Unmarked Graves: Death and Survival in the Anti-Communist Violence in East Java, Indonesia by Vannessa Hearman

Abstract

Reviewed by: Unmarked Graves: Death and Survival in the Anti-Communist Violence in East Java, Indonesia by Vannessa Hearman Taomo Zhou (bio) Vannessa Hearman. Unmarked Graves: Death and Survival in the Anti-Communist Violence in East Java, Indonesia. Singapore: NUS Press, 2018. 288 pp. More than two decades after the downfall of Suharto, the silence surrounding the mass violence in Indonesia in 1965–66 has been broken. Academics and the general public have been engaging in discussions regarding this inflection point in modern Indonesian history and connecting it to the larger global structure of the Cold War.1 Vannessa Hearman’s book is not only an exciting new addition to this body of literature, but also a game changer that challenges existing research frameworks. Given the enormous size and influence of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI, Partai Komunis Indonesia) during the early 1960s, the third largest communist party in the world at the time, the eradication of the party meant the remaking of Indonesian society. The country transformed from “a stridently anti-imperialist order” with egalitarian aspirations under Sukarno to Suharto’s autocratic system based on the dominance of the military; investment and aid from the capitalist West; and a labor force with almost no organized political representation. By tracing the trajectory of this transformation, Unmarked Graves makes a significant methodological intervention. The book demonstrates that, although a few months of intense violence cemented Major General Suharto’s ascendance to the presidency, the army’s takeover was not immediately assured, and the power transition was a long and “protracted process” (33). The Indonesian mass killings, Hearman suggests, should not be studied as event history, but approached through a longue durée perspective. This paradigm-shifting monograph begins with a fine-grained analysis of the economic and political developments of East Java from the early twentieth century to the late 1970s. This densely populated region, with rich resources and yet astounding mass poverty, was “a key province in the struggle for legitimacy and control” after the September Thirtieth Movement (Gerakan 30 September, G30S) and witnessed some of the most gruesome violence as a result (129). The devastation of the global Great Depression, the Japanese Occupation, and the Indonesian National Revolution combined to forge a local economy relying on fragmented, labor-intensive sugar cultivation and subsistence-crop production. In the 1950s and early 1960s, East Java was known as Sukarno’s “fortress” due to the prominence enjoyed by pro-Sukarno forces. Under Sukarno’s protection, the PKI had been active in the region. Hearman illuminates that the Communist Party’s popularity derived from its broad-ranging social programs, including “trade unions, schools, community organizations, and cultural groups” (20). Its electoral success during the liberal democracy period can be largely attributed to its [End Page 125] promotion of education, social welfare, and women’s emancipation. Starting from 1957, Sukarno’s implementation of “Guided Democracy” created an environment for the PKI to grow into a major political player, but the president’s authoritarian rule also hindered its development. Moreover, the PKI’s increased power caused a sense of insecurity within the Indonesian army while the party’s advocacy for land reform led to resentment by the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU, traditional Islamic party), sowing the seeds for the conflicts that ensured. Echoing works by Jess Melvin, Geoffrey Robinson, and John Roosa, Hearman refutes the cultural essentialist explanation that depicts the mass violence as a schizophrenic episode in which the stereotypically gentle and polite Indonesian people collectively went “amok.” She also debunks the Suharto regime’s narratives that portrayed the violence as spontaneous and horizontal, rooted in the long-simmering tension between the militant and atheist PKI and the fanatic NU (80). According to Hearman, the extermination of the political left in Indonesia was systematically organized by the Indonesian army. Rather than being a law-abiding and disciplined peacekeeper, the army was a shrewd instigator of violence. Its most lethal weapon was not its military prowess but propaganda. Capitalizing on some existing prejudice toward the leftists and evoking memories of the PKI’s past “betrayal,” particularly the Madiun Affair of 1948, the army “conditioned” radical Muslims for violence against the PKI, instilling in them a belief...