally quick with his counter-measures and assumption of Army demand. It was these curious loopholes that led Kammen & McGregor to argue that September 30th “was a complex process that lacked a simple schema or linear development.” (Kammen and McGregor, 2012)

Wertheim, meanwhile, argued Soeharto was likely to be in charge of the coup. He had significant implications with the coup leaders, being a friend of both movement’s leaders, Lieutenant Colonel Untung and Colonel Latief. Wertheim highlights that Soeharto was not targeted despite being a key commander of troops in Jakarta and a potential threat to any mutiny or coup attempt. The movement’s troops did not blockade the Army Strategic Reserve Command’s (KOSTRAD’s) headquarters, although it was not far from their position in front of the palace. Emotionally, Soeharto had also reacted with “uncanny efficiency in extremely confusing circumstances.” While most military officials were unsure of what to do, Soeharto seemed to know exactly how to defeat the movement. Finally, the identity of Sjam, who Soeharto claimed was a confidante of PKI leader Aidit, was also suspicious. Wertheim believes he was a double agent, but it remains to be seen if he was really Aidit’s subordinate, or in charge of the movement to forestall the military coup.

However, even this narrative is difficult to believe. Werthiem’s conjecture makes Soeharto out to be a figure of superhuman genius and foresight. Besides, a plan that involved the removal of top generals would significantly weaken the KOSTRAD, and there is no indication amongst the archival material available that Soeharto had fallen out of favour with his comrades. His goal of crushing the PKI could have been carried out in a more straightforward manner, such as having Untung declare they were working for the PKI. After the coup, the movement leaders did not demand Sukarno appoint Soeharto as Yani’s replacement. While CIA involvement did make it easier for Soeharto to coordinate the process that ultimately resulted in his overthrow of Sukarno, and later the communist killings, the forced confessions of some conspirators cloud narratives that they were not acting on Soeharto’s behalf.

Despite the different accounts available, it is clear that Soeharto was aware of the internal conflict between the PKI and the Army, and that the CIA had supported him in the PKI pogrom that came after. However, the true intentions of the movement leaders remain contested, and continue to cast doubt over the validity of these different accounts put forth. What we also know is that a communist Indonesia, given the state of the Indonesian economy then, as well as deep schisms between it and the majority Muslim groups in the country, was never likely. However, not only did this movement become a pretext for the mutual suspicion and indiscriminate killings of hundreds of thousands of people, it also affected Indonesian life profoundly, with old wounds that have not healed despite the passage of time.

 

George is a Masters’s student at the Department of Methodology at The London School of Economics (LSE). He received his double bachelors in Political Science and International Relations from The Australian National University, before furthering his studies at the LSE. His interests include examining the phenomenon of democratic backsliding across Southeast Asian states, and the study of the political systems of Southeast Asian states from a comparative perspective. Prior to the commencement of his graduate studies, George held roles in various research capacities, notably an internship stint at Control Risks’ Global Risks Analysis (GRA) team as well as AKE International’s, covering the broader Asia Pacific region.

Documentary Review: Berlin 1945 (2020)

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by James Brown

Berlin in 1945: The German army made a last stand in April 1945 to defend Berlin against the Red Army, the capital was a frontline city for over two weeks, leading to widespread devastation (Image credit: BBC)

The BBC’s Answer to Svetlana Alexievich at Remembrance Weekend

The 11 November 2020 marked the strangest day of remembrance in British history. In a country where the World Wars form the central pillars of national memory, the wartime style disruptions of COVID-19 meant the usual parades and ceremonies could not take place. Yet nonetheless, what did occur, as usual, was the remembrance of war as it takes place each year on television screens across the country.

Next to the broadcast of the traditional ceremonies, films and documentaries about the World Wars are traditionally shown as part of a period of reflection. The schedule, however, is often quite repetitive with the same heroic war films and armchair-general-type shows being re-run each year. There are comparatively few solemn attempts at reflection, particularly ones which highlight the multinational character of the conflict and the plight of civilians on all sides of the battle. That is why it was so refreshing to see the BBC release a new documentary that focuses on the civilian experience of war, Berlin 1945.

Berlin 1945 has an enticingly simple format: voice actors read diary entries from civilians and soldiers written in the year 1945 while their photographs and archive footage features on screen. The narrative focuses on the city of Berlin during the Second World War’s twilight period but includes voices from the allied side as well. The choice of the single city of Berlin gives the documentary a positionality that captures not only the creeping encirclement of Germany, but also how the military struggles enacted from the Berghof, Washington D.C., Moscow, and London were converging at a single point after years of bloodshed across far-flung corners of the world.

Those whose diaries are read out, and at whose lives we are allowed to look at their bleakest and most human, include conscripted 16-year old soldiers, a Jewish woman in hiding, worried mothers, fathers, and children. We also encounter enforced labourers from France and Eastern Europe, exhausted Soviet ground troops, and allied pilots conducting massive bombing raids over Berlin. Their stories tell of the desperation faced by Berliners and the intensity of WWII’s final days.

It is a Kafkaesque tale of daily struggles not just to survive, but also of the attempts to preserve remnants of normality as the Red Army exacts extreme military and sexual violence on Berlin’s civilian population, especially the women. People continue to watch light entertainment films at the cinema and return to finish them even after the viewing is interrupted by air raids. Family and friends still gather for schnapps before they listen to Hitler’s latest morale-boosting radio broadcast. Teenage air-craft gunners try to shoot down Allied bombers, intermittently referring to each other as comrades and classmates. And all the while inane Nazi propaganda continues to bleat promises of future victory even as the Third Reich’s armed forces melt away before the people’s eyes.

The Red Flag hoisted over the Reichstag in 1945 (Image credit: BBC)

While watching, I was reminded of Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel Literature Laureate, and her oral chronicles of the Second World War and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979-1989). Her books are not novels or histories, but rather written choruses of individual voices who have borne witness to the tragedies of war. Uniquely, Alexievich is especially attentive to the experiences of Soviet women and children during these conflicts and her Unwomanly Face of War (2018) and Last Witnesses (2020) respectively cover the experiences of each group throughout WWII. As in Britain, the Second World War in the post-Soviet countries, known there as the Great Patriotic War, also occupies a central place in national histories. There too, the focus is on the story of the soldiers. Like Alexievich’s books, the BBC’s Berlin 1945 adds vital voices to the story of WWII which are frequently ignored.

Berlin 1945’s appearance this Remembrance Weekend, with its emphasis on the civilian and multinational side of conflict, also connects with the growing debate over how Britain should remember its wars. The country finds it difficult to discuss changing the focus of remembrance. When alternatives to the mainstream narrative are proposed; for example, as opposed to traditional red poppies, wearing white or black ones which highlight civilian and African or Caribbean experiences respectively, it provokes a visceral and corrosive backlash (the poppy issue imbricates broadcasters especially, including the BBC). A production like Berlin 1945, which is also significant for giving a humanised portrait of the enemy German population, helps remind us how conflict damages all human lives, on and away from the front, and gives voice to some of the forgotten victims of war.

Berlin 1945 is available on BBC iPlayer now.

James Brown is a PhD candidate in history at Northumbria University. His focus is on Soviet dissidents and their use in the politics and international relations of the Cold War. He previously studied at Glasgow University, doing a Master’s in East European, Russian, and Eurasian studies. During this time he studied Russian and wrote his thesis, ‘Returning to Machiavelli: Giving Belarus-Russia relations the Original Realist Treatment’, which received the prize for best dissertation from the Centre for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at Glasgow.