Women, Sexual Violence and the Indonesian Killings of 1965-1966 (Annie Pohlman, 2015)

=== [PDF page 1] === aes Ney ae eas amieHos US boss WOMEN, SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND THE INDONESIAN KILLINGS OF 1965-66 Annie Pohiman === [PDF page 2] === Women, Sexual Violence and the Indonesian Killings of 1965–66 The Indonesian massacres of 1965–66 claimed the lives of an estimated half a million men, women and children. Histories of this period of mass violence in Indonesia’s past have focused almost exclusively on top-level political and military actors, their roles in the violence, and their movements and mobilisation of perpetrators. Based on extensive interviews with women survivors of the massacres and detention camps, this book provides the first in-depth analysis of sexualised forms of violence perpetrated against women and girl victims during this period. It looks at the stories of individual women caught up in the massacres and mass arrests, focusing on their testimonies and their experiences of violence and survival. The book aims not only to redress the lack of scholarly attention but also to provide significant new analysis on the gendered and gendering effects of sexual violence against women and girls in situations of genocidal violence. Annie Pohlman teaches in the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia. === [PDF page 3] === ASIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA Women in Asia Series Editor by Lenore Lyons The University of Sydney Editorial Board: Susan Blackburn (Monash University) Hyaeweol Choi (The Australian National University) Michele Ford (The University of Sydney) Louise Edwards (University of Hong Kong) Trude Jacobsen (Northern Illinois University) Vera Mackie (University of Wollongong) Anne McLaren (The University of Melbourne) Mina Roces (University of New South Wales) Dina Siddiqi (The City University of New York) Andrea Whittaker (The University of Queensland) Mukkuvar Women Gender, hegemony and capitalist transformation in a south Indian fishing community Kalpana Ram 1991 A World of Difference Islam and gender hierarchy in Turkey Julie Marcus 1992 Purity and Communal Boundaries Women and social change in a Bangladeshi village Santi Rozario 1992 Madonnas and Martyrs Militarism and violence in the Philippines Anne-Marie Hilsdon 1995 Masters and Managers A study of gender relations in urban Java Norma Sullivan 1995 Matriliny and Modernity Sexual politics and social change in rural Malaysia Maila Stivens 1995 Intimate Knowledge Women and their health in north-east Thailand Andrea Whittaker 2000 Women in Asia Tradition, modernity and globalisation Edited by Louise Edwards and Mina Roces 2000 Violence against Women in Asian Societies Gender inequality and technologies of violence Edited by Lenore Manderson and Linda Rae Bennett 2003 Women’s Employment in Japan The experience of part-time workers Kaye Broadbent 2003 === [PDF page 4] === Chinese Women Living and Working Edited by Anne McLaren 2004 Abortion, Sin and the State in Thailand Andrea Whittaker 2004 Sexual Violence and the Law in Japan Catherine Burns 2004 Women, Islam and Modernity Single women, sexuality and reproductive health in contemporary Indonesia Linda Rae Bennett 2005 The Women’s Movement in Post-Colonial Indonesia Elizabeth Martyn 2005 Women and Work in Indonesia Edited by Michele Ford and Lyn Parker 2008 Women and Union Activism in Asia Edited by Kaye Broadbent and Michele Ford 2008 Gender, Islam, and Democracy in Indonesia Kathryn Robinson 2008 Sex, Love and Feminism in the Asia Pacific A cross-cultural study of young people’s attitudes Chilla Bulbeck 2008 Gender, State and Social Power Divorce in contemporary Indonesia Kate O’Shaughnessy 2008 Gender, Household, and State in Post-Revolutionary Vietnam Jayne Werner 2008 Young Women in Japan Transitions to adulthood Kaori Okano 2009 Women, Islam and Everyday Life Renegotiating polygamy in Indonesia Nina Nurmila 2009 Feminist Movements in Contemporary Japan Laura Dales 2009 Gender and Labour in Korea and Japan Sexing class Edited by Ruth Barraclough and Elyssa Faison 2009 Gender Diversity in Indonesia Sexuality, Islam and queer selves Sharyn Graham Davies 2010 New Women in Colonial Korea A sourcebook Hyaeweol Choi 2012 Women Writers in Postsocialist China Kay Schaffer and Xianlin Song 2013 Domestic Violence in Asia Globalization, gender and Islam in the Maldives Emma Fulu 2014 Gender and Power in Indonesian Islam Leaders, feminists, Sufis and pesantren selves Edited by Bianca J. Smith and Mark Woodward 2014 Practicing Feminism in South Korea The women’s movement against sexual violence Kyungja Jung 2014 === [PDF page 5] === The Korean Women’s Movement and the State Bargaining for change Seung-kyung Kim 2014 Gender, Nation and State in Modern Japan Edited by Andrea Germer, Vera Mackie and Ulrike Wöhr 2014 Women and Sex Work in Cambodia Blood, sweat and tears Larissa Sandy 2015 Growing up Female in Multi-Ethnic Malaysia Cynthia Joseph 2015 Women, Sexual Violence and the Indonesian Killings of 1965–66 Annie Pohlman 2015 Love and Marriage in Globalising China Wang Pan 2015 === [PDF page 6] === Women, Sexual Violence and the Indonesian Killings of 1965–66 Annie Pohlman Routledge Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK === [PDF page 7] === First published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2015 Annie Pohlman The right of Annie Pohlman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Pohlman, Annie, author. Women, sexual violence and the Indonesian killings of 1965-66 / Annie Pohlman. pages cm. -- (Asian Studies Association of Australia women in Asia series; 36) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Women--Violence against--Indonesia. 2. Women political prisoners--Abuse of--Indonesia. 3. Political violence--Indonesia. 4. Indonesia--History--Coup d’état, 1965. I. Title. HV6250.4.W65P62 2014 959.803’5--dc23 2014009967 ISBN: 978-0-415-83887-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-81879-5 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. === [PDF page 8] === To my family, for their support. And for Ibu Lia, RIP. === [PDF page 9] === Thispageintentionallyleftblank === [PDF page 10] === Contents List of figures Acknowledgements List of abbreviations and terms xii Women and violence following the 1965 coup Getting caught and being killed 23 The violence of detention 47 Explaining sexual violence 63 Sexual assaults during the killings and in detention 79 Mutilation and sexual violence 109 Humiliation and the strip-searching of women and girls 130 Sexual slavery and istri diambil (wife-taking) 153 Conclusions 169 References Index 174 185 === [PDF page 11] === Figures 1.1 Main islands of Indonesia 1.2 Detention camps for political prisoners, ca. 1975 7.1 Punishment of prisoners 11 135 === [PDF page 12] === Acknowledgements Many people have helped me over the last decade in many different ways. First, my deepest and sincerest thanks go to my mentor, Helen Creese, who has been a constant source of encouragement and guidance for many years. My thanks also go to Lenore Lyons, editor of the Women in Asia series, for her help and patience throughout this process. To Bob Elson and Robert Cribb, thank you for your encouragement and advice on many occasions. I am grateful to the publishers of Robert Cribb’s Historical Atlas of Indonesia (NIAS Press, 2000) and A. Gumelar Demokrasno’s Dari Kalong Sampai Pulau Buru: Kisah Tapol Dalam Sketsa (PUSdEP, 2005) for allowing the reproduction of maps and images in this book. To my friends, thank you for help, patience and support. Special mention goes to Sam, Ange, Deborah, Ben, Suzanne, Helen, Odette, Sally, Deanne, Upik, Lara, Laura, Shirin, Lauren, Sol, Trevor and Noreen. To Mum, Dad and my sister, Catherine, thank you for coming with me on this journey; we got there in the end. To Ibu Lia (a pseudonym), who passed away before the completion of this research, and to the many other former political prisoners who helped me along the way, thank you for allowing me briefly into your lives and for sharing your stories with me. I hope I have helped. Thank you. === [PDF page 13] === Abbreviations and terms ABRI Aksi sepihak Ansor Banser BTI DPR-GR G.30.S. Gerwani Gestapu ‘Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia’ or ‘Armed Forces of the Republic of Indonesia’. Literally, ‘unilateral action’. The term used by the PKI to describe its campaigns to take over land for use by poor and landless people (1963–65). Young men’s assocation of the Muslim organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). ‘Barisan Serba Guna Ansor’ or ‘Mutlipurpose Ansor Brigade’. A para-military militia formed within Ansor in the early 1960s. ‘Barisan Tani Indonesia’ or ‘Indonesian Farmers’ Front’. A mass organisation aligned with the Indonesian Communist Party. ‘Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat-Gotong Royong’ or ‘Gotong Royong People’s Representative Council’. The national parliament set up by President Sukarno in mid-1960. An acronym for ‘Gerakan 30 September’, the 30th September Movement, the name given to Untung and Latief ’s group of mostly middle-ranking armed forces’ personnel who kidnapped and killed six generals and one general’s aide in the early morning of 1 October 1965 as part of an attempted coup. Often written as ‘G30S/PKI’. ‘Gerakan Wanita Indonesia’ or ‘Indonesian Women’s Movement’. The Communist-aligned women’s mass organisation originally set up in 1950 (then known as Gerwis) whose members were accused by the military of playing a central role in the 1 October attempted coup. ‘Gerakan September Tiga Puluh’ or ‘Thirtieth of September Movement’. An acronym created by the Indonesian military for the movement responsible for the attempted 1965 coup which deliberately played upon the name of the Nazi-era secret police. === [PDF page 14] === Abbreviations and terms xiii ‘Ikatan Pemuda Pelajar Indonesia’ or ‘Indonesian Students’ Youth Organisation’. A Leftist youth organisation whose members were persecuted after the coup. Kabupaten Regency; the tier of government below the provincial level and above the kecamatan (district) level. Kecamatan District; the tier of government below the Kabupaten (regency) level and above the desa (village) level. KKR ‘Komisi Kebenaran dan Rekonsiliasi’ or ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’. KODAM ‘Komando Daerah Militer’ or ‘Regional Military Command’. KODIM ‘Komando Distrik Militer’ or ‘District Military Command’. KOPKAMTIB ‘Komando Operasi Pemulihan Keamanan dan Ketertiban’ or ‘Operational Command for the Resoration of Security and Order’. The military organisation/agency with various special powers created by Suharto shortly after the 1 October 1965 coup which oversaw much of the killings and which remained in various forms throughout the New Order. LEKRA ‘Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat’ or ‘Institute of People’s Culture’. A cultural organisation aligned with the Indonesian Communist Party. Lubang Buaya Literally ‘crocodile hole’. The name given to the well in which the seven victims of the 1 October 1965 coup were thrown. Nahdlatul Ulama ‘Revival of the Religious Scholars’. A mass Muslim social organisation. Pemuda Rakyat ‘People’s Youth’. A youth wing of the Indonesian Communist Party. PKI ‘Partai Komunis Indonesia’ or ‘Indonesian Communist Party’. PNI ‘Partai Nasionalis Indonesia’ or ‘Indonesian Nationalist Party’. SOBSI ‘Sentral Organisasi Buruh Seluruh Indonesia’ or ‘All-Indonesia Organisation of Labour Unions’. Closely aligned with the PKI. Tapol An abbreviation for ‘Tahanan Politik’ or ‘Political Prisoner’. Also ‘E/T’ which stood for ‘ex-tapol’ was stamped on former political prisoners’ identity cards after release. IPPI === [PDF page 15] === Thispageintentionallyleftblank === [PDF page 16] === Women and violence following the 1965 coup It’s bitter to remember, very bitter. My memories taste bitter in my mouth. But people must know what happened to us. They must know what happened. (Ibu Lia, Jakarta, December 2005) Of the many conversations we had, these words stand out in my memories of Ibu Lia, a true revolutionary, former Communist Party leader and long-term political prisoner, who passed away in 2007. Sitting across from me in the small guest room of my boarding house, her unusually hard words startled me. It was hot as it almost always is in the late afternoons in Jakarta and we were both tired. As had become our habit over the past few months since Ibu Lia had begun helping me, we were sitting down at the end of the day to go over what we had done and to plan our next day’s activities. Three or four times a week, we would meet in the morning then go by bus or taxi to interview one of Ibu Lia’s many contacts. These interviews seemed to tire me more than Ibu Lia, in spite of the almost sixty years that separated us. It was Ibu Lia who was always ready to go on, to do another interview, to find more information. The men and women she took me to meet were her friends and former colleagues. Like her, many were former members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and, like her, many had been persecuted because of it. Over the previous two months, Ibu Lia had gradually told me parts of her story. She had been born during the Dutch colonial period and had been involved in the Revolution for independence in the late 1940s. During the first fifteen years of the Indonesian republic, she and her husband raised their family and became heavily involved in the Communist Party, rising to positions of leadership in the 1950s. An attempted coup in Jakarta on the night of 30 September 1965, however, changed their lives and the lives of millions of others. In the aftermath of that coup, the Indonesian military embarked upon a campaign to eradicate its mass-supported political rival, the PKI. An estimated half a million people were murdered and a further one million imprisoned, most of whom were persecuted for their association with the PKI. The regime which came to power during the massacres was General Suharto’s ‘New Order’, an authoritarian, militarist government which