Partai Komunis Indonesia Research Articles

An Appeal for International Solidarity in a Time of the Cold War: Retracing Indonesia’s Participation in the 1966 Tricontinental Conference

Abstract In January 1966, Cuban President Fidel Castro announced at the Tricontinental Conference the killing of more than 100,000 people in Indonesia and the destruction of the left movement in that country. The 1965–66 massacre of members and sympathisers of the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, pki) in Indonesia ushered in the authoritarian New Order regime under General Suharto, marking a realignment in Cold War politics. This article examines the battle to represent Indonesia by two competing delegations at the Tricontinental Conference and the materials left behind as traces of Cold War era social movements and tricontinentalism. The aim of the article is twofold. Drawing on archival research, oral history interviews, ego-documents, and ethnographic observations, the article consists of a partial reconstruction of the Indonesian intervention at the Tricontinental Conference, arguably the last public, international intervention by Indonesian leftists. The second part of the article examines the archives, broadly defined, used in the reconstruction and the research process itself, given the contested nature of these memories. In so doing, the article illustrates how the end of the Cold War, the rise of new media and technologies, and democratisation in Indonesia have contributed to the transmission of memories of this past to audiences in and outside of Indonesia.

Ethnic politics, the Cold War and sub-national dynamics: the Indonesian Communist Party, the ethnic Chinese minority and anti-Chinese activities in West Java, 1949–67

AbstractA growing body of scholarship has examined the intertwining of ideological polarization and inter-ethnic tensions during the Cold War. In this context, increasing attention has been paid to the experiences of the ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia, and how they were affected by international and national-level developments. Less scrutiny has been given to the role of sub-national forces, despite the fact that patterns of ethnic conflict sometimes varied markedly between different parts of a single country. This article addresses this lacuna via the case study of West Java, Indonesia. The article analyses the relationship between the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI), Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese population and anti-Chinese agitation in the 1950s and 1960s. International and national forces encouraged closer relations between the PKI and some ethnic Chinese Indonesians through the 1950s. From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s there were also recurrent episodes of anti-Chinese harassment, driven primarily by anti-communist groups. The strength of the anti-communist coalition within West Java helped make the province the epicentre of anti-Chinese agitation during crises in 1959–60 and 1963. Yet shifts in the configuration of military and political forces in the region meant anti-Chinese actions in West Java during the contentious period 1965–67 were less severe than in some other provinces. Overall the article highlights the need to consider the interaction of not only international and national processes but also sub-national regional dynamics when analysing the relationship between Cold War polarization and inter-ethnic conflict.

A region in dispute: Racialized anticommunism and Manila’s role in the origins of Konfrontasi, 1961–63

AbstractPrior scholarship has treated the Philippines as an outside party to the conflict over the formation of Malaysia, known as Konfrontasi, which has been dealt with as a dispute between Malaysia and Indonesia. This article demonstrates the centrality of the Macapagal administration to the origins of Konfrontasi. Treating Manila as a core actor gives new insight into Konfrontasi, which can be best understood as a regional conflict over the racial and social shape of island Southeast Asia in the final stages of decolonization. Racialized anticommunism, expressed through the forcible redivision of the region to ensure social stability, emerges as the preoccupation of all the state actors promoting and opposing the formation of Malaysia. At the same time, an examination of developments in the Philippines and the actions of the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) gives new insight into the critical function of the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) in this affair.

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

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...

The Hammer and Sickle in “Mecca’s Verandah”—The Indonesian Communist Party in Aceh, 1920–65

Here is a short history of the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI) in Aceh province, northern Sumatra, beginning with a brief overview of the effect of Dutch colonization on Acehnese society. It then traces the PKI’s emergence in the province during the early 1920s and the PKI’s relationship with political Islam between the 1930s and 1950s, before outlining the complexities of the PKI’s involvement in Aceh’s political life during the early 1960s. It argues that there is no reason to believe that the PKI in Aceh was particularly small or deviated substantially from the PKI’s patterns of growth or membership elsewhere in Indonesia. It also proposes that the relationship between the PKI and political Islam in the province was more complex than is generally acknowledged. It was only after a military-led anti-Communist propaganda campaign during the time of the 1965–66 genocide (Thirtieth of September Movement) that the PKI came to be widely viewed as a mortal enemy of Islam by Aceh’s civilian population.

