Glimpses of Indonesia's 1965 Massacre through the Lens of the Census: The Role of Civilian Organizations in the Mass Anti-Communist Killings of 1965–66 in East Java

Abstract

Abstract: The role of civilian allies of the Indonesian Army is an important theme in narratives of the anti-Communist killings of 1965-66 in Indonesia. There is an ongoing debate about the extent to which these organizations were involved in the killings. Spatial analysis can provide clues about the degree to which these organizations may have been involved in different locations. The aim of this paper is to use spatial analytics to answer two questions: first, is there evidence that politico-religious allies of the Indonesian Army in the province of East Java were involved in the killings across the province? And second, if there are indications of variation in the degree to which these two organizations were involved in different parts of the province, what do these variations tell us about the interplay between the military and these organizations in the killings? In order to answer these questions, we use kecamatan-level estimates of population loss associated with the violence of 1965-66 in conjunction with information on the locations of major army command centers and centers of politico-religious organization in East Java to test propositions about whether the degree of population loss is systematically associated with the locations of these centers. While the methods cannot prove involvement of specific individuals or organizations, the results are consistent with much of what is known about key players in the violence. They also identify hot spots for which there are indications of possible involvement by either the military or its civilian allies or both.