Special issue of Tempo magazine timed for release of The Act of Killing.

These axes jockeyed for power, especially as Sukarno created and dissolved cabinets with regularity in the 1950s until the 1959 implementation of “Guided Democracy,” Sukarno’s plan for stability that forewent elections. The military (and its U.S. backers) and political Islamists grew concerned over the PKI’s popularity, and the military became increasingly belligerent. The PKI, led by firebrand Aidit, reacted by demanding greater political power and creating para-military organizations. The nationalist campaigns to seize West Papua and confront Malaysia in the early 1960s were used to distract Indonesians from their domestic political and economic concerns.

Maj. Gen. Suharto, left front, with Gen. Sabur, commander of the presidential guard, October 1965.

In this context of political and economic chaos, members of Sukarno’s Presidential Guard kidnapped six generals and a lieutenant on the morning of October 1, 1965. The officers were murdered, and the kidnappers - calling themselves the 30th of September Movement - said they were acting to prevent an anti-Sukarno coup d’état. A quick response and counterattack was organized in Jakarta, led by Major General Suharto, then the leader of the military’s Jakarta-based Strategic Reserve (Kostrad) troops. Within a day of the coup, Suharto had gained control of the military and the PKI was blamed for the kidnappings and murder, although evidence casts doubt as to how well-coordinated the plot was. Observers have also raised questions about what Suharto might have known prior October 1, since he was not targeted and appeared poised to take quick advantage of the situation. An above-ground, legal, popular, and mass-based political party was criminalized overnight, with membership punishable by death.

PKI members, their families, and their associates, but also other leftists, critics of the military, ethnic Chinese, and many others, were rounded up and murdered or told to report to the government. Many did so willingly, completely unaware of the fate that would befall them – they had done nothing criminal, after all, and didn’t fear for their safety.

Former political prisoners and their families remained marginalized for decades; their association noted on their ID cards, employment opportunities closed off to them. Although a few victims’ groups have emerged since the start of Indonesia’s democratic transition, they also remain marginalized and threatened. Their meetings are attacked and their members accused of engaging in communist activity. Indonesia’s official National Commission on Human rights (Komnas HAM) recently investigated the killings and published a report. Although its scope and budget were limited, it found horrendous abuses associated with the anti-communist purge. The commission recommended either non-judicial action to restore a sense of justice for the victims or that the Attorney General proceed with cases. The Attorney General, Darmono, said he could not act because "The 1965 rights violations are beyond (the scope of) the existing law." No action has yet been taken on the report.

U.S.’s dark history in the Indonesia’s mass violence

Although the political struggle and the resultant mass violence were the culmination of decades of conflict among Indonesians, the U.S. sanctioned, encouraged, and assisted the killings. The U.S. government was concerned that Indonesia might fall to communism as events in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos (as well as Latin America) were heating up.

Presidents Kennedy and Sukarno, Andrews Air Force Base, Suitland, Maryland, April 1961. Photo JFK Library and Museum.

The U.S. role in early Indonesian politics dates back to the revolution, when it assisted in negotiations on independence between the Dutch and Indonesian nationalists. Less than a decade later, the US was sending arms and support to rebels in Sulawesi and Sumatra who were fighting the central government in an effort to topple Sukarno.

The assistance included sending U.S. bombers from their base in the Philippines to attack targets in Indonesia. This ended after U.S. pilot Allen Pope was captured on May 18, 1958. His plane was shot down after bombing a church in Ambon. Without U.S. support, the rebellion was quickly crushed. Despite the U.S. role in the rebellion, anti-Sukarno military officers continued to discuss with the U.S. their mutual goal of toppling Sukarno and undermining the PKI.

The Kennedy administration facilitated the turnover of resource-rich Western New Guinea (West Papua) by The Netherlands, first to the UN and then Indonesia, against the wishes of its inhabitants. This was done to endear itself to Sukarno and the Indonesian military and perhaps for economic reasons.

The U.S. stepped up military aid and its training of Indonesian officers and police. In the early sixties, U.S. security assistance focused on “civic action: as a nation-building exercise, as a counterinsurgency strategy, and, not incidentally, as a front for covert operations aimed at the PKI.”[i]

As events unfolded in the days following October 1, American diplomatic and intelligence staff encouraged the eradication of the PKI, and closely monitored the Indonesian military’s actions. Robert Martens, head of the US embassy’s political affairs bureau, gave the army thousands of names of suspected PKI members. U.S. officials "checked off the names of those who had been killed or captured.” The embassy also transferred cash to leaders of the anti-PKI movement. As soon as Suharto’s command was consolidated, the US and other Western countries pledged millions of dollars in economic assistance, and Suharto reversed Sukarno’s policy by opening the country up to foreign investment.[iii]

In June 1966, the Times’ James Reston called the “savage transformation… a gleam of light in Asia.” Time magazine hailed Suharto’s takeover as “the West’s best news for years in Asia.”[v]

Later, Time Inc. sponsored a closed-door "Indonesian Investment Conference" in Geneva in November, 1967, the first such conference since Suharto seized power.