Blood-Brothers: The Communist Party of the Philippines and the Partai Komunis Indonesia

Blood-Brothers: The Communist Party of the Philippines and the Partai Komunis Indonesia

FROM CONTROVERSY TO TOLERANCE: Dynamics of the Development of Istiqomah Mosque in Front of a Church in Ungaran Central Java Indonesia

This study aims to reveal the dynamic of the development of a mosque in front of a church: the case study of Istiqomah Mosque of Ungaran. The dynamics of the development is seen from some factors that encouraged the establishment of the mosque, the phenomenon of controversy, the problem solution, and the development of tolerance model. The study uses a historical-qualitative approach. The primary data are gathered from interviews, documentation, and observation. The purposes of building the mosque were to balance the national development, to prevent the influence of the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI, Indonesian Communist Party), and to create a symbol of tolerance. Controversy occurred in the process of construction because some political and religious elites considered the mosque as political Islam. The controversy waned after the New Order’s elites supported the construction of the mosque. The implementation of a moderate Islamic principles influenced the mosque in building tolerance to the Kristus Raja church in front of it.

Contesting Victimhood in the Indonesian Anti-Communist Violence and Its Implications for Justice for the Victims of the 1968 South Blitar Trisula Operation in East Java

ABSTRACTSince the end of the Suharto New Order regime and Indonesia’s transition to democracy in 1998, the country has struggled to address past serious human rights violations, in particular the 1965–66 anti-communist violence. Half a million members and sympathizers of the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI) and its mass organizations were killed and hundreds of thousands were detained, most without trial. Although these individuals seem to have the clearest claims to victimhood, they still cannot easily gain such recognition, facing opposition from the military and representatives of civilian organizations implicated in the violence. The contested nature of the status of victim, and in particular how to accommodate claims from those who were less central to the experience of political persecution but who nonetheless suffered as part of the government and military’s anti-communist strategy, is the subject of this article. Drawing on scholarly literature on victims, victimhood and collective memory, I analyse a case study of a group of villagers in south Blitar, East Java and how their being implicated in providing support for leftist fugitives in that area in 1966–68 has influenced how they are perceived by society. Representations of this group of villagers by the military and government have resulted in the rise of a collective victimhood across generations, but a victimhood that nonetheless remains striated by victim hierarchies and difficulties in identifying as victim. As a result of these factors, this complex victim group has, by and large, been excluded by mainstream transitional justice processes, except for limited efforts by two small non-government organizations in the local area, discussed in this article. The resurgence of anti-communism since the election of President Joko Widodo, however, creates new difficulties for the victims and these organizations.

“Down to the Very Roots”: The Indonesian Army’s Role in the Mass Killings of 1965–66

ABSTRACTThis article makes the case that the anticommunist violence of 1965–66 in Indonesia was neither inevitable nor spontaneous, but was encouraged, facilitated, directed and shaped by the Indonesian army leadership. It develops that argument in three parts. It shows first how the temporal and geographical variations in the pattern of mass killing corresponded closely to the varied political postures and capacities of army commanders in different locales, and how the mass violence everywhere depended on the army’s substantial logistical assets. Next, it outlines how the army encouraged and directed mass killings by mobilizing militia groups and death squads, and encouraging them to detain and kill members of the PKI (Partai Komunis Indonesia—Indonesian Communist Party) and its allies. Third, it describes how the army provoked and legitimized mass violence by launching a sophisticated media and propaganda campaign that blamed the PKI for the kidnap and murder of six army generals on 1 October 1965, and called for the party and its affiliates to be physically annihilated. The army had allies in this effort, none more enthusiastic than the anticommunist religious and political leaders who fanned the flames of hatred and violence by allusions to long-standing religious and cultural differences. Mass violence was also fuelled by the wider international context of the Cold War and by the acts and omissions of key foreign powers. But without the army’s orchestrated campaign to cast the PKI as evil, without the conscious decision to effect its physical annihilation, and without the mobilization of the army’s considerable organizational and logistical capacity to carry out that decision, it is unlikely that any of those long-standing tensions or external forces would ever have given rise to violence of such staggering breadth and brutality.