lasted until 1998. === [PDF page 17] === Women and violence following the 1965 coup Throughout the New Order, those associated with the Left and their descendants were subject to numerous formal and informal restraints on their rights, stigmatised and marginalised, all in the name of social inoculation against the dangers of a Communist resurgence. Ibu Lia survived the killings and managed to remain on the run from the military for over a year before she was finally captured. As a former Communist Party leader, she spent more than twenty years in jails on Sumatra and Java. When she was finally released in the early 1980s, she had to rebuild her life and family connections. When I met her in 2005, she was in her early eighties but remained an activist and continued to campaign for the rights of all Indonesians. When I told her that I had come to Indonesia to interview women survivors of the violence of 1965–66, she quickly surmised that I needed help to find these women. Within a few days, she had become my guide and teacher and together we interviewed scores of women about their experiences following the 1965 coup. Ibu Lia was one amongst millions who were adversely affected by the violence of 1965–66. She was also one of the many survivors who, with the end of the New Order in 1998, spoke out about the atrocities perpetrated during the decades of the regime. Fifty years after the 1965 coup, those who survived are telling their own stories, bearing witness to a violent and mostly forgotten history of Indonesia. This book examines the testimonies of women survivors of the violence that followed the 1965 coup. It does so, to use Ronit Lentin’s words, ‘to re-occupy the territories of silence’ that surround their stories (1999a: 47). It does so because their stories refuse to yield to and actively work ‘against a forgetfulness that too easily goes along with and justifies what is forgotten’ (Adorno 1986: 115). It does so because these women and their memories, their stories and their lives are not simply the human residue of a mass murder gone almost unnoticed on the world stage. And it does so because, as Ibu Lia said, ‘people must know what happened’. Investigating women’s experiences of violence Half a century after the mass violence and social upheaval that followed the 1965 coup, there remains much unknown about the dynamics of the killings and mass political detentions which had such a profound effect on millions of Indonesians as well as on Indonesian political and social life. As Mahmood Mamdani explained in his analysis of the Rwandan genocide, ‘atrocity cannot be its own explanation. Violence cannot be allowed to speak for itself, for violence is not its own meaning. To be made thinkable, it needs to be historicised’ (2001: 228–29, emphasis in original). When I began this research in 2002, I had one, essential question: what happened to the women caught up in the violence after 1965? As such, this research began with an historiographical objective – to collect, document and analyse the testimonies of women survivors of the massacres and political === [PDF page 18] === Women and violence following the 1965 coup arrests that followed the 1965 coup. As I began interviewing women, however, a second, explicitly political and personal objective arose – to present the testimonies of women survivors in order that those who hear their stories are empathetically motivated to respond, to become engaged, and to recognise their struggles to have their stories heard. In a political context where previous attempts for transitional justice measures and reconciliation have been stymied, my hope is that this project contributes to the many efforts for honest and open acknowledgement of past atrocities in Indonesia (see ICTJ and KontraS 2011). Both objectives seek to address an apparent absence of discourse, in Foucauldian terms, an archaeology of silence, about the Indonesian killings of 1965–66 and the mass detention of Indonesian citizens by the state responsible for their protection. The testimonies of women survivors in this book are examined in terms of two main themes: women’s experiences of violence, and the material forms of violence perpetrated against women victims, with a specific focus on sexualised violence. The women whose testimonies are recounted here survived, when many others did not, systematic attacks against them because they were regarded as responsible for, or sympathetic to, the 1965 coup. Although their experiences are privately remembered, they have been silenced and forgotten publicly. This book is a testimony to these women and their experiences. Women’s experiences and testimonies At its core, this research echoes Ranajit Guha’s question (1996: 11): ‘But suppose there were a historiography that regarded “what women were saying” as integral to its project, what kind of history would it write?’ I approach each woman’s testimony from the particularities and singularities of her experience and take, as my starting point, the urgency to include these testimonies in an analysis of the violence perpetrated after the coup. This focus on women’s experiences, women’s lives and women’s testimonies attests that although the massacres in Indonesia were intended to wipe out all those associated with the Left, ‘the road to annihilation was marked by events that specifically affected men as men and women as women’ (Hilberg 1992: 126). This research draws upon the testimonies of around 150 women survivors out of the millions of women who were adversely affected by these events, as well as testimonies by some of their family members who also took part in this project.1 Each of these women, just as each of the men and children caught up in the violence of 1965–66, experienced these events in both unique and common ways. As will be shown throughout the book, commonalities amongst women’s experiences only emerge when balanced by numerous, individual stories of great exceptions, unexpected consequences and moments in which situations changed in an instant. In short, while patterns of how women experienced the aftermath of the coup do emerge, these cannot be essentialised in any way. While it was more likely for women and girls to experience certain types of violence – such as the sexualised forms of violence discussed at length in this === [PDF page 19] === Women and violence following the 1965 coup book – women’s experiences cannot be reduced to their sexuality nor to what might be seen as patterns of gendered vulnerability. This study underlines the multifaceted ways in which women experienced these events by showing the various ways in which they both participated in and became targets of the process of eradicating the Left in Indonesia. This book also shows that during the months and years that followed the coup, women were neither helpless nor powerless, despite often being made vulnerable to violence, exploitation and degradation. Women made choices where and when they could, coped when they had to, and made plans and devised strategies to overcome problems. The women survivors’ testimonies that lie at the heart of this study attest that at no time were women peripheral to the events that followed the coup. Overall, this research places ‘what women were saying’ at the centre of the analysis of the violence perpetrated in 1965–66. By doing so, it examines the gendered and gendering effects of violence against women and girls in a situation of genocidal violence against Communists and their alleged sympathisers. More broadly, this study fits within a wider research paradigm of women’s experiences during mass violence. By examining gendered experiences of violence and in particular by focusing on sexualised forms of violence against women and girls, this research contributes to feminist approaches to studying individual experiences and agency during conflicts. Throughout the book, I draw on feminist interpretations of women’s roles and women’s bodies during mass violence. The groundbreaking work of researchers such as R. Charli Carpenter (2002), Cynthia Enloe (2000), Susan Brownmiller (1975) and Ronit Lentin (1999b) offers critical insights into the intersections between constructions of gender and forms of sexual violence against women during conflict. In my analysis of women survivors’ testimonies, these and other feminist works on gender and violence are essential for examining how gendered bodies and subjectivities are performed and constructed during the mass violence which followed the coup in Indonesia. Furthermore, this study into sexual violence against women and girls within the Indonesian context contributes to feminist understandings of women’s experiences during mass violence as well as interpretations of the effects of this violence. Women’s testimonies of violence The analysis presented in this book on sexual violence perpetrated against women and girls following the 1965 coup is based primarily on the testimonies of women survivors of this violence. I conducted interviews with women survivors and some of their family members in regions of Java and Sumatra between 2002 and 2009, principally with former political prisoners between July 2005 and January 2006. Added to these oral testimonies were the transcripts of interviews with former political prisoners obtained from a number of Indonesian non-government organisations which have conducted their own historical memory and reconciliation projects.2 While the focus of this research === [PDF page 20] === Women and violence following the 1965 coup have been the testimonies of women survivors, some accounts by men have been included, particularly when they provide information about what happened to women. Within the fields of life narrative and testimony studies, there are numerous approaches to conducting this kind of oral testimony–based research for the documentation and analysis of serious human rights violations. My methods for collecting, analysing and presenting women survivors’ narratives about their experiences are derived primarily from a particular form of testimonial genre, testimonio. This genre is more commonly identified with testimony-based reporting on human rights abuses in Latin America, however, the methodological and political issues brought to the fore in testimonio made it a fitting choice for my research on testimonies of abuses in Indonesia. In particular, these issues relate to the core characteristics of testimonio, which are: that these testimonies are given within a situation of political urgency; that they are driven by a commitment to bear witness to atrocities; and, lastly, that they are told in order to seek redress for these abuses (Unnold 2002: 14). Within the context of post–New Order Indonesia where attempts for truth and reconciliation have been stalled, testimonio offers both a methodological and political paradigm for the task of investigating women survivors’ testimonies of their experiences following the 1965 coup (see Pohlman 2008). The coup, incitement and eradication The events of the night of 30 September 1965 at an air force base in south Jakarta have attracted a great deal of scholarly interest within Indonesian studies as well as spawned a myriad of theories as to who carried out the coup, for what purpose and who was ultimately responsible (see Crouch 1978; Heryanto 2006). It was, incontestably, a watershed in Indonesian history and, arguably, a turning-point in the Cold War history of Southeast Asia. The coup is beyond the scope or interest of this book. What follows, therefore, is a purposely short and somewhat simplified ‘official’ version of the supposed events of the coup, intended to contextualise the testimonies presented in this research. I use the term ‘official version’ loosely to refer to the highly politicised and mythologised story of the coup whose origins can be traced to the propaganda following the coup but which was re-invented and re-worked in various media throughout the New Order period and in the years since (see On the night of 30 September 1965, guards of the then President of Indonesia, Sukarno, together with members of various Communist organisations, kidnapped and assassinated six generals and one general’s aide. These seven men were taken to the Halim Air Force base in South Jakarta. Some of the men had been killed during the kidnapping, while others remained alive until the early hours of the morning. The air force base was located near the training grounds for the volunteers of the government’s anti-Malaysia === [PDF page 21] === Women and violence following the 1965 coup ‘Confrontation’ campaign which included the training grounds for members of Pemuda Rakyat (the PKI’s youth organisation) and Gerwani (Gerakan Wanita Indonesia, a women’s mass organisation with close ties to the PKI). Both organisations played key roles in the coup. At Halim, the Gerwani women purportedly stripped naked and danced lasciviously in front of the rebels, then tortured the generals who were still alive by cutting them with razors, gouging out their eyes and slicing off their genitals (see Anderson 1987). After the bodies of the seven victims were dumped in a deep well, which became known as the infamous Lubang Buaya (‘Crocodile Hole’), the Gerwani women participated in a mass orgy with the rebels. At the same time, other members of the rebel group, who proclaimed themselves the ‘30 September Movement’ (G30S), captured a number of buildings in Jakarta. Amongst these captured buildings was a radio station from where they announced that they had taken power in order to protect President Sukarno – claiming that they had foiled a plot by an alleged Council of Generals who were planning their own coup to overthrow the President a few days hence. Within twenty-four hours, the coup attempt had been defeated by the Indonesian military, chiefly by the army unit headed by General Suharto, who later became President Suharto (Leclerc 1997). Propaganda and incitement During the upheaval resulting from the coup, the Indonesian military seized the opportunity to destroy its main political rival, the PKI. Within days, parts of the remaining military leadership