LBJ National Security File: Indonesia, Communist Parties and Internal Politics, Nov 1965-May 1966
LBJ Library National Security File, Indonesia country file (vol. VI): US Embassy Jakarta cables and withdrawal sheets, mainly December 1965 to May 1966, on the army's moves against the PKI, Sukarno's speeches, student demonstrations and Suharto's rise. Gerwani appears twice. Embtel 2077 (17 Jan 1966) reports Bogor wall
FBIS-monitored ANTARA report (6 Nov 1965): PKI and affiliates on Bali, including BTI, Gerwani, Pemuda Rakjat, Lekra, HSI, SOBSI, IPPI and the PGRI teachers' union, were suspended from 3 November. Leaders must report daily to military commands and sign obedience statements, take down signboards within five days; the war
Armed Forces Information Centre, Intisari Berita, 2 December 1965: arrests of Gerwani members in Jakarta and Central...
Armed Forces Information Centre bulletin, 2 Desember 1965. Three Gerwani items: arrest of a woman Misnah, 'a Gerwani', at a Jakarta coffee stall with insinuations about 25 September; three Gerwani among those seized by Kodam Diponegoro; executioners' confessions in Blitar.
Airgram A-408: Joint Weeka no. 48, 21 Dec 1965
US Embassy Joint Weeka no. 48 (airgram A-408), 21 Dec 1965: estimates 100,000 PKI deaths and 10,000 on Bali; notes Sukarno addressing the 20th anniversary of Perwari. Only women-related scene is a non-communist women's group used as a stage.
US Embassy Djakarta, Joint Sitrep No. 68, Telegram 1842 (22 December 1965)
US Embassy Djakarta telegram 1842, Joint Sitrep No. 68 (22 Dec 1965, Secret, sanitized, OCR rough). Reports Sukarno's speeches defending the PKI, including a Mother's Day gathering where he defended the PKI's women's affiliate (Gerwani), Nasution's 'basic guide' for crushing the PKI, the PNI purge, anti-Chinese violenc
Telegram 203 (Joint Sitrep 21), US Consulate Surabaya, 21 Dec 1965
US Consulate Surabaya Joint Sitrep 21, 21 December 1965: killings 'ceased' in Pasuruan but the Army quietly hands 10-15 prisoners nightly to Muslims for execution; also Bali and rice shortages. Regional context; no Gerwani content.
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
Thai Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee communique condemns Indonesian military killings and arrests
Xinhua report in Renmin Ribao (19 Apr 1966, p. 4) of a 13 April communiqué by the Thai Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Committee condemning Indonesia's military and 'reactionaries': 78,500 killed and 106,000 arrested per the Fact-Finding Commission in Bali, Java and North Sumatra; bans on Pemuda Rakyat, CGMI, Gerwani, B
Peking Review no. 18, 29 April 1966: 'white terror' in Indonesia, women and children killed
Peking Review Vol. 9 No. 18, 29 April 1966, a Chinese weekly. Besides Cultural Revolution and Afro-Asian Journalists' Association material, it carries Chinese protests against Indonesian anti-China outrages and a Renmin Ribao commentary, 'Right-Wing Reactionaries Plunge Indonesia into a Bloodbath' (p. 25), quoting New
The Politico-Military Role of the Indonesian Armed Forces, October 1965-1968 (Fox, 1968)
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
The forgotten massacre: 'More killed than in Vietnam so far'
Tribune (Sydney), 21 Jan 1970, p. 8: extract from Hong Kong's Eastern Horizon of letters by an Indonesian writing as 'Barbro Karabuda' on the 1965-66 massacre and prisoners (official 86,000 detainees; torture; Army extortion). The writer finds Tanti Aidit in Bukit Duri women's prison in Jakarta with Aidit's mother-in-l
The forgotten massacre: 'More killed than in Vietnam so far'
Tribune (Sydney), 21 Jan 1970, p. 8: extract from Hong Kong's Eastern Horizon of letters by an Indonesian writing as 'Barbro Karabuda' on the 1965-66 massacre and prisoners (official 86,000 detainees; torture; Army extortion). The writer finds Tanti Aidit in Bukit Duri women's prison in Jakarta with Aidit's mother-in-l
South China Morning Post, 26 Nov 1975, p.22, Kenneth Whiting (AP), 'Indonesia: a fresh start': ten-year retrospective on the 1965 coup and 'bloodbath' (about 300,000 killed, 100,000 jailed, 20,000 political detainees still held), with oil-led economic recovery. A short passage says women were killed if believed to be p
TAPOL Bulletin no. 15, April 1976. Editorial links East Timor killings to the 1965-66 massacres; the issue devotes pages to a mimeographed East Java massacre report and to translated fictional accounts (Gestapu: Indonesian Short Stories, ed. Harry Aveling). Gerwani appears incidentally: victims included members of the
After 12 Years Freedom (Post-Courier, 19 January 1978), clean OCR
Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, 19 January 1978, p. 5, clean OCR of George Oliver's feature on the release of 10,000 political prisoners held since the 1965 coup (same article as GA-00267). It covers the official and alternative accounts of 30 September, killings of perhaps half a million, half to three-quarters of a mi
Murders (Suharto and the mass killings of 1965-66)
De Waarheid piece (2 Sep 1989, p.16) criticising Suharto's silence on the 1965-66 massacres, quoting Stanley Karnow and C.L. Sulzberger on the killings and estimates of 300,000 to one million dead. It notes mass arrests without trial of hundreds of thousands, including members of SOBSI, Gerwani and Pemuda Rakjat, and t
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
Destruction of the Indonesian Communist Party: East Java and Bali compared (Sudjatmiko, 1992)
Iwan Gardono Sudjatmiko's 1992 Harvard sociology PhD thesis compares East Java and Bali to explain the PKI's destruction after 1965, arguing that it followed from the party's 1963 revolutionary strategy and that violence depended on public figures, army units and PKI size. It covers mobilisation, land reform and local
The trauma of 1965 itches and nags
Jan Bezemer's long Trouw weekend feature (30 Sep 1995) on the unresolved 1965 trauma. Covers the 30 September events, Suharto's role, US encouragement, massacres (Gatot's trial testimony) and the smear campaign against Gerwani. Draws on Saskia Wieringa's doctoral research: Gerwani was blamed for mutilating the generals
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
TAPOL Bulletin No. 159, Aug/Sep 2000: Carmel Budiardjo's visit to Indonesia (Sri Ambar, Sulami, YPKP)
TAPOL Bulletin no. 159 (Aug/Sep 2000), with Carmel Budiardjo's report on a visit to Indonesia (pp. 12-14). She meets some twenty former Bukit Duri prison mates, among them Sri Ambar, frail after a stroke (p. 12); visits the Tangerang home of Ibu Sulami, founder in April 1999 of YPKP, the foundation investigating the 19
Bali Post, 11 August 2002: short story 'Ngaben' (I Wayan Artika)
Bali Post, 11 Aug 2002, p. 10: short story 'Ngaben' about a PKI activist's family fleeing the 1965–66 Bali killings; the father knew of the plans 'from the stories of the Gerwani women'.
Leslie Dwyer's 2004 article on the gendered violence of 1965-66 in Bali, framed by Ibu Ari, whose husband and brother were taken by PNI paramilitaries and who was sexually 'inspected'; argues women's silence is a culturally specific semiotics, not absence of memory. Fieldwork-based gender analysis.
Komnas Perempuan's 2007 report on gender-based crimes against humanity in 1965: 122 testimonies, an account of Gerwani's history and the 1965 press campaign behind the Lubang Buaya slander, and catalogue of rape, sexual slavery, detention and Buru. Key official source on women's experience.
Tempo, 1 October 2012: I Ketut Mantram - 'There was a list from the Kodim'
Tempo testimony (1 Oct 2012) of I Ketut Mantram, 72, PNI village secretary in Jembrana, Bali, who joined the 37-man 'Tameng/Rantai' squad that executed PKI members on Kodim lists for about three months, burying bodies in coastal pits. Gerwani is not mentioned.
Tempo, 1 October 2012: Mass killings 1965-1966 - vendetta and jingoism
Tempo historiography essay (1 Oct 2012) on the 1965-66 mass killings, outlining three phases of writing about 1965 and proposing 'jingoism' and 'vendetta' (macho, anomie-driven local score-settling) as cultural explanations, with the label 'PKI lu' as a channel for hatred. Argues history is interpretation and need not
Tempo, 1 October 2012: After the pistol fired at Tegalbadeng (killings in Bali)
Tempo report (1 Oct 2012) on how mass killing began in Bali from Tegalbadeng, Jembrana, after a shooting on 30 Nov 1965; PNI 'Tameng Marhaenis' squads, trucks and beach executions, with RPKAD arrival in Dec (Geoffrey Robinson). Testimony from Ida Bagus Raka Negara and others on the Toko Wong detention site. Gerwani is
Tempo, 1 October 2012: The question of victim statistics
Tempo explainer (1 Oct 2012) on victim statistics for 1965-66 (estimates 200,000 to 3 million; most likely about half a million), weighing the Oei Tjoe Tat commission's 78,000, Kopkamtib's 1 million, Sarwo Edhie's 3 million and census evidence. It notes army propaganda about torture of the generals at Lubang Buaya was
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
The Indonesian Genocide of 1965: Causes, Dynamics and Legacies (McGregor, Melvin, Pohlman, eds., 2018)
Edited volume (Palgrave 2018; McGregor, Melvin, Pohlman) arguing the 1965 violence was genocidal, covering causes (Aceh army documents, Bali, Pohlman on women's testimonies of sexual violence in West Sumatra) and legacies. Key scholarship on 1965 violence.