FO 371/180322: Attempted Coup against Sukarno [13] (28 Oct-5 Nov 1965)
UK Foreign Office file FO 371/180322 (28 Oct-5 Nov 1965): Djakarta telegrams quoting Antara on the post-coup purge, Sukarno versus the generals, Medan and Central Java. Gerwani items: tel. 2418 (2 Nov, p. 52) reports a Kowani/women's congress move to expel Gerwani members; tel. 2421 (p. 57) quotes Suharto naming 'Pemud
Dossier of the Indonesian Drama (Lucien Rey, New Left Review, 1966)
Article by Lucien Rey (New Left Review no. 36, March 1966) reconstructing the 1 October 1965 events as a plot by dissident Central Java officers, plus a translated Asahi Shimbun interview with PKI deputy chair Njoto. Says People's Youth and Gerwani auxiliaries trained at Halim took part in the generals' executions in r
Dossier of a slaughter
Tribune (Sydney), 29 Jun 1966, p. 5: editorial attacking Western press whitewashing of the Suharto regime plus a long reconstruction of 30 Sep-1 Oct 1965 taken from the British New Left Review, portraying the movement as junior officers' action. It mentions that Halim auxiliaries from Pemuda Rakyat and Gerwani took par
Dossier of a slaughter
Tribune (Sydney), 29 Jun 1966, p. 5: editorial attacking Western press whitewashing of the Suharto regime plus a long reconstruction of 30 Sep-1 Oct 1965 taken from the British New Left Review, portraying the movement as junior officers' action. It mentions that Halim auxiliaries from Pemuda Rakyat and Gerwani took par
Archive of the Event of 1965 in Indonesia (compilation incl. Anderson and McVey, Preliminary Analysis of the October 1,
Internet Archive compilation on the 1965 events whose main text is Anderson and McVey's Cornell 'Preliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965 Coup' (1971), with source documents. It says Gerwani and Pemuda Rakjat trainees at Lubang Buaya were drawn into the killings (pp. 22-23) while stressing the army-fed 'orgy' storie
Archive of the Event of 1965 in Indonesia (compilation incl. Anderson and McVey, Preliminary Analysis of the October 1,
Internet Archive compilation on the 1965 events whose main text is Anderson and McVey's Cornell 'Preliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965 Coup' (1971), with source documents. It says Gerwani and Pemuda Rakjat trainees at Lubang Buaya were drawn into the killings (pp. 22-23) while stressing the army-fed 'orgy' storie
She Who Earns: The Politics of Prostitution in Java (Sunindyo, 1993)
Saraswati Sunindyo's PhD dissertation (Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1993) is a feminist study of prostitution in Java based on 1987-88 fieldwork in three brothel resorts (Samas, Bandungan, Tretes), with life stories and a history of state policy. Gerwani appears mainly in Chapter 2 (pp. 29-39): it outlin
South China Sunday Morning Post, 23 Apr 2000, p.10, Vaudine England: profile of Sudjinah Halina (72), former Gerwani activist and political prisoner, as Indonesia reopens debate on 1965. She recounts Solo childhood, guerrilla courier work (1947-49), study at Gadjah Mada, the 1955 Prague youth festival, a job with the W
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.
The Treachery on YouTube: Politics of Memory on New Media in Indonesia (Parahita and Yulianto, 2020)
Journal article by Gilang Desti Parahita and Vissia Ita Yulianto (Archipel 99, 2020, pp. 47-73) on how YouTube reproduces the New Order's 'Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI' as monumental memory while alternative 1965 films circulate far less. Gerwani appears on p. 63: filmmaker Lexy Rambadetta, after meeting former Gerwani membe
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
From the Men They Took Their Labor, from the Women They Took Everything (Sarbinatun, transl. Florida, 2025)
Nancy Florida's annotated English translation (Indonesia, Oct 2025) of Sarbinatun's testimony: Lekra dancer and IPPI president, married at 17 to a PKI Special Bureau man, tortured in Solo and Semarang, held at Plantungan until 1979 and accused as Gerwani though never a member.