In 1967, Richard Nixon argued that "The U.S. presence... was a vital factor in the turnaround in Indonesia, where a tendency toward fatalism is a national characteristic. It provided a shield behind which the anti-communist forces found the courage and the capacity to stage their counter-coup and, at the final moment, to rescue their country from the Chinese orbit. And, with its 100 million people, and its 3,000-mile arc of islands containing the region's richest hoard of natural resources, Indonesia constitutes by far the greatest prize in the Southeast Asian area."

By the end of 1968, the CIA was downplaying Suharto’s brutality, writing in a classified National Intelligence Estimate that “the Suharto government provides Indonesia with a relatively moderate leadership.” Adding that “There is no force in Indonesia today that can effectively challenge the army's position, notwithstanding the fact that the Suharto government uses a fairly light hand in wielding the instruments of power.”

Later analyses of the violence showed its often chaotic nature, despite being organized from the top. Hermawan Sulistyo’s PhD thesis[vi], for example, shows that the anti-communist bloodletting was used by various groups to eliminate their enemies: landlords, tenants, ethnic Chinese, debtors, etc. All one had to do was accuse someone of being a member of the PKI or a sympathizer, and extrajudicial death was the result. Those who were not killed on the spot, frequently because the “evidence” of their ties to the PKI was egregiously spurious, were sent to prisons or exiled to islands that became prison camps, such as Buru. This was the fate of Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Indonesia’s best known author, who detailed his experience in his memoir and suffered persecution until the end of the Suharto regime.

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After-effects

The World Bank gave $30 billion to a dictator who killed 1 million. ETAN projected The Act of Killing on World Bank HQ. Photo by Dakota Bell.

Suharto had consolidated his rule by early 1966, and Sukarno had been shunted aside. The tight bonds forged by the CIA and diplomatic staff in Indonesia remained during Suharto’s tenure (1965-1999). U.S.-based multinational corporations were free to plunder the country – it is said that the first MNC to engage with the Suharto government, Freeport McMoRan, wrote its own contract with immensely favorable terms – making sure Suharto received his cut.

Suharto with Vice President Agnew.	Presidents Nixon and Suharto meet in 1970.
Kissinger, Suharto and Ford meet.	President Reagan with Suharto.
Suharto with President George H.W. Bush.	Suharto and Clinton at the White House, Oct. 1995.

The list of egregious human rights violations during Suharto’s New Order is lengthy, including the “mysterious shootings” incidents of the early 1980s, the 1984 Tanjung Priok massacre, and the persecution and killings in West Papua and Aceh. Among the most egregious was the 1975 invasion of former Portuguese colony and newly declared independent state Timor-Leste (East Timor), where up to one-third of the population died in the years following the invasion. Throughout all of these human rights disasters, the United States remained firmly on Suharto’s side, pledging financial and political support, encouraging investment, and perhaps most troubling, providing military aid and training, at times contrary to the US Congress’ wishes and in violation of US law. At a State Department meeting on Timor-Leste, one official told Secretary of State Kissinger how “happy [Indonesia is] with the positions we have taken. We’ve resumed, you know, all of our normal relations with them…” Kissinger responds: "Illegally and beautifully,” a reference to the fact that he had ignored the requirement to suspend military assistance to Indonesia for using U.S. weapons to invade its neighbor. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, bragged in his memoir of his ability to stymie effective UN action on the invasion of Timor-Leste.

Adi Rukun from The Look of Silence.

As you watch the films Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, ETAN asks you to think of the victims and to reflect on the role of the U.S. in perpetrating and perpetuating these crimes against humanity. The ability of the perpetrators to make their version of the story the official one allows them to enjoy impunity for their actions, an impunity that UK-based human rights group TAPOL calls an obstacle to Indonesia’s ongoing democratization. And a thorough accounting of events would also hold responsible figures in the United States and other Western countries who encouraged and supported the violence.

As Indonesia and Timor-Leste specialist Brad Simpson pointed out in a recent article in The Nation, the U.S. role in the violence portrayed in the films makes it our “act of killing, too.