had embarked upon a propaganda campaign which was designed to incite anti-Communist hatred throughout the Indonesian population.3 To achieve this goal, the military took over numerous media outlets in Indonesia shortly after the coup which effectively ensured its control over the content and release of news. The propaganda played upon existing tensions within Indonesia and arguably was the catalyst for the slaughter of alleged Communists and Communist sympathisers predominantly in the later part of 1965 and early months of 1966 by the military with the collaboration of various vigilante groups. While the killings were being perpetrated, the military – by then under the command of General Suharto – also carried out successive waves of arrests of suspected Communists for their alleged ‘direct or indirect involvement’ in the coup attempt (Tapol 1976: 1).4 The initial arrests began within hours of the collapse of the coup and rapidly expanded throughout much of Indonesia, ostensibly under the mandate of Suharto’s newly created command unit, KOPKAMTIB (the Operational Command for the Restoration of Security and Order) (see Fealy 1995: 4; Crouch 1978: 160–61). The majority of those arrested, known as tapols (an abbreviation of tahanan politik or ‘political prisoner’), were detained without trial and imprisoned. Many were subjected to interrogation, torture, starvation and forced labour in overcrowded and substandard prisons and labour camps (Flanagan and Southwood 1983: 3). === [PDF page 22] === Women and violence following the 1965 coup The propaganda campaign itself was an elaborate and calculated mixture of stories, warnings and instructions, all intended to provoke fear and hatred of the PKI. Convoluted fictions were spread by radio and in newsprint media about how the PKI had secretly been planning to take over the country and wipe out non-Communist supporters. Entirely false reports of PKI weapons caches, death lists and mass graves having been dug to dispose of their enemies were alleged evidence of these secret plans and the threat that the Communists posed. The PKI, after all, had just brutally killed six of the country’s top military leaders in a failed coup d’état, so these stories were only further proof of the Party’s deception and betrayal. It was the stories made up about the coup which featured most prominently within the propaganda and which provoked the strongest reactions. Shortly after the coup, allegations began to appear that the generals had been brutally mutilated and tortured, with the stories that their eyes had been plucked out and their genitals sliced off gaining greater and greater prominence. Rumours that these acts had taken place near where Gerwani and Pemuda Rakyat trained became stories of how their members had savagely attacked the generals. The sexual licentiousness and sadistic violence of the alleged events at Lubang Buaya were taken as evidence of the Party’s immorality, savagery and godlessness. The significance of these themes was that they created the image of the PKI and Communism in general as being a dangerous enemy. This, in turn, encouraged those who would eliminate the PKI to see themselves as defenders of the nation, purging the Communist pollutant from Indonesia in order to save it (Drakeley 2007). What were perhaps the most pervasive and insidious aspects of the campaign, however, were the blatant misogynous themes. In particular, the depiction of Gerwani members as key players in the violence at Lubang Buaya was one of the strongest aspects of the propaganda. A possible reason that the sexual torture of the generals was made such a central part of the campaign may have been that this violence would have been seen as more horrifying as the acts of women; by making Gerwani women into vicious predators with obscene sexual desires, the propaganda was much more effective in demonising the PKI (Drakeley 2007: 22–23). As Saskia Wieringa (1998) has shown, this propaganda campaign effectively discredited Communist ideology and cultivated the association of Communism with sexual perversion, immorality and betrayal. As will be discussed in Chapter 4, this misogynist propaganda also had a direct impact on the demonisation of and violence against Gerwani members and women accused of being Communist sympathisers during the massacres and in detention. The highly instrumental nature of the military’s propaganda to incite public participation in the massacres of 1965–66 is fundamental to understanding the military’s overall role in the killings. Genocides, crimes against humanity and, in this case, mass murder and political incarceration on the scale witnessed in Indonesia after the coup, all require certain levels of planning, coordination, weapons and perpetrators; people do not spontaneously begin === [PDF page 23] === Women and violence following the 1965 coup killing en masse. Identified as a key element in Gregory Stanton’s ‘Eight Stages of Genocide,’ hate propaganda, in conjunction with social, political and other factors, functions to classify and dehumanise potential victims, polarise communities, and aides in the organisation and extermination of those victims (1998). The role played by the Indonesian military’s hate propaganda in 1965 must, therefore, be seen as a critical causal element for the incitement and perpetuation of the massacres and political detentions. Eradication: the massacres and arrests The best estimate for how many people were killed following the coup is 500,000 (see Cribb 1990a: 11). The number of people detained after the coup is unknown, although estimates range from approximately 500,000 to more than 1,500,000 (van der Kroef 1976–77; Amnesty International 1980). The victims of the killings and arrests were first and foremost those connected with the PKI or one of its associated organisations, such as Gerwani, Pemuda Rakyat, SOBSI (Sentral Organisasi Buruh Seluruh Indonesia, All Indonesia Centre of Labour Organisations), BTI (Barisan Tani Indonesia, Indonesian Farmer’s Union) or LEKRA (Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat Indonesia, The Indonesian People’s Culture Institute). As will be discussed in Chapter 2, this association was most often direct membership within these organisations or through family connections with members. Neighbours, acquaintances and other social associates of members of Communist organisations, however, were also sometimes killed or arrested. On some occasions, there were cases of mistaken identity, whereby people were arrested or killed because they either had the same or a similar name to a PKI member or simply were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Furthermore, there were some incidents of opportunistic violence whereby individuals were either killed or arrested and had their property stolen as a result of local dynamics of rivalries and previous disputes. Apart from these victims, others were also adversely affected. Although the killings and arrests may have begun as an attempt by the military to eradicate its main political rival by destroying the PKI and its structure of associations, as time went on, these events also saw a paradigmatic shift in Indonesian socio-political life. Secondary targets of the ‘cleansing’ that went on after the coup were those seen to be too closely aligned with the so-called ‘Old Order’ – the retrospective name given to President Sukarno’s government by the Suharto regime to distinguish it from the ‘New Order’ after 1966. To rid the new administration of Sukarno loyalists, government departments, the different branches of the military and other sectors were also cleansed of suspected ‘PKI elements’ throughout the late 1960s.5 Thus, by the beginning of the 1970s when the New Order had been firmly established, the paradigmatic shift was clear; Indonesia had gone from having a Leftist-leaning, almost socialist orientation to becoming a new, capitalist economy under army leadership with the support of the West and firmly reintegrated into the regional political economy. === [PDF page 24] === Bungurari Subi Kambangan Barung Madura Laut Togian, Sumba Sangir Sawu Roti Damar Rom Roma Sabar Flores " T ' R. n t o Dama Moa Alor Kisar Solor / Lombiert Timor Larat Yamd&na Selaru Dolak Sumbaw IRIAN © Robert Cribb 2007 Wokam Kobroor Trangan Yapen Salawati Supiori Numfoor BraK Buru Ambon' Saparua Adl Nuhucut Guaungapi Nuhurowa Sulabesi Wowoni Bulon Peleng Waigeo Batanta Bacan Obi Misool S&ram Hafmahera Morotai Karaketong (Tatoud) Miangas Temate Tidote Banggai Makian > Kasifuta. Manqoli Taliabu Siau Mindanao Tagulandang Selayar Sulabes Bulon Komodo Janahjarnpea Lombok Sumbawa Penida Bali Jolo Tawitawi SULAWESI (CELEBES) Taraka Tarakan Balabac ) Banggi Sebukg Kangean Labuan. KALIMANTAN (BORNEO) Bawean JAWA (JAVA) Belitung Karimata Figure 1.1 Main islands of Indonesia Krakatau* Panailan^ Christmas Limas . Lmgga Singkep Barigka Tlomari Jemaja Rangsan Bintan • Bintan main Ervggano Siberut Sipora Patjai U tara' K Pagai Selalarf Pini Tanamasa. Tartabeia- BengalisPadanav Tebnq Tinqqi Rangsang Rupal Pinangn LangkawT Samqslr Nias Tuar»gki> Simeulue Phuket I LA UL MA INS === [PDF page 25] === 10 Women and violence following the 1965 coup In terms of the violence of 1965–66, there is no overall, set pattern that can be seen as to how the massacres and arrests took place across Indonesia. The available information provides evidence of variations dependent upon where and when the killings happened, who were involved as perpetrators and victims (and bystanders), and how the killings were carried out. Ultimately, therefore, for any study of the violence of 1965–66 to investigate all of these variables, it must focus on local events and how local actors interpreted tensions at the national and regional levels and, in turn, how these tensions were exacerbated or alleviated by local conditions. What is clear is that the national crisis instigated by the coup and exacerbated by the military’s incitement and propaganda were major causes for the killings and arrests to begin. Despite these great variations, there are some general conclusions that can be drawn about the violence that followed the coup. While the majority of victims were killed and arrested in Central and East Java, Bali and in the northern provinces of Sumatra, anti-Communist violence was perpetrated across Indonesia. In terms of the timing of the killings, most were carried out between mid-October 1965 and March 1966 but, once again, in some areas sporadic killings continued for much longer. For example, one of the more well-known cases was the subsequent killings that formed part of the Trisula Operation, aimed at wiping out Communist remnants in 1968 in South Blitar, East Java (see Liem 2004). The waves of arrests also continued well into the late 1960s, long after the pace of the killings had abated. The ways in which victims died also varied. There were reported cases of whole family groups and villages being massacred, however, these seem to have been uncommon (see Roosa 2006: 31; Siregar 1993: 226–32; Young 1990: 89). It is likely that a larger proportion of those killed were murdered in executions, rather than in general or localised killings of civilians, with the often secretive nature of the executions limiting the number of witnesses. For many of the victims of the killings, death was preceded by capture. Some were ‘called’ (apel) to report to the local military command post while others were captured after the arrival of soldiers or militia to take away suspected PKI supporters. Sometimes family members simply disappeared, never to be seen again. Once in detention, the outcome for many detainees was torture and mistreatment followed either by removal and execution in some remote place (a process often called ‘dibon’, literally meaning ‘borrowed’) or else by months if not years of imprisonment. Alternatively, the progression from capture to execution could be much more swift: suspected PKI supporters would be rounded up from a particular area, spend a short amount of time in an ad-hoc detention centre or military/police post, then be taken to a nearby site that was convenient for the disposal of many bodies, and executed en masse. There are also some general conclusions which can be made about the extrajudicial arrests carried out by the Indonesian security services and aided by the various civilian vigilante groups. Information gathered during this project and reports carried out since the 1970s by organisations such as === [PDF page 26] === 600 kilometres Cipinang* CJmahi BUR Kambangan Sukit Duri (women) Salemba Pte/itungan Kalisosok Liananggang Figure 1.2 Detention camps for political prisoners, ca. 1975 \fcamps?5\ Tandikat BURU RafKMTIUl Masotii €> Robert Cribb 2007 CJmah === [PDF page 27] === 12 Women and violence following the 1965 coup Amnesty International show that in the interval between their arrest and their removal to prisons or detention camps, detainees were often kept at centres used for interrogation (see Amnesty International 1977). These interrogations were carried out by army intelligence units and police, in some cases with the aid of civilians recruited by KOPKAMTIB because of their known strong anti-Communist leanings, particularly those who had collaborated with the military and taken part in the killings (Amnesty International 1977: 21). For many prisoners, ‘interrogation’ was synonymous with torture; a great number were subjected to frequent brutal and inhumane treatment with the aim of demoralising, intimidating and terrorising them. In Chapter 5, I discuss some of the forms of torture perpetrated against women prisoners in particular by presenting and examining the testimonies of women survivors. From my interviews, it was clear that women detainees were often subjected to violent sexual assault. When political prisoners were released – some after more than ten years of detention – the social transition back into family groups and communities was often difficult. Many prisoners left detention and made their way back to their former communities where they would, if possible, return to extended family networks. Some