The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reported in 1968 that “in terms of the numbers killed, the anti-Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI- Indonesian Communist party) massacres...rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century...” (Directorate of Intelligence, 1968). Dr Geoffrey Robinson, former United Nations (UN) Political Affairs Officer and current professor of genocide and political violence, analyzes the events in his book The Killing Season: a History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66. Here he explains how the largely unexamined massacres occurred and why it has remained in the shadows of other violence.
According to Robinson, the events began unravelling in Aceh on October 1, 1965, when a group called the September 30th Movement (G30S) killed seven members of the Indonesian Army in an attempt to protect standing President Sukarno from a CIA backed coup d’état (Robinson 2019, 6). Despite the confession, and against the wishes of PKI sympathetic Sukarno, the Indonesian Army placed blame on the leftists and the PKI to forcibly remove Sukarno from office. Days after the supposed coup, the army advocated for violence, killings, and detention ofG30S and PKI. They published propaganda and arrested many without warrants. The violence spread to Central Java by the end of the month and gradually made it to Bali in just two months (Robinson 2019, 8). During these months, it is estimated that over 80,000 had already been killed. The military rule took over by 1966 under Major General Suharto, effectively banning leftist teachings, organizations, and violently overtaking the PKI (Robinson 2019, 8). The violence was diminished in some parts of Indonesia after the authoritative regime seized control, however, it endured in other areas until late 1998 under the New Order (Robinson 2019, 11).
Both the PKI and PNI had armed militias and, in the eyes of the United States and the United Kingdom, Indonesia was falling victim to communism (Robinson 2019, 110-113). Western nations worked to prevent this fall by supporting the authoritarian seizure of power, naming the anti-communist movement as “a gleam of light in Asia” during the late 1940s (Reston, 1966). Anywhere from 500,000- 1 million people were slaughtered during the New Order (Robinson 2019, 122).
Self-determination and Political Affiliations
In the current definition, genocide can only be classified if the acts are intentionally committed to eliminating a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. David Lisson argues that national groups must be more thoroughly examined, and all updated to include self-determining groups (Lisson 2008, 1460). Lisson explains that groups, under international law, have the right to “external” and “internal” self-determination. External includes the formation of an independent state, for example, from a colonial power. Internal, on the other hand, has been described as “a people’s pursuit of its political, economic, social and cultural development within the framework of an existing state (Roya, 1999). Genocide is the destruction of a group’s pursuit of these rights (Lisson 2008, 1471).
The formation of the PKI as a strong political party manifested hatred among the Indonesian Army and the Right. The PKI lost its right to form its political framework within Indonesia and its capability of internal self-determination. What starkly contrasts the Indonesian massacres from the historically acclaimed atrocities (the Holocaust, Cambodia, and Rwanda) is that the victims were not sought out over their ethnicity, religion, or race. Ideology based genocides were not the international norm in 1948, but the increase of ideological war crimes in modern times leaves the necessity to include self-determination and political affiliations in the definition. Many of the victims were not communists themselves. Many had a family member or a friend, that was affiliated with the PKI. The events that took place in Indonesia were an attempt to destroy, in whole or in part, an ideology (Robinson 2019, 298).
Gender, Sex, and Age
Women, in wartime and genocide, are not spared or treated with more reverence than the politically active men. On the contrary, women suffer gruesome and unimaginable sexualized deaths. It is far too common for women and young girls to be victims of rape, sexual assault, genital mutilation, humiliation, forced marriages, sex trafficking, and prostitution (Mackinnon 2005, 314). While women have not been single-handedly sought out as the sole group of genocide, the tactics used against them are vastly different from the tactics used against men. Sexual abuse was used as a genocidal tool in Indonesia by causing bodily and mental harm to women, preventing births, and displacing women and children (Mackinnon 2005, 314).
There are distinguishing factors of wartime rape and genocidal rape. In the conventional definition of genocide, there must be a deliberate intent and aim to destroy a people. While wartime rape would be to further the geopolitical aims of war and would be classified as a war crime. In genocidal rape, the perpetrators violate “...the female-identified part of a woman, deeply and closely-held aspect of self-conception that intrinsically involves identification with... one’s group” (Mackinnon 2005, 334). In most instances, women and girls are not raped by foreign soldiers. They are abused by neighbours who know their ethnicity, religion, and political affiliations (Robinson 2019, 132). It is an intimate crime against women, as a group. The issue, however, is that women are not legally defined as a people under international law. Because of this, genocidal rape can only be classified as a tool of genocide, when, in reality, it is the actual genocide itself. Women, girls, and some men are often raped and sexually abused in times of genocide because of their sex, race, and political affiliations (Mackinnon 2005, 316).
Many women who faced wartime sexual violence remain silent. The lack of legal justice enhances sexual violence as a tool of genocide, neglecting its survivors (Mackinnon 2005, 339). With the physical and mental attack on girls and women during the Indonesian massacre, the women’s political and social empowerment campaign (before 1965) was efficiently ended. In its place the New Order left behind the patriarchal ideas, further suppressing women (Robinson 2019, 302).
Endnotes -
- Directorate of Intelligence, US Central Intelligence Agency. 1968. Indonesia -- 1965: The Coup That Backfired (Washington, DC: CIA)
- Lisson, David. 2008. "Defining "National Group" in the Genocide Convention: A Case Study of Timor-Leste." Stanford Law Review. 60 (5): 1459-496. www.jstor.org/stable/40040391.
- Mackinnon, Catharine A. 2005. “Genocide’s Sexuality.” In Melissa S. Williams’ and Stephen Macedo’s Political Exclusion and Domination. New York City: NYU Press.
- Reston, James. 1966. “A Gleam of Light in Asia,” New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1966/06/19/archives/washington-a-gleam-of-light-in-asia.html.
- Robinson, Geoffrey. 2019. The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Roya M. Hanna. 1999. Right to Self-Determination in In Re Secession of Quebec, 23 Md. J. Int'l L. 213. Available at: http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mjil/vol23/iss1/9