Indonesia's Political Prisoners

Abstract

S INCE GENERAL SUKARTO became President of Indonesia his program known as Orde Baru (New Order) has been characterized by an unrelenting domestic anti-Communism, underscored by the formal banning of the Indonesia Party (PKI) and the proscription (except for purposes of academic study) of Marxism-Leninism and related ideologies.1 Beginning in the closing weeks of 1965, an intensive Army-assisted pogrom, often initiated by Muslim youths and other opponents of the Party in Sukarno's day, led to widespread slaughter of PKI members, sympathizers, suspected sympathizers and, it is to be feared, innocents. Estimates of the number killed have ranged from 78,ooo (the figure arrived at by an Indonesian government investigating tribunal at the close of I965), to one million (the estimate of a 15o-man investigating team, commissioned by the Army and reported in July I966), with one authoritative calculation giving a possible figure of 250,000.2 There have also been waves of arrests of civilians as well as many government officials, including military in all ranks and branches of service, suspected of complicity in the i965 coup attempt, of PKI affiliation, or of mere sympathy. The grand total of those arrested for political (i.e., coupor PKI-related) reasons between the end of I965 and the end of 1975 (most of them in I965-66) is at least 58o,ooo. The vast majority had been set free by the early seventies, but about 34,000 (some assessments go as high as 55,000) still remain confined. Between the end of I966 and I973 such arrests and/or dismissals from government service on similar grounds continued, though at a reduced rate, and only in recent years does there appear to be a noticeable drop. A few examples of the arrest pattern must suffice. In September I968, the Military Regional Commander of Central Java announced that 70,000 Communist activists, representing most of the PKI's regional and district committee members in Central Java, had been