families, however, were afraid of persecution through association with political prisoners which sometimes meant that families cut all ties with them. Some ex-tapol felt it best to avoid their old friends and family members, for fear that association with them would harm their loved ones or that their presence would become a burden for them. The stigma of being related to political prisoners or those killed during the massacres later developed into institutionalised policies in the 1980s, whereby those tainted by association with the PKI were marked as ‘unclean’ (‘tidak bersih’) with family members said to be from an ‘unclean environment’. For unclean people and their relatives, the government imposed numerous restraints on movement, employment, speech, political participation and residence, supposedly to help protect the wider community from the latent danger of Communism (Asia Watch 1988: 65–73). This was in addition to the existing requirements for those wanting to work in certain sectors, such as in government services or the military, or for those wanting to enter university or move to a new district, all of which required the applicant to have a ‘certificate of non-involvement in the 30 September Movement/PKI’ (van der Kroef 1976–77: 643). The killings, arrests and stigmatisation of all those connected with the Left created the foundation for Suharto’s long-lasting authoritarian New Order. As Ariel Heryanto (2006) has shown, the regime’s efforts to maintain legitimacy were, in part, based both upon its success at having eradicated the Communist scourge and upon perpetuating the fantasy of a Communist resurgence. When the New Order ended in 1998, however, the spectre of anti-Communism did not die with the regime, but rather remained a powerful tool to discredit political opponents and evoke fear. Despite this, after 1998, survivors of the 1965–66 killings and political imprisonment, including the women who took part in this study, began speaking out about their experiences. === [PDF page 28] === Women and violence following the 1965 coup 13 Women, agency and the violence of 1965 The ways in which women caught up in the violence of 1965 made choices and reacted to events are central to the findings presented in this book. The women’s testimonies at the core of this research highlight how women resisted, acquiesced, collaborated, negotiated, survived, or did not survive, during the massacres and political detentions. As the violence escalated in the weeks and months after the coup, women affected by anti-Communist actions faced increasingly demanding and dangerous circumstances and choices. In often adverse, seemingly unendurable conditions, women (and men and children) persevered. In the vast array of women’s experiences following the 1965 coup, what is clear is that they were not passive victims. Women made choices, devised plans and strategies to deal with problems, and they coped with the difficult situations in which they found themselves. Physical dangers and deprivations had to be endured and new social situations and relations managed. Food had to be found and loved ones taken care of to the best of a person’s ability in the circumstances. One of the recurring stories that came out of this research was of women, sometimes with great courage, sometimes out of desperation and fear, or both, who did everything that they could to survive and, very often, to ensure the survival of their children – even if that meant giving their children away to relatives, neighbours and sometimes strangers. Some women who took part in this project lost all of their possessions after the coup, either because they were stolen by the military, the militias or locals, or because they had to sell everything they had in order to eat. Many also lost loved ones, particularly husbands and male relatives, but also children, and yet managed to keep going. Some of the choices individual women made can only be described as heroic: the choice by a Gerwani woman to risk herself and her family by helping other party members to escape capture; a party leader’s decision to commit suicide rather than face the inevitable betrayal of friends and comrades because of continuing torture and interrogation; and a prisoner’s choice to offer herself in order to protect another woman or girl when guards took women from their cells in order to rape them (recorded and unrecorded interviews with Ibu Lia, Jakarta, October–December 2005). Each of these choices was made at significant risk or sacrifice and was described with great admiration often mixed with sadness. There were also some occasions when individual women stood out in the memories of others for their strength and personal integrity. An example of this was Ibu Sumiyarsi (sometimes spelt ‘Sumiarsih’), a doctor and political prisoner who was detained at the Plantungan women’s prison in Central Java (see Lestariningsih 2006). Several of the women who took part in this project had been amongst the approximately 500 women detained at Plantungan during the 1970s. At various times during interviews when explaining life in the camp, they described Dr Sumiyarsi’s many efforts to ensure the wellbeing and health of the women detainees. They also described how she === [PDF page 29] === 14 Women and violence following the 1965 coup had managed the care of all the people in the camp with little equipment, medicine or support from the guards. Later, she was moved to Bulu prison in Semarang, before being released finally in the late 1970s. While Dr Sumiyarsi had died well before I conducted my research, she loomed very large within women’s memories of Plantungan because of her work to help other detainees.6 In comparison to stories of noticeable heroism, some women made what they described as merely ‘unimportant’, ordinary or everyday (‘biasa’) decisions either to help improve their own condition and often that of their fellow inmates, or in some way to subvert the authority of their guards. These included a vast range of plans, choices and opportunities, all of which women described as in some way helping them, physically or emotionally. For example, although Ibu Lia described it as ‘just something they did,’ she explained how she and her fellow political prisoners would hide forbidden messages in the toilet walls for one another, the tiny scraps of communication passing on information, well wishes or encouragement. The punishment for being caught writing or possessing one of these notes was a beating, but still they continued, because it was one of their only ways to communicate. The small pieces of paper were precious to Ibu Lia and her fellow inmates – if only for a few moments before being flushed down the drain. Another example was one of the stories by Ibu Jusufa, a former tapol whom I met on a number of occasions in Sumatra. During one of these meetings, she described how she and a few other women were often punished for protecting the other women and girls in their prison. This usually happened when the women would all go out to the bathing area together – going together was also a strategy to avoid being caught alone because, according to Ibu Jusufa, there was greater safety in numbers. The guards would often try to watch the women while they were bathing, so Ibu Jusufa and some of the other women would stand guard. Sometimes this was enough to deter these men, at other times they would simply push open the door and watch. The worst punishment Ibu Jusufa received for doing this was after one incident when a guard pushed his way into the bathing area. Ibu Jusufa laughed when she recalled the incident, and said, ‘Of course I got angry. I’d had enough. So I hit him on the head with a rock.’ Instead of being beaten as she expected, Ibu Jusufa was locked in a room that was too small to lie down in for ten days with very little food or water. Despite this, she and the other women kept guarding the bathing area because it was ‘important’ to do so. In many stories told to me, the risks of defying orders or subverting the guards in other ways, as well as the potential punishments, were weighed against the possible rewards. Times when they had outsmarted their jailors were often described with great satisfaction, pride and laughter. In particular, stories that involved making a fool out of a guard were fondly recounted with general hilarity. These stories, however, were set against the many other stories about when plans failed and prisoners were caught and punished, as well as descriptions of those punishments. === [PDF page 30] === Women and violence following the 1965 coup 15 Other choices, particularly those that involved relationships between prisoners and guards, earned sometimes scorn, and sometimes understanding, from other women prisoners. While in some interviews, these choices were depicted in moralistic and condemnatory terms, at other times, they were described as necessary, if sometimes regretted, actions that had to be taken in order to survive. For example, there were descriptions in some interviews of women who ‘befriended’ guards or other military personnel within the detention centres in order to gain access to ‘nice things’, such as food, soap or clothing, or of women who sought the ‘protection’ of other men after husbands were killed or disappeared. For example, on the topic of marrying a guard in order to leave detention, there were numerous descriptions of and reactions to these decisions. Ibu Progo, a woman I interviewed in Sumatra, for example, described with understanding how one of the young women held in the same detention centre felt she had no choice but to leave by marrying one of the men in charge of the centre: We suffered and were always hungry … everything was gone. One of the girls, she married one of the senior officials. She married him so she could get out. And he wanted her as well. He wanted her and she wouldn’t have to be imprisoned any more. Now, Annie, what would you have done? Ibu Tati, a former political prisoner from Sumatra, described how teenage and younger women were coerced into sexual relationships with officials. She explained that women in the detention camp were frequently sexually abused and tortured by prison guards, policemen and others who came to the camps and how, in order to escape this, some of the girls became the ‘girlfriends’ of their abusers. Ibu Tati described the path which led some girls to make this decision: The girls were abused [so that one of them] would be one of the guard’s girlfriend. The guard would threaten her until she became his girlfriend, you understand? The guard would say, ‘Come on, let me do it [have sex with you],’ he’d say. Then, later, ‘Choose,’ the commander would then say [to the girl], ‘do you want to marry him or stay in here for this?’ She had to choose. So she would be released to marry him. Ibu Tati’s description shows that, certainly in this case, the choice of whether or not to have a sexual relationship with a guard or official in exchange for either better treatment or release from detention was strongly compelled by the threat of further violence. At other times, entering into a sexual relationship with a guard or official was described as a betrayal of other prisoners, and the woman in question depicted in harsh, often derogatory, terms. Resentment, anger and condemnation also featured prominently in these descriptions. Later in my interview with Ibu Tati, for example, she spent some time explaining how all of the women === [PDF page 31] === 16 Women and violence following the 1965 coup in her detention centre were sexually abused. In the middle of this story, however, she singled out one of the women who had been in jail with her because she appeared to have unfairly benefited from her relationship with a policeman: One of the girls at [the centre], she was D–’s special mistress. Every now and then we’d see her, she was really arrogant. While the rest of us were suffering in jail, she was like some kind of little miss, always getting around with an umbrella [to keep her skin white]. She’d go out in a nice sarong … and wave [at us] like some Mrs. Policeman. When asked how the other women in the centre felt about this girl, Ibu Tati replied: Oh, they really hated her! All of us cursed her. We condemned her for that sort of behaviour, how could we not? She was enjoying herself, we were suffering … In the end she was released from prison. People lost all their things, their money, everything, and she had it all. When she got out from there, she got it all. When she got out of prison (she paused for a moment), anyway, she got things. Her life was a success. When we got out it wasn’t to profit like that, it was to help improve the lives of our kids who didn’t have enough to eat. Interpersonal reactions to the actions and motivations of individuals must be set beside the issue of agency and involvement by men and women more broadly. In general, stories about the killings mostly ignore the gender of actors, or at least naturalise the actors as being men – excluding, of course, the demonised role that Gerwani women allegedly played in killing the generals on 1 October 1965. Despite this, women were complicit in carrying out the purges. They collaborated with perpetrators, turned over friends and associates to authorities, and stole from, lied to and cheated others. The question of complicity and involvement during 1965–66 is one which applies, of course, to numerous actors to varying degrees: to the different militia and military individuals and groups at all levels who perpetrated the massacres and arrests; to the unknown military personnel creating the anti-Communist propaganda that helped to incite the purges; to the governments which condoned and even supported the massacres as well as the rest of the international community which sat by and did nothing to stop them (see, for example, Simpson 2008). Complicity also applies to the tens of millions of bystanders in Indonesia who also did nothing to stop the killings or to help survivors. During the course of this research, I found only very rare accounts of women having participated directly in murdering or torturing