Glimpses of Indonesia's 1965 Massacre through the Lens of the Census: Migration and Refuge in East Java

The anti-Communist violence that followed the kidnapping and assassination of senior Indonesian generals on the morning of October 1, 1965, marked the beginning of the most traumatic period in modern Indonesian history. Prior work on this subject focuses almost exclusively on the killings themselves rather than on any movements of population that may have occurred as the violence unfolded. This paper presents evidence of widespread migration associated with the violence using estimates of one-time changes in population based on data from three Indonesian censuses that were taken shortly before or after the killings. Specifically, this paper demonstrates that information about locations in which cadres of the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI) were regrouping in the wake of the killings, as identified by the intelligence apparatus of the Indonesian military, coincide with locations for which there is substantiation, based on census data, of a large, one-time in-migration during 1965–66. These destinations tended to be located in established PKI strongholds, which the army was unable to effectively penetrate, and where refugees could expect to find shelter among like-minded people. The findings of this paper also provide clues about district-level locations in East Java in which researchers may find additional information about such movements of people and about the 1965–66 killings more generally from survivors and witnesses.

Rok 1965 w Indonezji w spektaklach Papermoon Puppet Theatre z Yogyakarty i filmie Scena zbrodni Joshuy Oppenheimera

1965 is the date that has been disregarded in the recent history of Indonesia and the world. Gerakan 30 September (30th September Movement), self-appointed organization consisting of representatives of the Indonesian army carried out a failed coup on October 1, 1965, killing six generals. The same day evening the Movement fell and Partai Komunis Indonesia (Indonesian Communist Party) was blamed. In the following weeks communists and their supporters began to be removed from public life being arrested and murdered. The 1965 purges have been read in the West as a victory over communism. In Indonesia they remained taboo for almost half of the century. The paper focuses on showing how the events of 1965 are shown in today's Indonesia and in the word. For Papermoon Puppet Theatre 1965 is a key to understand the past, present and future of their homeland. For Oppenheimer meeting with former criminals has provided an opportunity to make the film about the political system in which genocide was erased from the collective memory of those who survived, and the offenders remain unpunished. Keywords : Indonesian studies, Indonesian history, 1965 and its aftermath, theatre, puppet theatre, Papermoon Puppet Theatre, The Act of Killing, documentary film, Joshua Oppenheimer

Sweet Potato Dreaming: Development, Displacement and Food Crisis in South Blitar, East Java, 1968

In the transition to Suharto's New Order regime in the province of East Java, fugitives from the political Left, members and sympathizers of the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI), came to the south of the province to set up a rural base from 1967 to regroup and resist the military-dominated regime. The military responded by mounting a counterinsurgency operation, the Trisula Operation, in 1968, against what they alleged were underground guerrillas in the area. Using food as a lens, this article traces the effects of counterin-surgency operations on food cultivation and consumption patterns in South Blitar, East Java. Changes to food cultivation and land use as a result of the operation coincided with shifts in thinking under the New Order regime in relation to food and local economy, despite both sides of the conflict agreeing on the desirability of modernization and development for the area. Food consumption and production therefore became a site of struggle for legitimacy and a mirror showing the shifts in power in East Java during the early New Order period.

BATTLING OVER THE BUREAUCRACY

On 10 October 1963, a group of Muslim college students staged a protest at the State Islamic Institute (IAIN) in Yogyakarta. Rejecting efforts by Nahdlatul Ulama to transform the IAIN system into a traditionalist fiefdom, the students declared that they would no longer accept the existing IAIN administration. Within weeks, the IAIN protests spread to Jakarta and garnered the attention of the national media, the Minister of Religious Affairs, and Sukarno himself. By examining this largely forgotten episode in Indonesian Islamic history, this article argues that intra-Muslim conflict continued unabated in the wake of Masyumi's dissolution and the rise of the Partai Komunis Indonesia. In fact, Sukarno's Guided Democracy merely provided a new political framework through which Muslim traditionalists and modernists alike articulated their interests and pursued political influence vis-à-vis one another. During the 10 October incident, both Nahdlatul Ulama administrators and modernist protestors deployed Sukarnoist rhetoric and appealed to the authority of the President and his revolutionary nationalism in order to stake their respective claims on bureaucratic power. In this sense, the incident was not a modernist uprising against Sukarno's state but an intra-Muslim contest over who should have access to and control of the sprawling religious bureaucracy.

