Sept. 30, 1965: What was really at stake?

Sept. 30, 1965: What was really at stake?

Max Lane, Visiting Fellow, Center for Asia Pacific Social
Transformation Studies, University of Wollongong, New South Wales,
Australia

In the last years of the New Order and since the fall of Gen.
Soeharto, discussion opened up within Indonesian society about
the real nature of what happened on Sept. 30, 1965. A consensus
had developed among a large section of the country's
intelligentsia, NGO community and democratic activist movement
that Sept. 30 was a great human tragedy. More than one million
people lost their lives: This has become an acknowledged fact of
great sadness and concern. A number of short stories, poems and
films have been written or produced lamenting this tragedy.

There has also been a great deal of interest in uncovering the
facts of the events of Sept. 30 and the weeks afterwards. Did
president Sukarno no about Col. Untung's plans? Did Soeharto know
and was he involved? Did the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI)
really know what was happening or were just a few individual PKI
leaders aware? Are there other facts that still have to be
uncovered?

One outcome of this discussion, especially in the first few
years after the fall of Soeharto, was the appeal for
"reconciliation". Figures such as the publisher, Goenawan
Mohammed, raised the example of Nelson Mandela as somebody who
led the way for reconciliation between the supporters of
apartheid and its victims in South Africa after the overthrow of
apartheid.

Former president Abdurrahman Wahid, even before he became
president, also urged reconciliation. He even sent a message to
the Peoples Consultative Assembly (MPR) urging the repeal of the
MPR decree banning the spreading if Marxist and Leninist ideas.

This recommendation for reconciliation was rejected, on the
other hand, by the writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer, demanding
instead accountability for those responsible for the mass murder,
mass imprisonment and confiscation of property.

The discussion of "tragedy" and "reconciliation", and even of
justice, however, misses one major question: Why? Why did it
happen? Why did Soeharto and his allies deem it necessary for
such a wholesale purge of society? More than one million people
were slaughtered; all active worker, peasant and women's campaign
organizations were banned, purged or otherwise disempowered;
scores of newspapers and magazines were closed; half of the
intellectual and artistic community were killed or imprisoned;
all left-wing political parties were smashed and later on even
conservative parties were virtually taken over by the state
special operations. Why?

In the sharp and bitter polarization of society between 1960-
1965, what was at stake? What indeed was being fought over?

From the point of view of Sukarno's supporters including the
biggest political party, the PKI, they saw looming in the future
a country dominated by corrupt and repressive business generals
working hand-in-glove with Western business and financial
interests. They called the business generals, kabir, capitalist
bureaucrats, and the Western business and financial interests,
Nekolim -- neo-colonialism and imperialism. They assessed that if
the country was taken over by these parties, most Indonesians
would be sacrificed for their personal wealth and economic
interests. They also feared that such a new set-up would
undermine the development of a genuine, and independent national
culture, something that was still developing only 20 years after
independence.

Opponents of Sukarno and the PKI were divided into two camps,
but two camps that worked together. The Armed Forces, a section
of the conservative religious organizations (though not all of
them), and people who owned land opposed Sukarno because his
policies undermined their privileges.

The Sukarno government began a program of retooling, that is
of dismissing corrupt officials, especially kabir, which
threatened the privileged position of business generals. The
government also talked about arming tade union and peasant
organizations, threatening the Armed Forces monopoly on weapons.

The government also introduced laws attempting to distribute
land. Peasant unions which unilaterally occupied land, when the
law failed to be implemented quickly, vigorously supported these
laws.

Some religious organizations were opposed to the Sukarno
policies for ideological reasons -- hostility towards communism
as an atheistic ideology -- and also because their leadership
were drawn from the land-owning and business layers of society.

The Sukarno government also nationalized first Dutch, then
British and Belgium foreign companies as well as some American
companies. Indonesia refused to become a member of the
International Monetary Fund or take conditional loans from the
World Bank.

This alliance between the Armed Forces, land-owners and
Western business interests also found an ally in a section of
students and intellectuals. Most students were, however, still
organized in the big student organizations affiliated to the
Sukarnoist and communist parties. Many of the anti-Sukarno
students and intellectuals went on to become prominent figures
during the New Order period: Goenawan Mohammed, Arief Budiman,
Sjahrir, just to name a few.

At the time, they saw the Sukarno government as a dictatorship
based the cult of the personality. A survey of the press and
magazines of the time and of the discussions among the political
public indicates that the level of repression under Sukarno was
minimal. Two political parties had been banned for effusing to
disassociate themselves from military coups in Sumatra and
Sulawesi. However, the leadership and memberships, and their
affiliated organizations, continued to operate.

However, there were elements of authoritarianism in the
Sukarno government's methods. Political discourse, even criticism
and opposition, had to be made in the language of Sukarnoism.
Sukarno's opponents were forced to pretend to be supporters of
Sukarno and to attack their opposition as fake Sukarnoists.

Of course, the government was not the only source of
repression during this period. A bigger source was the Armed
forces itself, which banned left-wing publications and activities
in many provinces. Even in Jakarta, as early as 1960, Pramoedya
had been arrested by the military and gaoled for one year. After
all, this was a period of martial law.

The Sukarno government's resort to cult tactics and later to
arresting some opponents were violations of human rights,
although on a smaller scale than that carried out by the Armed
Forces even before 1965, let alone compared to the mass slaughter
after 1965. These methods used by the government confused the
situation and facilitated some students' attention being directed
away from the real issue at stake.

Today nobody speaks of kabir and Nekolim. But how different
are the concepts of kabir versus KKN, and how different are the
Sukarnoist critiques of Nekolim and today's criticism's of the
exploitative role of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank,
and the World Trade Organization?