suspected Communists, either as part of massacres carried out by military and militia groups or as part of executions during imprisonment. Given the limited scope of this project and the general difficulty of finding out about perpetrators and === [PDF page 32] === Women and violence following the 1965 coup 17 their behaviour during 1965–66, this should not be taken to mean that more women did not participate directly in the killings; that they too did not pick up machetes, bamboo spears, parang or guns, and kill and injure their neighbours, family members or strangers. The few descriptions available of perpetrator behaviour during this time (see, for example, McGregor 2009) as well as the depictions by survivors about 1965 more generally, often paint a rather confused and turbulent picture of those months during 1965–66. Broadly speaking, these stories describe it as a time of general confusion and anxiety over what might happen, of fear over the new social order that was emerging and, with the military’s dehumanising propaganda spreading the message that the Communists were dangerous and that it was right and necessary to destroy them, of intense fear and loathing of dangerous enemies. In this context, it is extremely unlikely that women did not take a direct role, at least on some occasions, in the killings. After all, if these circumstances compelled or incited participation of male (mostly men, but also boys/youths) perpetrators, then it is realistic to assume that women were also impelled by these circumstances to carry out acts of violence. Although my research did not find much evidence of individual women taking a direct, physical part in murdering and inflicting violence on suspected Communists, they did participate in numerous other ways which directly harmed individuals. One of the rare accounts of women taking direct part in harming others is recounted in the Komnas Perempuan report on ‘Listening to Women Victims of 1965’ (2007). In this account, the survivor, ‘AJ’, was tortured by a female police officer. While there is little information on this incident in the report, it is stated that AJ was breast-feeding her baby when she was detained and that she kept the baby with her while she was in detention. When AJ was interrogated, the female police officer took the baby and put it outside the interrogation room with some of the other female detainees. As the report (2007: 59) states, For hours the baby was not breast-fed, so it started crying. The policewoman intended to throw AJ’s baby into a barrel full of water. AJ recounted what the policewoman had said, ‘Just throw the baby in the barrel. Who cares? The mother will die anyway.’ Luckily, one of the other detainees managed to grab AJ’s baby from the policewoman’s arms. In this case, the female police officer caused harm to both a mother and child and seemed intent on murdering both. There are no further details in the report of what happened to AJ or her baby. Some women also took part in the anti-PKI rallies and demonstrations in the major cities; in the scant film coverage and photographic records available of these events, most of the angry mob members are younger men, but there are also some women visible.7 Arguably, these rallies played an important role in promoting violence against perceived PKI supporters, so participation in these events could be seen as direct incitement. The official ‘umbrella’ organisation made up of the many women’s organisations in Indonesia at the time, Kowani, === [PDF page 33] === 18 Women and violence following the 1965 coup also joined the calls to destroy the PKI in the weeks following the coup. On 29 October, Kowani expelled the Communist-aligned women’s organisation, Gerwani, from its ranks and at the rally where they announced this decision, Kowani also agreed to send 1000 volunteers to ‘help ABRI annihilate the Gestapu [30th September Movement]’ (Wieringa 2002: 310–11). While I did not find evidence of women’s groups, or groups of women, participating directly in the violence, Saskia Wieringa cites a news report that members of an organisation for police officers’ wives in Semarang, Central Java, formed their own group and actively participated with their husbands in the ‘cleaning out’ of Women would also certainly have benefited materially from anti-PKI actions in 1965–66. Almost all those interviewed as part of this project attested to the fact that the violence was combined with a general looting of the possessions, homes and other assets of those accused of being PKI supporters as well as some cases of houses and property being burnt by mobs. Many women, for example, told me how their possessions had been stolen by members of the military, police or militia groups.8 There were a few cases when women described their homes being taken and then occupied by others, usually members of the military, including the families of military personnel (for example, in interviews with Ibu Tati and Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005). Thus in the looting of possessions and stealing of property and assets, women benefited from stealing from those accused of being PKI sympathisers. Returning to the issue of agency and participation amongst women accused of being PKI supporters described during my fieldwork, however, and quoting the terms used in interviews, some people were ‘turned’ or ‘betrayed the party’ by becoming informants or helping to capture or implicate others. On the few occasions that I heard of these cases, their actions were at times described with understanding and, at others, they were harshly condemned. In accounts by both men and women about their time spent in detention, there are often stories of detainees who were tortured or otherwise coerced into becoming informants for the military.9 When I first began researching this topic, I read Carmel Budiardjo’s autobiography (1996) of her time spent as a political prisoner between 1968 and 1971. Ibu Carmel was originally from England, but married an Indonesian and raised a family in Indonesia during the 1950s and 1960s. Both Carmel and her husband had been involved with the PKI and, by the time of her arrest in 1968, her husband, Bud, had already been detained and released twice. In the early part of her detention, Carmel describes being held in a cell with other women prisoners at one of the detention centres in Jakarta. She describes the other prisoners, the guards, the meagre conditions at the centre and her interrogation sessions. One of the women held in her cell, Ting Suwarni, had been ‘turned’. Carmel recounts one exchange with Ting: The first person to be summoned for questioning from our room that morning was Ting Suwarni, the woman who had been drawing the charts === [PDF page 34] === Women and violence following the 1965 coup 19 the night before [when I arrived at the detention centre]. I later discovered that she had been working on a chart showing the organisational structure of SOBSI [a PKI-aligned union organisation], and wondered how many more people would be rounded up because of her revelations [ … ] After being arrested somewhere in East Java, she was savagely tortured, stripped naked, beaten and forced to stand with the legs of a chair on her feet while a soldier jumped up and down on the chair. This form of torture is commonly used by the army. After having to endure such ordeals, she succumbed and was now feeding information to her persecutors. As she settled down [when she returned from interrogation], she turned to me. ‘The Party made terrible mistakes, Zus Carmel, and we’re all paying for it now.’ No one could disagree with that, I thought. But the Party could not be held responsible for the millions of people who had suffered after 1965. She was herself a victim and was trying to rationalise her collaboration. The idea that a person can ‘betray’ her friends, family, colleagues, or cause because she ‘broke’ under torture is a fallacy and an essential misunderstanding of the process of torture. Torture is, to use Elaine Scarry’s terms, worlddestroying; for the one being tortured, ‘the sheer, simple, overwhelming fact of his agony will make neutral and invisible the significance of any question as well as the significance of the world to which the question refers’ (1985: 29). For Scarry, as torture undoes the sensory world of ideas, feelings, relationships and objects, and becomes an all-absorbing, internal physical reality, nothing exists outside the body; not friends, not allegiances, not any relationship. Thus, at a point where the physical pain of the body so overwhelms consciousness that anything external no longer has any meaning, ‘confession’ or ‘betrayal’ is also meaningless. After all, ‘[o]ne cannot betray or be false to something that has ceased to exist and, in the most literal way possible … all the psychological and mental content that constitutes both one’s self and one’s world … ceases to exist’ (Scarry 1985: 30). In accounts about those who had ‘turned’, there was a spectrum of reactions and descriptions; from intense dislike and condemnation of a person for betraying former friends, to suspicion and resentment of those who were suspected of having become informants for the authorities, to understanding that there is an inevitability about torture, that, as one woman explained to me, ‘you resist, you fight, keep going [ … ] but in the end, well, you have to’ (interview with Ibu Moeliek, Sumatra, September 2005). In particular, there were the occasional reactions that showed this empathetic understanding of ‘betraying’ friends under torture. In the testimonies by survivors who participated in this project, it is evident that interrogators went to extreme lengths to torture their captives and that they were both inventive and brutal in their techniques. Testimonies by survivors about their interrogation sessions and the violence and threats deployed against them reveal that choice and agency when being tortured are === [PDF page 35] === 20 Women and violence following the 1965 coup somewhat false terms. I do not mean that victims of torture have no agency, only that under threat, coercive violence and pain, choices under these circumstances cannot be viewed in moralised terms, however ambiguous, of ‘betrayal’ or being ‘strong enough’ to hold out against interrogation. Confession under torture is not a chosen act of betrayal of friends, loved ones or causes, it is the forced theft of the victim’s own body and voice for use in the torturers’ fraudulent assertion of power. In Chapters 3 and 5, I explore the process of interrogation and torture in detail and return to the issue of agency and victims of torture. In the end, it is clear that those caught up in the violence of 1965–66 were not passive victims. The women survivors who took part in this research, along with some of their family members, described the numerous ways in which they and others made choices, acted in the ways they thought best and created strategies to deal with circumstances. All of these choices, whether made in defiance, acquiescence or otherwise, involved risk and consequences. Sometimes the risks that were taken worked, at other times, they made things worse. What is important is that they negotiated these risks and took agency in matters related to them. For many of them, they described these risks, the decisions that they made, and the strategies that they developed to cope with problems as simply everyday events, or ordinary things that they had to do. What their testimonies reveal, however, is that these risks, decisions and strategies were anything but ordinary. In the following chapters, individual women’s agency and strategies to negotiate risk are shown in testimonies of their experiences of dealing with the violence following the coup. This book on women’s and girls’ experiences of gendered forms of violence during a period of mass social upheaval in Indonesia contributes to broader debates within a number of fields; particularly approaches to social and physical interactions during mass violence and feminist understandings of gender roles and violence against women’s bodies in mass conflict. In my analysis of sexual violence following the 1965 coup, I draw on and complement theoretical insights from social anthropology to investigate how victims’ bodies are both gendered and transformed to represent community during conflict (see Appadurai 2006; Malkki 1995). This study also contributes to the work by several theorists working in comparative genocide studies who have examined the physical and social effects of violence during conflict (see Semelin 2007; Hinton 2005). As stated at the beginning of this chapter, however, this analysis of the violence of 1965 emphasises in particular the gendered and gendering effects of violence against women and girls in a situation of genocidal violence. This book is organised into two parts. The first three chapters together provide a background to the remaining chapters. Chapter 2 gives an overview of the different ways in which women were caught up in the violence following the coup while Chapter 3 outlines the violence inherent within the system of political detention. The second part, Chapters 4–8, comprises the main analysis. These chapters are grouped thematically rather than chronologically and each examines individual women’s experiences of violence following the coup, with an emphasis on various forms of sexual violence. This thematic discussion === [PDF page 36] === Women and violence following the 1965 coup 21 of different experiences of violence in each chapter progressively examines: how and why sexual violence was perpetrated pervasively against women (Chapter 4); the many forms of sexual violence used against women victims during the massacres and in detention (Chapter 5); sexualised forms of mutilation during the killings (Chapter 6); sexual humiliation and the practice of strip-searching women and girls in detention (Chapter 7); and forms of sexual enslavement (Chapter 8). In the conclusion, I discuss the broader implications for this research within the wider field of violence against women during conflict. I