Film dan politik di Indonesia 1957-64; Hambatan peredaran "Pagar kawat berduri" dan "Anak perawan di sarang penjamun"

This study attempts to discuss the offensive policy taken by Partai Komunis Indonesia (Indonesian Communist Party) in cultural sphere, especially in film during the period of Demokrasi Terpimpin (1957-64). One of the implementation of the policy was the decision to stop the circulation of two films, Pagar Kawat Berduri and Anak Perawan di Sarang Penyamun, written by Asrul Sani and Usmar Ismail. By analyzing varios written and audio-visual sources, this study concludes that the reason were more political. Film was not seen as a form of art, but was suspected as a threat to the political power of the party.

Ambivalent Alliance: Chinese Policy towards Indonesia, 1960–1965

AbstractFrom 1960 until 1965, the People's Republic of China (PRC) built a remarkably cordial quasi alliance with the Republic of Indonesia. At the same time, however, the years between 1960 and 1965 were marked by two large waves of anti-Chinese movements in Indonesia. Although more than half a century has passed since these events, our understanding of Chinese foreign policy towards Indonesia during these turbulent years remains incomplete. In 2008, the Chinese Foreign Ministry Archives declassified for the first time documents produced during the years between 1961 and 1965. However, very recently in summer 2013, the Chinese Foreign Ministry Archives re-classified the main body of its collection. Through examining this body of fresh but currently inaccessible official records, this article aims to bridge the gap between scholarly works on the PRC's diplomatic history and overseas Chinese history. By tracing the processes by which Chinese diplomats dealt with Sukarno, the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, and the Communist Party of Indonesia (Partai Komunis Indonesia, or the PKI), this article argues that the ambivalent Chinese alliance with Indonesia was shaped by three disparate pressures which interacted and competed with one another: the strategic need to befriend Third World countries, ethnic ties to the Chinese in Indonesia and ideological commitment to the international communist movement.

TRANSFORMATION OF LUDRUK PERFORMANCES: FROM POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT AND STATE HEGEMONY TO CREATIVE SURVIVAL STRATEGY

This article discusses the transformation of ludruk performances, from Soekarno to Reformation era. In discussing the problem, we apply a cultural studies perspective. From our analysis, there are three findings related to the discursive transformation of ludruk stories. Firstly, in the era of Soekarno, many ludruk groups joined Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat (Lekra/Institute of People’s Culture), which had many ideological similarities with Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI/ Indonesian Communist Party). Consequently, ludruk groups performed some provocative stories that exposed the problems of lower-class people and criticized Islamic religious beliefs. Secondly, after the bloody 1965 tragedy, the regional military apparatuses controlled ludruk groups and their performances, including the stories. In this era, ludruk stories supported the New Order regime’s national development programs and raised people’s consensus on the significance of militarism through popular stories about people’s resistance to colonizers. Thirdly, in the Reformation era, some ludruk groups make newer, interesting stories about many complicated social problems in contemporary society. Finally, we conclude that this mode of transformation through creating newer, social problem-based stories that intertwine with historical conditions has deep historical roots in ludruk performances. In addition, during the Reformation period in whichmarket capitalism becomes a dominant ideology and practice, such newer stories and breakthroughs of staging may become a suitable creative survival strategy for ludruk groups in the midst of techno-cultural popularity as the dominant taste and orientation in societies.

