Arbitrary Detention in Indonesia: Buru Prison Island, 1969–1979

Abstract

Between 1969 and 1979 Indonesia’s New Order regime consigned some 12,000 leftist political prisoners to a penal settlement on the island of Buru in eastern Indonesia. The prisoners were sent there without trial as part of a mass detention campaign undertaken by the state security organisation, Kopkamtib. Once on the island, they were expected to create a new, viable settlement by clearing jungle and planting crops. The authorities had no intention of releasing the prisoners, but rather expected then to settle on the island for good. In order to enhance the ‘normalcy’ of the settlement, the authorities persuaded and coerced the families of some prisoners to move to Buru. Although conditions were better in Savanajaya, the settlement allocated to families, than in other parts of the penal colony, the family members of detainees were subject to many of the same rules of detention. Prisoners and their families suffered both from difficult conditions on Buru and from harsh ill-treatment by camp guards. Under international pressure, the New Order regime dismantled the settlement in 1979, and most of the detainees returned to Java.