also consider efforts by those who survived the Indonesian killings since the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998 to tell their stories. I argue that until there is an open debate within Indonesian society and some form of official acknowledgement and apology for the harm done to so many people, Indonesian history will remain unsettled and unfinished. Notes 1 Unless explicitly stated, all names and other identifying information provided by participants in my research have been removed or obscured through the use of pseudonyms. Given the sensitive nature of this research, individuals are de-identified in both primary and secondary accounts to protect their anonymity. In most cases, I recorded interviews on a digital recorder, with permission given by the participants involved. When participants were not comfortable being recorded, I took extensive notes. Field notes were made following all interviews. All interviews were conducted by myself together with a local intermediary, who was usually a former political prisoner and who introduced me to potential informants. In West Sumatra this was Narny Yenny (a researcher from Andalas University), in Jakarta it was Ibu Lia (not her real name, now deceased) and in Central Java it was Pak Karto (not his real name, now deceased). These interviews were conducted, in chronological order: in Yogyakarta and Jakarta (July–October 2002); Jakarta and surrounding areas (July, September and November 2005–January 2006); West Sumatra (August– September 2005); various regions of Central Java and Yogyakarta (September– November 2005); and in Jakarta (June 2011). ‘Ibu’ or ‘Bu’ are commonly used terms of address for adult women; ‘Pak’ or ‘Bapak’ are terms of address for adult men. There are few examples in this study where I have not used pseudonyms for informants. In the case of the former heads of Gerwani, they have either been interviewed by myself and others (and, in others’ subsequent publications, their real names have been used) or else they have published their own memoirs and testimonies under their own names (see, for example, Susanti 2006). I interviewed Ibu Umi Sarjono a few times while in Jakarta in 2005. She passed away in March 2011. I interviewed Ibu Kartinah also a few times in Jakarta in 2005, as well as members of her family. I also had the opportunity to interview another central member of the Gerwani secretariat, Ibu Sudjinah, on a number of occasions, first in 2002 and then again in 2005. She escaped arrest in 1965 and went on the run, working underground to support the Party, but was eventually arrested in 1967. She passed away in September 2007 (see her book, Sudjinah 2003). 2 These organisations were: the Lontar Foundation; the Indonesian Institute of Social History (Institut Sejarah Sosial Indonesia – ISSI), together with the Volunteers’ Team for Humanity (Tim Relawan untuk Kemanusiaan, TRuK) and the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (Lembaga Studi dan Advokasi Masyarakat – ELSAM); the Foundation for the Research of the 1965/1966 Massacre (Yayasan === [PDF page 37] === 22 Women and violence following the 1965 coup Penelitian Korban Pembunuhan 1965/1966 – YPKP); and the Institute for the Research of the 1965 Massacre (Lembaga Penelitian Korban Pembunuhan 1965 – LPKP), all of them based in Jakarta. Some additional primary data was collected from Syarikat, an organisation of mostly young Muslims in Yogyakarta who are conducting their own research into the events of 1965 as well as advocating reconciliatory measures in Indonesia. 3 By this, I mean certain high level members of the military, including General Suharto. I also include Ali Murtopo, the chief of the Army Special Operations Command (OPSUS), who is likely to have played a role in the creation and dissemination of the propaganda (see Simpson 2008: 181; Elson 2001: 124). Elson also suggests that Brigadier General Sucipto may have been involved in the propaganda as well (personal communication, 15 December 2008). I have written about this incitement campaign elsewhere (Pohlman in press). 4 These waves of arrests continued into the late 1960s and included various ‘operations’ whereby renewed efforts were made by the military to round up remaining PKI ‘elements’, such as the ‘Kalong’ Operation in 1968. For a discussion of some of the operations to eradicate these alleged remaining PKI subversives (i.e. PKI malam) during the late 1960s, see van der Kroef (1970). 5 For one man’s story of being ‘cleansed’ from the armed forces, see Zubaidi Hasan’s story, ‘Menembus Tirai Asap’ (2003: 3–23). Please also note that, although ethnic Chinese Indonesians were amongst those persecuted after the coup, they did not form a disproportionate group in terms of the numbers of victims. On this topic, see Cribb and Coppel (2009). 6 A small clinic was set up at Plantungan and run by Dr Sumiyarsi, together with other women prisoners who had been nurses or midwives. This clinic serviced both the prisoners and the local villages. A photo of Ibu Sumiarsih, taken during her imprisonment at Plantungan, can be seen in an Amnesty International report (1977: 55). 7 For example, in Sutton (1967), a photograph taken by Rory Dell at the top of p. 27, where a young woman is visible in a HMI (Islamic Students’ Association) anti-Communist demonstration. Please note, however, that HMI was a stridently anti-Communist organisation that had protested against the PKI on numerous occasions and thus it is possible that this picture was taken prior to the coup. 8 Some of these included Ibu Mimien (interview with Ibu Mimien and Ibu Guritno, Jakarta, September 2005), Ibu Eny (interview with Ibu Eny and Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005), and Pak Agus (interview with Pak Agus, Pak Pramana and others, Sumatra, September 2005). In the Komnas Perempuan report, there are also several examples of homes and possessions being looted and stolen or 9 For example, see Margiyono and Yunanto (2007: 2–5, 81 and 89). Amongst my own research, some of those who talked about people being ‘turned’ through torture included Ibu Lia (interview Jakarta, November 2005), Ibu Wanti (interview, Jakarta, October 2005), Ibu Endang (interview, Jakarta, October 2005), Ibu Susiani (interview, Jakarta, October 2005), and Ibu Astuti (interview, Sumatra, September 2005) and interview with Ibu Astuti by Narny Yenny (Sumatra, October 2002), transcript obtained from Narny Yenny. There were also accounts by women whose family members had been ‘betrayed’ by those who had been ‘turned’, such as by Ibu Nada (East Java, interview transcript from ISSI). 10 Ibu Carmel was only able to leave prison because the British government, along with her friends and family, intervened on her behalf. She was deported to England after her release. I also met with Ibu Carmel in 2006 when I visited the TAPOL office, located in her house in Surrey. She kindly took the time to answer my many questions. === [PDF page 38] === Getting caught and being killed Then, in 1965, then the troubles and upheaval came, the political strife came. And I was washed away by it, destroyed by it. (Ibu Eny, West Sumatra, October 2005) The lives of millions of Indonesians were violently changed after 30 September 1965. Six months later, an estimated half a million were dead and at least a further half a million imprisoned. Hundreds of thousands of families and communities were affected by the death or detention of men, women, children, relatives, friends, colleagues and enemies. Led by General Suharto, the military high command in Jakarta which had been made responsible for the ‘restoration of order and security’ had instead incited, coordinated and perpetrated the slaughter. Moreover, unknown thousands of Indonesian civilians had participated and collaborated in the murders. In this chapter, I explore the narratives of individual women amongst those millions and investigate the diverse range of experiences and circumstances which led them to be adversely affected by the violence following the 1965 coup. Specifically, I examine a number of trends within women’s testimonies about how and why they and their loved ones were arrested, killed or otherwise persecuted. The majority of the victims of the violence of 1965–66 were either members of, or somehow associated with, the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). As such, this chapter charts five distinct patterns amongst victims of the violence: those who were members and leaders of the PKI and its associated organisations; friends and relatives of members; those who were taken ‘hostage’ in place of fugitive relatives; cases of mistaken identity; and instances whereby existing local grievances gave rise to scapegoating or finger-pointing for the benefit of individuals in petty feuds. Although there were many other ways in which people were caught up in the violence, these five trends were those most clearly seen in the testimonies of individual women. Over the course of this research, it has become clear that although trends, similarities and commonalities emerge, this study must inevitably focus on the individualities and differences of experiences. Each affected region, each town, each village and each individual experienced the mass killings and arrests differently. Therefore, this chapter does not provide a === [PDF page 39] === 24 Getting caught and being killed comprehensive overview of the history of women during the 1965–66 killings in Indonesia. Instead, I bring together threads of similar experiences in the narratives of women survivors with the aim of drawing some conclusions, to find partial answers to how and why they were persecuted. Victims of the killings and arrests We were farmers [ … ] In ‘65 I had three children, one of them died. One died, the oldest one. He was affected by it, affected by ‘65. And then my husband was taken, then he disappeared. Who knows where? I don’t know. If he died, I don’t know. Until this day, I don’t know. In what place or when, I don’t know. And then there was the interrogation. I was interrogated and it turned out that I wasn’t involved in it, in ‘65, and so then I was released … only seven months for not being guilty. (Ibu Farida, Central Java, undated1) Ibu Farida’s testimony is similar to many that I heard. Her words hold meanings that encompass more than the murder of her oldest child and husband, the not knowing where or when or how they died, and the irony of having been interrogated and detained for her non-involvement. The words she used and which I heard many times – ‘enam-lima’ (‘sixty-five’), ‘hilang’ (‘disappeared’), ‘terlibat’ (‘involvement’) – are frightening. They are frightening because of the suffering they intimate and the suffering they brought about when attached to individuals, their families and friends. Stories about victims of the killings and arrests in the aftermath of the coup vary greatly. The basis of the arrests was supposedly ‘indications of involvement [whether direct or indirect] in the 1965 coup attempt/Communist Party (G30S/PKI)’ (Budiardjo 1974: 20). ‘Involvement’, however, had nothing to do with whether a person had participated in the kidnap and murder of the generals on that night in Jakarta. Allegations were made widely against many people, from higher ranking members of the Communist Party itself to members of organisations associated with the PKI (such as Pemuda Rakyat, BTI, Gerwani and others), to members of their families and associates, to inhabitants of villages which were perceived as ‘PKI bases’. Some were wholly unrelated to the PKI or any of its organisations but were in the wrong place at the wrong time or became victims because of personal conflicts and jealousies. There was also great regional and local variation and so the stories of survivors and victims’ families vary greatly from place to place. In the following sections, I present only a few of these stories to illustrate how systematic or arbitrary becoming a victim could be during those months following the coup. Members and leaders of the PKI and associated organisations The majority of those arrested or killed following the coup were members or associates of the PKI or one of its aligned organisations. This was reflected in === [PDF page 40] === Getting caught and being killed 25 my research and most of the women and men with whom I spoke had been affiliated in some way with the Party. The majority of the women interviewed were former members of Gerwani or another PKI-affiliated organisation or else they were the wives or daughters of men who had been members. Of these, more than half had played some leadership role in the PKI or one (or more) of its associated organisations. These leadership roles ranged from very high positions, such as in the Central Committee of the PKI or the secretariat of Gerwani, to regional and sub-district leaders, to those who had been in charge of particular projects in their local communities. In these interviews, almost all described how members of the Party and associated organisations were hunted down and killed or arrested because of their political affiliation. What also became clear during these interviews, however, was the way in which leaders of the PKI and associated organisations were often the first to be attacked or arrested. Based on my interviews and other research, it is probable that having a position of leadership increased the likelihood of becoming a target during the killings and arrests or, at the very least, that those who possessed leadership positions were at greater risk. The main reason identified in some interviews for this increased risk was that, as leaders, they were more visible within the community as being associated with the PKI. This not only made them more readily identifiable as targets of antiCommunist demonstrations or arrests, it also meant that their names were more likely to appear on any ‘black’ or ‘death’ lists in the area. During the course of this project, there were many stories about the homes of leaders being attacked by mobs or of leaders being kidnapped or disappearing. In this section, I present a small number of