The ‘Gestapu’ events of 1965 in Indonesia: New evidence from Russian and German archives

One of the unsolved riddles of Indonesian history in the twentieth century is the so-called Gestapu affair and its aftermath. For the murder of six army generals on the night of 30 September 1965 the Indonesian communists and President Soekarno were widely held responsible. Indonesian leftists – real and alleged – were persecuted; hundreds of thousands were killed. The longterm consequences affected Indonesian domestic as well as foreign policy: the changeover in government resulted in 30 years of rule by Soeharto; the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI, Indonesian Communist Party) and leftist organizations were banned; relations with China were severed, those with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were reduced; and ties with Washington and the Western world intensified.

The Birth of the New Order State in Indonesia: Sexual Politics and Nationalism

Scholars have suggested that Indonesia's former president Suharto's New Order state legitimated itself by destroying the Partai Komunis Indonesia (Communist Party of Indonesia, PKI). In this article, the author points to the sexual politics underlying this process of legitimation that have been largely ignored in earlier analyses. She focuses on the military's orchestrated campaign of slander and sexual innuendo against the PKI's women's organization Gerwani (Gerakan Wanita Indonesia, Indonesian Women's Movement). This campaign was pursued for more than 30 years since the 1 October 1965 putsch in Indonesia that eventually brought Suharto to power. It embodied a powerful, supportive logic by which Suharto's rule was sustained until mid-1998, creating a particular form of national, militarized identity. Another consequence of the sexual accusations Gerwani endured was the destruction of what was at the time one of the most powerful women's movements in the world. Not only was Gerwani banned and destroyed, but the remaining women's organizations were also brought under strict government control. The state even set up its own mass women's organizations, under the umbrella of Dharma Wanita (Women's Duty), which were intended to re-subordinate rather than emancipate women.

The Legacy of Violence in Indonesia

In a journal whose primary focus has consistently been on the hic et nunc, on explaining contemporary sociopolitical realities, it may strike our readers as a bit bizarre to devote so much ink and space to events that transpired some 35 years ago, as we have in this issue. But the inherent importance of the massive cataclysm unleashed in Indonesia between October 1965 and March 1966, resulting in the essential extermination of the PKI (Partai Komunis Indonesia, the Indonesian Communist Party), hitherto the largest communist party in the free world, was to reverberate in the country’s subsequent history. Beginning in 1975, violence was exerted against the struggle for independence in East Timor, intensifying during the culmination of that struggle in 1999. The Asian financial crisis in 1997–99 hit Indonesia harder than any of its neighbors, precipitating nationwide violence during the 1997 elections, which culminated in the fall of the Suharto regime the following year and in the still-fragile transition of the world’s fourth-largest nation (population ca. 228 million) to democracy. This ambitious special issue is hence concerned with violence in the Indonesian archipelago (the largest in the world, with some 13,000 islands and some 300 distinct ethnolinguistic groups): with the phenomenon itself, its origins, its political memorialization, and its future. As Professors Zinoman and Peluso explain below, most of these papers originated in a conference organized by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Berkeley in February 2001; to these we have added the study “Democratization and Regional Power Sharing in Papua/Irian Jaya: Increased Opportunities and Decreased Motivations for Violence,” by Timo Kivimaki and Ruben Thorning, as it is concerned with much the same problematic and in the same region.

Revolution, religion and magic; The PKI in West Timor, 1924-1966

The Indonesian Communist Party began as a socialist organization in Java in 1914 and after various permutations took on the name Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) in 1924. Outside the Russian sphere, it was the first commu nist party in Asia. Most studies of the PKI stress its activities in Java, and to a lesser extent Bali and Sumatra, while the other islands have been largely ignored.1 An examination of the history of the PKI in the Timor region, how ever, reveals that the party was adept at adapting to local conditions. The area is predominantly Christian, but traditional animism and belief in the powers of the supernatural have remained strong also. The PKI in West Timor showed from its earliest days up until the point when the party was dissolved that it was capable of mixing radical politics, Christianity, tradi tional magic, and witchcraft into a blend that was palatable to the variety of local tastes.2 The PKI was no latecomer to the region either, for in the very year the party was formed, Dutch officials in Timor reported communist activity in their area. Throughout the Dutch period there was regular men tion of communists undermining rust en orde (peace and order) in West Timor and the surrounding islands. Under the Indonesian administration the PKI blossomed in West Timor. By the mid-1960s there were PKI members in the