The Anti-Communist Campaign in Indonesia: A Chronology (USIA R-158-65), Nov 1965
USIA Research and Reference Service report R-158-65 (November 1965), a chronology of the anti-Communist campaign in Indonesia, 1-20 October 1965, built on Indonesian and foreign radio and press. Gerwani entries: Suharto's 4 Oct TV statement linking the generals' murders to Pemuda Rakjat and Gerwani training grounds; NU
South China Sunday Post-Herald, 7 Nov 1965, p.30 (Reuter, Djakarta, 6 Nov): the Armed Forces bulletin says nine 'suicide squad' members of Gerwani, the Communist Women's Organisation, were killed by troops after standing in the path of army tanks in Solo, jeering and turning their backs when asked to leave. The item al
Nógrád, 7 Nov 1965: army kills communist women demonstrators in Solo
Page of Hungarian county daily Nograd, 7 Nov 1965, with an MTI Djakarta dispatch: the army press office says paratroopers 'were forced to take the lives' of Gerwani women who blocked a military column in Solo (Surakarta), Central Java; the communique does not state numbers. Also Pravda's Jakarta report on the banning o
Somogyi Néplap, 7 Nov 1965: Sukarno condemns anti-communism; nine women killed by army in Central Java
Somogyi Neplap (Hungary), 7 Nov 1965, p. 2: MTI/AFP dispatch from Bogor on Sukarno's cabinet meeting, where he condemned anti-communist revenge and upheld NASAKOM. States an army press communiqué that soldiers fired on marching Gerwani women in Solo, Central Java, killing nine. Also notes de facto bans on the PKI and t
251 dead in Central Java; women demonstrate against the PKI
Leeuwarder Courant, 9 November 1965, p. 5: report that about 10,000 housewives, schoolgirls and actresses marched in Jakarta to the National Front office demanding dissolution of Gerwani and state control of communist-run schools, while over a million demanded the PKI's dissolution. Governor Mokhtar says 251 were kille
And shame (Solo, November 1965)
Limburgsch Dagblad, 20 November 1965, p. 5: correspondent's column from Solo. Paratroopers daily parade 'enemies of the people', yesterday three Gerwani members, described as involved in the massacres 'in the most dissolute manner', forced to lie face down on hot asphalt before a passive crowd. It also describes ex-may
Killing off the communists (South China Morning Post, 17 July 1999)
South China Morning Post, 17 July 1999, p.37, Marian Wilkinson (Sydney Morning Herald), 'Killing off the communists': newly released US embassy and CIA cables show US officials encouraging the army's anti-PKI campaign in Oct-Nov 1965, urging anti-PKI propaganda that links 'diabolical murder and mutilation of the genera
Drakeley's 2007 article analysing the army's Oct-Dec 1965 psywar 'Lubang Buaya horror story' as a misogynist attack on Gerwani and a driver of the killings, tracing escalating claims in Angkatan Bersendjata, Antara and others, including the 'confessions' of Djamilah, Sujati and Saina. Core analysis of the slander.
Wieringa's 2011 article condensing her research: the army's sexual slander of Gerwani was the spark without which the genocide would not have happened; reconstructs the Lubang Buaya night (about 70 women and girls, mostly Pemuda Rakyat volunteers) and reads the monument mural. Programmatic synthesis.
Incitement to Genocide against a Political Group: the anti-communist killings (Pohlman, 2014)
Pohlman's 2014 article arguing the 1965-68 killings were political genocide and that the military's post-coup propaganda, including fabricated stories, constituted incitement to genocide; critiques the exclusion of political groups from the Genocide Convention.
The Cold War in the City of Heroes: US-Indonesian Relations and Anti-Communist Operations in Surabaya (Setiyawan, 2014)
PhD dissertation in History (UCLA, 2014) by Dahlia Gratia Setiyawan on U.S. anti-communist operations and the 1965-66 purge in Surabaya. Gerwani appears in context: as the PKI's women's affiliate (ch. 1), through the Surabaya women's coalition GOWS in the 27 September 1965 Grahadi demonstration (ch. 4), and in the Army
Feminism as a Class Question, Part II (Ita Fatia Nadia, 2020)
Part II of Nadia's essay (südostasien 3/2020): how the army and paramilitaries used sexualised violence to destroy Gerwani after Oct 1965, the Lubang Buaya slander and film, 1966 tattoo 'searches', and New Order redefinition of women's roles. In German.
Buried Histories: The Anticommunist Massacres of 1965-1966 in Indonesia (Roosa, 2020)
John Roosa's 2020 book, from nearly 400 interviews, arguing the typical 1965-66 killing was army execution of detainees (hence mass disappearance); dissects army propaganda including how Gen. Sugandhi sexualised Lubang Buaya from 9 Oct 1965. Key scholarship.
Years of Dressing Dangerously: Modern Women, National Identity and Moral Crisis in Sukarno's Indonesia (Sullivan, 2020)
Charles P. Sullivan's PhD dissertation (History, University of Michigan, 2020) reads Indonesian women's magazines (Wanita, Puspa Wanita, Varia) from 1945-66 to argue that the Lubang Buaya narrative about Gerwani worked as a 'post-text' of long-running anxieties over modernity, moral crisis and the 'Mother of the Nation