FO 371/180337: Bilateral Relations with the US [3] (1965)
UK Foreign Office file FO 371/180337 (Mar-Nov 1965): telegrams and letters on US-Indonesian relations: Bunker mission, Peace Corps withdrawal, anti-American demonstrations, Ambassador Green, Palmer affair, then Anglo-American talks on aid to the generals after 1 October. No mention of Gerwani; 'women' appear only among
ANP news report, 11 October 1965 (Indonesia: Gerwani headquarters burned in Aceh)
ANP radio bulletin, 11 Oct 1965: the army arrests all PKI board members in Bandung, and in Aceh demonstrators burned down the headquarters of Gerwani. Also notes the evacuation of American embassy families from Jakarta. Early evidence of anti-Gerwani violence outside Java.
Evening Post (Wellington), 12 Oct 1965, NZPA-Reuter report: Communists flee into Central Java hills from an Army dragnet; branch officials detained; US embassy dependants withdrawn. Mobs ransacked Communist youth, women's and trade-union offices in Jakarta; per Radio Malaysia quoting Radio Jakarta, a crowd burned the G
Armed Java Reds Flee to Hills to Escape Dragnet (Evening Post, 12 October 1965), headline clipping
Headline-only clipping 'Armed Java Reds Flee to Hills to Escape Dragnet' from the Evening Post of 12 Oct 1965; the Gerwani passage is not in this fragment.
Armed Java Reds Flee to Hills to Escape Dragnet (Evening Post, 12 October 1965), opening clipping
Opening clipping of the Evening Post article of 12 Oct 1965: tension in Central Java, where thousands of Communists, some armed, have fled into the hills from an Army dragnet. Gerwani is not mentioned in this fragment.
Armed Java Reds Flee to Hills to Escape Dragnet (Evening Post, 12 October 1965), clipping on arrests and Aceh office
Clipping from the Evening Post of 12 Oct 1965: US embassy dependants withdrawn; hundreds of Communist branch officials detained, Bandung committee arrested in Yogyakarta; Jakarta curfew eased. Communist youth, women's and trade-union offices ransacked in Jakarta, and a crowd burned the Gerwani office in Aceh, north Sum
Walliser Volksfreund, 13 October 1965: The hunt for communists in Indonesia
Walliser Volksfreund (13 Oct 1965) running the Reuter report on the hunt for Communists: flight into Central Java mountains, Muslim attacks on PKI offices in Bandung, and an angry crowd burning down Gerwani premises in Aceh per Radio Djakarta. Includes a photo caption of the burned PKI headquarters.
FBIS-monitored ANTARA report (21 Oct 1965): at Madjalengka Square, Bandung (West Java) region, before thousands and the local commandant, PKI sectional committee members and affiliates declared themselves out of the PKI and dissolved the branches, renewing allegiance to Sukarno. The statement lists nine signatories, in
Berita Yudha, 26 October 1965
Berita Yudha, 26 Oktober 1965. Antara: West Java police close and freeze assets of seven private universities suspected of G30S links, including Universitas Rakyat (UNRA) in Bandung and Cirebon; important for the education strand.
Words and deeds of the Indonesian army: Suharto's Bandung speech (snippet)
Snippet-only Renmin Ribao extract (7 Nov 1965, p. 5) from Suharto's 30 October Bandung speech: the September 30th Movement as a play with Untung and some officers in the lead, Pemuda Rakyat and Gerwani members in supporting roles, and the PKI as staff; truncated. Full text is GA-01990.
Words and deeds of the Indonesian army: Nasution and Suharto statements reprinted
Renmin Ribao (7 Nov 1965, p. 5) reprints Indonesian army statements from radio and Antara: Nasution's 25 October speech on 'slander' and purges, Suharto's 30 October Bandung speech calling the PKI the 'protagonist' and Pemuda Rakyat and Gerwani members 'supporting roles' of the movement, an army information chief's int
Girl admits role in coup (South China Morning Post, 20 November 1965)
South China Morning Post, 20 Nov 1965, p.20 (Jakarta, 19 Nov; UPI/AP via Antara): a girl captured near Bandung admitted taking part in the killing of the six generals at Lubang Buaya and among those who shot the Army commander, and admitted membership of Gerwani, the Communist women's auxiliary. The item also reports a
Angkatan Bersendjata, 11 January 1966
Angkatan Bersendjata, 11 Jan 1966. NTB military order (31 Dec 1965) dissolving the PKI and affiliates including Gerwani, BTI, SOBSI, Lekra, Baperki and Universitas Rakyat (UNRA), confiscating their property; about 66,000 detainees in Central Java.
Soldiers look on: schoolchildren in Jakarta attack again
Algemeen Handelsblad (1966-03-09, pp. 1 and 11): student and schoolchildren demonstrations in Jakarta, tanks outside ministries, a student demand to ban the PKI, and Siliwangi troops beating the Cakrabirawa guard to the university. Sukarno told a meeting of Indonesian women (unnamed) to amend a resolution to condemn Am
Communist leader in West Java captured near Bandung: Gerwani members arrested (Berita Harian, 1967)
Berita Harian, 11 July 1967, p. 3, Reuters: the army announces capture near Bandung of Yakob Margolang, who allegedly tried to form a new Communist party in West Java; several women believed to be members of Gerwani, 'the secret organisation of Communist women', were also arrested. Context: army warnings against pro-Su
Jakarta releases 8,000 political prisoners (The Times, 27 July 1978)
The Times, 27 July 1978, p.6, whole page of overseas news; the relevant item reports (Bandung, 26 July) that more than 8,000 political prisoners, communists jailed since the 1965 coup attempt, were released across Indonesia, about 4,000 in Bandung. They were 'B'-class prisoners who could have been tried; Colonel Sardjo
TAPOL Bulletin no. 29 (London, August 1978): assessment of the 1977–78 prisoner releases, resettlement camps, ILO criticism, Wertheim on Suharto and the Latief trial, ex-tapol discrimination, and trials. Page 11 reports that Dr Tanti Aidit, widow of D.N. Aidit and a Gerwani member who ran a Gerwani clinic, is to be tri
TAPOL Bulletin no. 34 (London, June 1979, 20 pp.): exposes inconsistencies in KOPKAMTIB release figures, resettlement camps in Kalimantan and Buru, the student trials, release oath and ex-tapol discrimination, the Nijmegen psycho-test cover-up, TAPOL's research on 366 1965 trials, IGGI aid. Gerwani is not named; one it
Released from detention (Sutanti Aidit), Tempo, 5 Jan 1980
Short Tempo item, 5 January 1980, on the release of Dr Soetanti Aidit, 57, widow of PKI chairman D.N. Aidit, from detention on 20 December 1979. Held from 1966 in Bukit Duri women's prison and never moved, she was separated from her five children for 13 years, declines to talk about the past and hopes to practise medic
From politics to mysticism: S.K. Trimurti in her own words (Tempo, 21 Apr 1990)
Tempo profile (21 April 1990), in S.K. Trimurti's own first-person voice, of her life from teacher and Partindo cadre to labour minister and spiritualist. She says she co-founded Gerwis around 1950 (Ketua III, Yogyakarta), that Gerwis became Gerwani at its third congress under Umi Sardjono, and that in 1965 she quit Ge
The Aidit family: after that night of horror (Tempo, 1 Oct 2007)
Tempo special (1 October 2007) on what happened to D.N. Aidit's family after 30 September 1965. It recounts the fates of his father, siblings and children, and of his wife Dr Soetanti Aidit, who fled, lived in disguise, was arrested, held in Kodim 66 and Bukit Duri until about 1980, and died in 1991. Her Gerwani member
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