UK Foreign Office file FO 371/180318 (Oct 1965): Djakarta embassy telegrams, minutes and copied US cables on the 30 September affair. Covers the anti-PKI demonstration and burning of PKI HQ, Sukarno's return, Suharto and Nasution, and Anglo-American debate on backing the generals. Only Gerwani-relevant item: the 10 Oct
UK Foreign Office file FO 371/180324 (1965), 'Attempted coup against Sukarno [15]': telegrams and letters from Djakarta, Washington and Peking, November 1965, plus appended US and Canadian reports. It records Sukarno's Heroes Day speech, Adam Malik's view of the Sukarno-generals stalemate and accounts of 30 September.
New York Herald Tribune (European ed.), 11 Oct 1965, Reuters report 'Army Nets 1,500 Reds' from Djakarta. Says the army arrested at least 1,500 Communists, including members of 'the Gerwani Communist women's movement, some members of which are alleged to have tortured the six army generals', plus PKI band and choir mem
South China Morning Post, 15 Oct 1965, p.12, 'Torture squads in Djakarta: how Indonesian generals died', by a special correspondent. A lurid account of the 1 October killings: it says 'frenzied members of the Gerwani women's organisation' chanted insults and danced naked while Pemuda Rakjat youths emasculated six gener
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
The Economist, 6 Nov 1965, p.594, 'Rings on a tree trunk', from a special correspondent in Jakarta: the army-inspired anti-communist campaign has gained its own momentum, with raids on PKI offices, arrests, 26 Antara correspondents detained, Aidit in hiding, Sukarno declaring Central Java in a 'state of war'. Wall graf
South China Morning Post, 9 Nov 1965, p.20 (Jakarta, 8 Nov): Sukarno is given a list of suspected PKI members of parliament; about 10,000 housewives, girl students and actresses marched to Suharto's HQ and the National Front office shouting support for Sukarno and the armed forces, denounced Gerwani, 'the PKI's women's
Edward J. Fox, University of Chicago MA dissertation (1968; the catalogue title says PhD) on the Indonesian armed forces' control programme and the pattern of violence from October 1965 to early 1968. Gerwani appears only in passing: a footnote cites 1.75 million members and notes its self-dissolution (p.32), and one u
Roger Paget's 1970 Cornell PhD thesis on how student and youth action groups, culminating in KAMI, emerged after 1 October 1965 and helped undermine Sukarno. Gerwani appears in several passages: action fronts demanded its banning (p. 44) and its offices were ransacked (p. 63); Herlina denounced it for not fighting Mala
Kinesis (Vancouver feminist paper), June 1977, p.10, 'Women round the World': a section on Indonesian women. It says Gerwani, the largest women's organisation (over one million members), was banned for alleged complicity in the 1965 coup and blamed for atrocities; many members suffered torture and sexual abuse in inter
The Guardian (Weekend Guardian), 8 Sept 1990, p.A4, John Gittings, 'The black hole of Bali': long feature on the 1965 massacre (250,000 or more killed), how the killings were organised by the army under Suharto, the Aidit/PKI role, the US list of communists (Martens/Kadane) and US encouragement, survivors ('Tapols') an
South China Sunday Morning Post, 27 Sep 1998, p.8, Jenny Grant: after Suharto's fall, historians and politicians call for a reassessment of the 1965 coup and killings; the government has dropped compulsory screening of the New Order propaganda film. The article repeats that members of 'the communist women's organisatio
Klaus Schreiner's 2003 chapter reading the Monumen Pancasila Sakti at Lubang Buaya as a 'site of memory' and founding shrine of the New Order, noting the 1998 end of the annual film broadcast; applies Halbwachs, Nora and trauma theory. Memory-studies framing.
Yosef Djakababa's 2009 Wisconsin dissertation on how the New Order built the official Lubang Buaya narrative (PKI sole mastermind, spontaneous people's response) via army history, Mahmillub trials, the monument, Hari Kesaktian Pancasila and the film. Key study of official memory.
Tempo.co book notice (9 May 2010) on Saskia Wieringa's Indonesian edition of 'Penghancuran Gerakan Perempuan' (Galangpress 2010, transl. Harsutejo). Recounts the military propaganda of naked dancing, razor-cutting and castration at Lubang Buaya, Wieringa's rebuttal from 1982-85 interviews and autopsy results, and Siti
Tempo.co book notice (17 May 2010) (second Tempo.co version, with a lead on the penis-cutting allegation) on Saskia Wieringa's Indonesian edition of 'Penghancuran Gerakan Perempuan' (Galangpress 2010, transl. Harsutejo). Recounts the military propaganda of naked dancing, razor-cutting and castration at Lubang Buaya, Wi
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
Martha Stroud's 2015 UC Berkeley/UCSF medical-anthropology dissertation, based on fieldwork in Yogyakarta (2010-12), examines how the 1965-66 killings shape daily life through propaganda, surveillance, stigma, silence and justice. Gerwani appears mainly as the object of New Order propaganda: the Lubang Buaya mutilation
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