The CIA and Indonesia’s Anti-Communist Genocide

By Gisela Audrey Gunadi

On the 30th of September 1965, an attempted coup was struck against the Indonesian government under the Sukarno administration. This failed coup historically known as Gerakan 30 September or G30S, became a main element of General Soeharto’s consolidation of power and Sukarno’s fall. After becoming president in 1967, Soeharto led the New Order, maintaining a dictatorship that would last up to 31 years. The coup assassinated six high-ranking army officials, disposing off their bodies in a small unused well named Lubang Buaya or Crocodile Pit. Analyzing how Lubang Buaya and G30S affect the collective trauma of the Indonesian consciousness becomes a challenge. This is particularly because of the government’s lack of accountability and the way Soeharto’s dominant narrative remains to be the reality of most individuals in the country believing that godless communism is the main enemy. 

The anti-communist genocide which occurred between 1965 and 1966 claimed the lives of approximately 500,000 to 1,000,000 (Kwok, 2015). The army, paramilitary groups, and religious organizations hunted down members or suspected affiliates of Partai Komunis Indonesia or Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), alleged leftist sympathizers, and the ethnic Chinese. Members of Gerakan Wanita Indonesia or Indonesian Women’s Movement (Gerwani) were also targeted, as the organization worked closely alongside PKI. Gerwani members were arrested, beaten, raped and killed. Those who were arrested would stay incarcerated without a fair trial for many years (Lestariningsih, 2023). Many other innocent people were wrongly arrested and accused, countless were tortured (Melvin, 2020).

Soeharto’s regime has established a destructive yet intentional narrative against the PKI to grant him the United States’ alliance. U.S. foreign policy was opportunistic and saw Indonesia as a target of great victory if they could demonize the nation’s communist ties. Hence, assisting Soeharto becomes a prerequisite step for infiltrating the Indonesian government. A large part of why dismantling Soeharto’s narrative presents to be a  challenge is because the propaganda of the New Order has been inherited as history by the following generations. A prime example is how the film entitled Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI or Treachery of G30S/PKI was funded by the New Order government in 1984 and was televised annually on the anniversary of G30S. It was a mandatory screening for students until 1998, highlighting violence to showcase how communists were inherently evil beings. Soeharto’s narrative also officially claimed that immoral and sexually depraved communist women were behind the murders of army officials, and this notion was foregrounded in the film as well. Fragments of the New Order government still exist and prevail today, as most of Indonesia’s political elites rely on Soeharto’s false narrative for their legitimacy. Another reason why dismantling the New Order’s narrative is challenging is due to the continuous denial of the CIA, as well as the U.S. government. However, 51 years later in 2017, declassified documents from the U.S. embassy in Jakarta showcased telegrams indicating that embassy staff was aware of the systematic killings across the archipelago of 17,500 islands, as well as the military killing techniques (Melvin, 2020). 

Significant U.S. intervention conducted by the CIA provided information to the Indonesian army, specifically identifying and locating where Communist operatives and alleged sympathizers were. The CIA supplied communications equipment to help Soeharto spread false reports of PKI being responsible for the military purge (Bevins, 2017). Robert J. Martens, a U.S. embassy staff member, admitted handing a list of communists to the Indonesian military, and so did other senior U.S. diplomats and CIA officials. There were approximately 5,000 names given. He states that “it really was a big help to the army…they probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not all bad.” The CIA financially supported Soeharto, the Gestapo, and the Indonesian army, ultimately assisting a genocide. 

Mass violence backed up with U.S. dollars served as a prerequisite to Soeharto’s rise to power. In Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary The Act of Killing, a member of a far-right paramilitary group named Pemuda Pancasila or Pancasila Youth explains how he would never wear white pants when executing somebody during the massacre, while also showing his preferred method to murder someone. Anwar Congo, a notable member of Pemuda Pancasila, describes in front of the film crew how he would rape Gerwani members (Oppenheimer, 2012). 

The excess of violence in the years between 1965 and 1966 changed Indonesia as a country. The present government still controls the narrative foregrounded by the New Order, a prevailing force that ensures the narrative is to be inherited by the masses. The continuous denial from the U.S. government and the CIA in terms of their roles in the massacre has resulted in a traumatized yet unclear past within Indonesian history. Their lack of accountability only highlights how haunting the effects of the massacres throughout the archipelago really are, as there seems to be uncertainty on how justice can be implemented.

References

Bevins, V. (2017, October 21). What the United States did in Indonesia. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/the-indonesia-documents-and-the-us-agenda/543534/

Bevins, V. (2021). The Jakarta method: Washington's Anticommunist crusade and the mass murder program that shaped our world. Public Affairs.

Kwok, Y. (2015, September 30). Indonesia still haunted by 1965-66 massacre. Time. https://time.com/4055185/indonesia-anticommunist-massacre-holocaust-killings-1965/

Lestariningsih, A. D. (2023). Suara mereka Yang kembali Dan dikembalikan: Kisah eks tapol perempuan, 1965. Kompas.

Melvin, J. (2020, September 29). Telegrams confirm scale of US complicity in 1965 genocide. Indonesia at Melbourne. https://indonesiaatmelbourne.unimelb.edu.au/telegrams-confirm-scale-of-us-complicity-in-1965-genocide/

Oppenheimer, J. (Director). (2012). Jagal (The Act of Killing). Final Cut for Real.