testimonies by those who were leaders of Communist organisations and who survived the killings in order to illustrate some of the patterns of targets of persecution after 1965. During my fieldwork in Jakarta I had the opportunity to interview former leaders of the Communist women’s organisation, Gerwani; Ibu Umi Sarjono (former head of Gerwani and member of Parliament – DPRGR/MPR2) and Ibu Kartinah (secretary general of Gerwani, also a member of the DPRGR/ MPR). Both Ibu Kartinah and Ibu Umi Sardjono were detained within days of the coup because their leadership of Gerwani made them targets for arrest at a very early stage during the anti-Communist actions. Before meeting Ibu Umi for the first time in 2005, I had read about her in Saskia Wieringa’s book on Gerwani (2002). I had also heard about her from other former members, so I knew how she had been involved in the struggles against colonialism before and during the Revolution (1945–49), and how she had been part of the founding of Gerwani and had guided its direction and actions, from beginning to end. On the few occasions when I visited her, two matters stuck in my mind. The first was her vehemence when refuting the New Order propaganda about Gerwani. In common with many other former Gerwani members, she expressed her disgust and anger about the depiction of Gerwani members as blood thirsty killers at Lubang Buaya. She also outlined how in prison she and others had met some of the teenage girls whose === [PDF page 41] === 26 Getting caught and being killed ‘confessions’ were used in the Indonesian military’s anti-Communist propaganda campaign; confessions signed by girls who could not read and who had been coerced by torture.3 The other point that stood out in my mind during our conversations was Ibu Umi’s caution; she preferred that I did not record our discussions, we spoke in English so that, as she put it, her housekeeper and neighbours would not understand if they heard us, and our conversation would stop and start whenever someone passed by the narrow walkway in front of her house. Neither of these points was surprising. I had conducted interviews in warungs (small food stalls), cafés, bookstores, and other locations that various participants had nominated in order to avoid their family or neighbours knowing about the interviews. At other times when I interviewed people in their homes, if anyone asked why I was there, it was because I was a tourist who knew someone who knew someone in Jakarta and so I had come to see the village/ town/area. I was used to these measures to try to protect the anonymity of participants. I was not surprised by Ibu Umi’s caution because she knew and had experienced the New Order’s anti-Communist persecution and what it meant to be a former leader of a communist organisation. Moreover, she had been the leader of Gerwani, perhaps the organisation that had been most intensely vilified and dehumanised during the military’s propaganda campaign, the legacy of which continues today. As a senior, well-known and visible leader, Ibu Umi was among the first to be arrested following the coup. On 1 October 1965, Ibu Umi, along with Ibu Kartinah, Gerwani’s secretary General, and a few others, were at the canteen and lodgings for parliamentary members in Jakarta. They had been shocked by the news of the coup but, as they had not been involved in it, they continued both their work in the parliament and their various organisational commitments for Gerwani. They were arrested by policemen at their lodgings, taken to a military post for questioning and then imprisoned at the Jakarta women’s prison, Bukit Duri (interview with Ibu Umi Sarjono [her real name] and Ibu Lia, Jakarta, October 2005). Ibu Kartinah, who was with Ibu Umi during her arrest and for much of her imprisonment, told their story: I was captured right after a parliamentary recess. Between 1–17 October, we had continued to attend parliamentary sessions, the three Gerwani leaders [including Ibu Umi Sarjono], and just before the recess, we were called in by one of the parliamentary heads and told that many houses had been destroyed and belongings stolen, including at my house. We were allowed to stay at the parliamentary canteen and lodgings in Senayan [a suburb of Jakarta] with our children. So we gathered our things to move to the mess. However, after just one night of sleeping at the mess, we four were approached by a gang of officials and police and were never returned, rather we were taken to the Regional Military Command (KODAM) post. At the time when we were taken, I was sure that we would be brought back straight away, that we would only be there for a === [PDF page 42] === Getting caught and being killed 27 little while. We went there in our own vehicle with our driver. But our vehicle, a jeep, and our driver never returned, he too was imprisoned. At the command post, we four were interrogated; we weren’t physically tortured but we were mentally pressured during the interrogation process. And beside us were young kids who were being beaten to death before our eyes. At the time, I protested and was told by the interrogation team in a sinister tone that, ‘You’d be used to seeing people tortured, wouldn’t you?’ Meaning that we were used to seeing torture at Lubang Buaya supposedly. Of course I refuted that accusation because it was blatantly clear that they had no evidence that we had been at Lubang Buaya. This kind of thing happened over and over. (Interview, Jakarta, October 2005) In subsequent interviews with Ibu Umi and Ibu Kartinah, they both talked about their repeated interrogation sessions and how they saw young members of Party organisations and others being severely physically tortured. They also spoke about what had happened to others they had known in Gerwani and other Communist organisations, particularly the many leaders with whom they had worked over the years. As Ibu Umi explained to me, many of these leaders and their families had been rounded up and detained, many of them tortured, and some of them had disappeared, taken in the night and executed. Both Ibu Umi and Ibu Kartinah remained in prison for thirteen years. Neither was ever put on trial for her alleged involvement in the coup. As such highranking leaders of the organisation whose members had supposedly played such a vital role in the 30 September Movement at Lubang Buaya, it is incongruous that they were never put through the heavily publicised trials of other prominent PKI figures and members of Sukarno’s Cabinets held in the late 1960s nor, indeed, the later civil court show trials.4 As Saskia Wieringa has pointed out, it also seems strange that the teenage girls who were kidnapped near Lubang Buaya, tortured and forced to sign ‘confessions’ were also never put on trial, given that their testimonies were so widely propagated in the media (2002: 314). This aside, what is clear is that Ibu Umi, Ibu Kartinah and so many other leaders of Gerwani and other Communist organisations were imprisoned without legal process because they were leaders, not because they had participated in the coup. In comparison with what happened to Ibu Umi and Ibu Kartinah, who were leaders of Gerwani at the national level, the story of Ibu Dibyo Puspito, retold in the collection by Sumarwan (2007: 153–55), demonstrates how leadership in a Communist organisation at a local level also determined persecution following the 1965 coup. Born in 1923, the daughter of a village clerk in East Java, Ibu Dibyo Puspito married at nineteen and then became involved in various organisations, beginning with a number of those set up by the Japanese during the Occupation (1942–1945). After the end of the war, both she and her husband continued their work with various social associations and Ibu Dibyo Puspito went on to become the local branch leader of Gerwani as well === [PDF page 43] === 28 Getting caught and being killed as the farmers’ and peasants’ organisation, the BTI. At the time of the coup, she was attending a farmers’ meeting organised by the BTI outside Jakarta. After the coup, however, she describes how everything changed for her and her family: From October 1965, the events going on in Jakarta were frightening. Many people were being kidnapped. At the time, I was attending a farmers’ course which was being run by the BTI in [a town outside Jakarta]. After hearing all the rumours, I suggested that we simply cancel the course. After all, we didn’t need to die needlessly. We had planned for the course to last six months but it ended in its third month. The leftover money that we had was divided up amongst us in order to pay for our journeys home. [ … ] Finally I managed to get home to [my home in the Yogyakarta region]. Once I got home, I was arrested in 1965. [ … ] Then I was taken to the Wonosari detention camp by truck. I was imprisoned there for three years. [ … ] While I was in prison, I was also tortured. During the interrogation, my fingers were electrocuted. [ … ] My husband who was active in the district branch was kidnapped the day before me. He was thrown into Luweng Grubug (Grubug Cave). So was my father, my older sister’s husband and many others. I’m sure that they’re dead, because those caves [have a subterranean river that] runs out to the South Sea. (Cited in Sumarwan 2007: 153–55) For Ibu Dibyo and her family, membership within the Party structure meant being captured, imprisoned and tortured, and for her and her sister’s husbands and their father it meant death. As she explained, after the coup it was clear that people associated with the Party were in danger, so she returned early from her course to her home outside Yogyakarta. Once Ibu Dibyo returned, however, both she and her husband, who also held a leadership position within the Party, were quickly arrested. She was imprisoned for three years and tortured, whereas her husband and other male family members were killed and, as she suspects, their bodies dumped in Luweng Grubug, one of the natural sinkholes east of Yogyakarta used as body disposal sites. In the case of Ibu Dibyo Puspito and her family, leadership positions within the Party, Gerwani, and the BTI, meant that they were easily identified and quickly arrested by those who knew them as such. The families of party members also became targets for the arrests and killings. Ibu Astuti’s membership within the Party and local leadership position also influenced what happened to her after the coup. In early October 1965, Ibu Astuti became fearful that she and her family would become the object of local anti-Communist violence and so fled. Ibu Astuti’s testimony highlights a number of issues: how the propaganda incited the participation of local people in the killings; how PKI leaders were frequently attacked; how many PKI members tried to flee; and the process of hunting them down. During the 1950s and early 1960s, Ibu Astuti was an active member of a number of Communist-aligned organisations in Sumatra. She became a leader === [PDF page 44] === Getting caught and being killed 29 of Gerwani in the area, married a local leader of another Communist organisation and, on occasion, was involved with other PKI-aligned organisations and events. When the coup took place, Ibu Astuti was shocked by the allegations being made against the Party on the radio and in the newspapers and became frightened for her safety and that of her family. At the time she had three small children, one of whom she was still breast-feeding. After hearing about killings that had already begun nearby and afraid that the mobs would soon come for them because of their prominence within their community as local leaders, she and her husband decided it was time to escape. Thus within a couple of weeks of the coup, she left her two older children with her mother and fled into the forest with her husband, her baby and some other PKI members who were on the run. It was time to make a run for it [ … ] I brought a mattress and some of the children’s clothes, but everything else we left, and went to [my mother’s] village. My mother was there in the village and they were really scared. [Everyone asked], ‘What’s happening? What’s going on?’ Things were being said on the radio, and I’m not kidding, there’d already been killings. [ … ] So we walked to the foot of the mountains. My two little girls who were four and five at the time, they stayed with my mother in the village. My little one was on my hip. Our friends were with us [my husband and me] and we all knew what we had to do. That was flee from our homes in order to escape. So, we’d sleep at one friend’s house for two nights, then it wouldn’t be safe, so we’d move to another unsafe place. [But soon we decided] then to run far into the forest, right up into the mountains, into the mountains, and we weren’t just in twos or threes, but thousands [ … ] There were those from the PKI, from Gerwani, from the BTI and Pemuda Rakyat, there were a lot of young people running, hundreds.5 As Ibu Astuti explained, she and her husband knew that the mobs would come for them because they belonged to the Party leadership and therefore they thought they would be the first to be attacked. Driven by the belief that killings in nearby areas would soon spread to their community, they hoped to pre-empt what they believed would be certain violence against them and quickly made the decision to flee. Knowing that they would be hunted, they left their two older girls with Ibu Astuti’s mother but, as the baby was not yet weaned, they had to take him with them. Ibu Astuti then recounted how the propaganda had incited the participation of people in the killings. In particular, she identified how people were influenced by what they heard on the radio, the most common form of mass media communication at the time: There were a great many people who were against us [ … ] and they all hated us because of what they’d heard about in Jakarta, from the radio and all that, hating the PKI [ … ]. They had the hatred planted in them, === [PDF page 45] === 30 Getting caught and being killed they said the PKI had killed the generals, they said Gerwani killed the generals, that they’d gouged out their eyes, that they’d murdered them, that they’d cut their things off, cut off their penises, things like that. Even though they were very crude, these stories were passed from place to place, not just from the centre, but also from the regional areas, and everyone who had a radio listened to it [ … ] And they listened to it all, those who were against us before now mobilised the mobs, all of it coming from the military. They were from [she lists various organisations here, including Masyumi, a Muslim organisation] and all other sorts that were anti-PKI, who were in conflict with the PKI’s politics. Gerwani, Pemuda Rakyat, we were all hunted, and we were terrorised. Going from place to place, Ibu Astuti and her husband, along with a small group of other local PKI members and leaders, decided to flee into the forest in the mountains. Without adequate food or supplies, they hid in the forest, finding that hundreds of other PKI members were doing the same. The mobs which soon came to hunt them down in the mountains were mostly made up of the various anti-PKI civilians who had joined militia groups. As Ibu Astuti described, ‘We were being hunted in the mountains. I’m not joking, there were hundreds of people who came carrying bamboo spears, carrying crowbars and all sorts of things, machetes, pieces of wood, hunting us.’ After a few months hiding in the forest, Ibu Astuti’s group were spotted by a group of vigilantes, chased down and caught. She was separated from her husband while they were fleeing and later she found out that he had been killed. She was caught while trying to escape with another PKI leader. As he was someone whom the mob had been looking for, they decapitated him but left Ibu Astuti alive so that she could carry his head back to the command post and so that they could interrogate her. Her baby was taken away by a man in the army and she never saw him again. In the following chapters, I return to Ibu Astuti’s testimony about her torture, the years she spent in detention, the deaths of her daughters, the attacks on members of her family, and her eventual release (interview with Ibu Astuti and Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005). What Ibu Astuti’s testimony makes clear, however, is that her leadership position and that of her husband made her afraid that they would quickly be attacked by anti-Communist mobs, thus forcing them to flee. Their positions and membership within the Party also meant that those connected with them, their family members in particular, became targets for anti-PKI violence. Contagious relations: friends and relatives Members of the PKI and its associated organisations were not the only ones accused of ‘involvement’ in the 30 September 1965 coup or who became victims during the coup’s aftermath. Involvement by association meant the death or detention of unknown numbers of family members, friends, neighbours and colleagues. For those who survived, this contagion also spread beyond === [PDF page 46] === Getting caught and being killed 31 the period of the killings and arrests; the stigma of involvement later becoming institutionalised within New Order rhetoric and policy, the most obvious example being the ‘Clean Self, Clean Environment’ policies of the 1980s (see Goodfellow 1995). During my fieldwork, a handful of witnesses related how whole ‘PKI families’ or, occasionally, whole villages considered ‘PKI bases’ were slaughtered (see Hefner 1990; Cribb 2001). Such killings were less common than other patterns of killings identified, such as the capture then execution of individuals, however, again, the situations differed greatly across the different regions. In this section, I present three accounts about how family members, friends and neighbours became victims during the killings because of their association with those considered Communists. Ibu Lani, Ibu Sri and Ibu Nana are three women who were imprisoned after the coup. My contact in West Sumatra, Narny Yenny (Upik), and I had driven with Ibu Sri and Ibu Lani for two hours down a road that zigzagged along forested hillsides and precipices to get to Ibu Nana’s house. Along the way, Ibu Sri and Ibu Lani had talked about how the steep precipices that dropped off from the roadside had been used to dispose of victims during the killings. After all, the women said, how could anyone possibly get down there to find the bodies? When we finally arrived, we sat in Ibu Nana’s front room for a few hours and the three women told us stories about the killings in that region. They talked about the victims who were killed, where they were taken from, and how they were killed. They also revealed how, sometimes, whole families, even children of PKI families, would be killed along with their parents: [ … They] killed them all. It’s incomprehensible. NANA: It makes no sense at all. Fathers, mothers, children, all of them would be thrown in [the mass grave]. ANNIE: So if, during the killings, if the father was killed, and the mother was killed, what would happen to the children? NANA: There would be no-one to take care of them. If someone was willing to give them food, then they’d be able to eat. ANNIE: So they wouldn’t be killed then. NANA: Well, in these parts, not often. In [this area], it didn’t happen often. But in [the neighbouring] region, the children would be killed as well. The whole family would be taken to the edge of the river and, all of them shot, all of them would be dead. Murdered. ANNIE: It’s hard to understand why the children had to be killed as well. NANA: So if someone who had their children with them was caught, they’d be shot, the children too. They knew that, it meant they’d all be killed. LANI: Little children. That’s what it was like. But that’s the level of commitment they had for destroying the ‘seven generations of descendants’ [a rhetorical phrase for extermination]. NANA: To exterminate the PKI right down to their roots! LANI: Right down to their children being killed. SRI: ANNIE: === [PDF page 47] === 32 Getting caught and being killed As the three women made clear, the slaughter of entire ‘PKI’ families or even whole villages was not common but it did happen in some areas. They also discussed how the anti-PKI propaganda not only incited the violence but also created extreme rhetoric which advocated eradication not only of PKI members themselves, but of family members. As Ibu Lani and Ibu Nana said, this exterminationist logic of the propaganda extended to the murder of children in some cases. In a number of other interviews also, other women highlighted the pervasive nature of the propaganda as well as the particularly strong message to eradicate the PKI ‘down to its roots’, ‘down through seven generations’, and often that ‘even the children’ had to suffer.6 The contagion of PKI affiliation for entire families or even entire communities was not limited to that region of Sumatra. I Ngurah Suryawan, who conducted an anthropological study into the violence of the massacres in the Jembrana regency on the western side of Bali, describes another account of violence against an entire community considered to be a ‘PKI base’ (2006: 154–55). As he describes, [I] found out about a particular bridge called Ijogading bridge[ … in] Loloan which is a Muslim area in the Jembrana regency. In this Muslim community [ … ] there were clashes between the Pemuda Ansor group which had joined together with the Front Pancasila mob [both youth militia groups] and the PKI supporters. During the clash, two of the Pemuda Ansor were killed. After that, Loloan village became a base for the butchers who carried out the root and branch eradication of PKI members and sympathisers. Witnesses whisper about how, at Ijogading bridge, the bodies of the killing’s victims were thrown into and swallowed up by the river and the muddy silt. Each time I visit Jembrana, I always come to this bridge and look down and see the flowing water that has been polluted by the community’s waste and rubbish. The Muslims in Loloan village were very against the PKI because they considered them atheists. So it is not surprising that, during the killings of PKI in Jembrana, the Muslim population became one of the groups of butchers to wipe out the communists down to their roots. As Suryawan discovered, this ‘root and branch’ extreme rhetoric meant that PKI as well as their family members were eradicated ‘down to their roots’. The nature of this eradication, however, varied from place to place. As Suryawan shows, in some places, whole families were killed. Most times, however, men and teenage boys were the more likely to be kidnapped or killed. Crossing Ijogading bridge, there is a small road which leads to a village. The village is called Mertasari. I had once visited that village. According to some of the historical protagonists, Mertasari was always a ‘Hindu village’ in amongst the larger Muslim community of Loloan. During those tense days in 1965 in Jembrana, men who were considered members or === [PDF page 48] === Getting caught and being killed 33 sympathisers of the PKI were kidnapped from that village. They would be taken during the night and never returned. The men from Mertasari who felt their safety was threatened fled into the wild jungle areas around the village. These jungles became renowned as the hiding place for PKI members from Mertasari who would have been kidnapped. This area became known as a karang suwung [empty] area. Because once the killings subsided, this village was known as the village of widows, because all that was left was women and children. According to Suryawan’s study, the village of Mertasari was an example of how whole communities came to be a target during the killings, the men of the village killed or forced to flee, leaving the women and children behind. The process by which Mertasari and many other communities like it became seen as ‘PKI’ bases was always partly a product of existing local politics and antagonisms (see Young 1990). In this case, Suryawan (2006: 155) points out that Mertasari was ‘always a “Hindu village”’ amongst a larger Muslim community, referring to extant pressures outside differences over political affiliation. As Stephan Eklöf has also pointed out in relation to the killings in Bali, the polarisation and antagonism between political parties came to characterise other communal conflicts. Thus he argues that it was ‘common practice that whole hamlets or kin groups had declared their support for the PKI, and therefore all members of these consequently came to be regarded as communists by their adversaries’ (2002: 128). In situations where political affiliation and identity conflated with local tensions, the violence of eradicating the PKI extended to family members and sometimes entire communities. Ibu Tati’s testimony is another account of how victims became targets because of familial association in Sumatra. Her story, in fact, highlights a number of points. First that members and leaders of Communist organisations associated with the PKI at all levels became the initial targets of anti-Communist actions. Second, that the violence began in particular areas and spread to others, and third, that families were also persecuted because of their association with PKI members. Growing up in a regional area of Sumatra, Ibu Tati trained as a kindergarten teacher and in the early 1960s began working for one of Gerwani’s Melati kindergartens. The Melati kindergartens were part of Gerwani’s commitment to adequate childcare. Wieringa notes that by mid-1964, there were nearly 1500 crèches established and that they were also used as a recruiting tool; women whose children attended the kindergartens were also asked to sign up for membership in Gerwani (2002: 240–41). Ibu Tati explained that, as she was quite young at the time, she joined the PKI’s youth organisation, Pemuda Rakyat, and that the man she eventually married was a leader in the BTI. When the coup happened, she had recently given birth and was still in hospital. As with other PKI organisation members in the area, her husband went on the run early in October, but she was unaware of this. She then described how ill she had been === [PDF page 49] === 34 Getting caught and being killed in the hospital and her confusion over the events going on around her (interview with Ibu Tati and Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005): At the time when G30S exploded, I had a new baby, born right at that time, ‘65. The baby was born on 26 September, so right when the G30S happened. We were still at the hospital [ … ] I couldn’t move. It was a very difficult birth, the baby was more than four kilos … I asked someone at the hospital where my husband was, but no-one could find him. But all of this was overheard by one of the guards. Oh, the hospital was already on edge what with all those black-clothed troops around, what were they called? The ones that wore the ceremonial ribbons and so forth, black pants, a mob of them! (She is talking about anti-PKI militias.) I could hear their voices all over the place [looking for], you know, them, the PKI, and so on. I was quite sick, but I overheard them, just by eavesdropping. What’s going on, I wondered. Why all this commotion? None of my friends was willing to tell me what was going on, because I was still so ill. They were afraid, but still, I heard what was happening. I heard it, so I went home. Still recovering from the difficult birth, Ibu Tati left the hospital and went home. It was then that she discovered that her husband had gone on the run. As the situation became more dangerous, she decided to leave her home and went to her parents’ home in a nearby village. I went home to my parent’s place in the village. [ … ] When I left the hospital, I went home for a week first. But it wasn’t safe there after that. KAMI, KAPPI [mobs involved in attacks on PKI members] had started to attack people, and we couldn’t escape it, it just kept going! [ … ] You just had to look outside to see the thugs on the road, the people in KAMI, KAPPI and all that. [ … ] There were many young men around here who got involved with the attacks. But I could still handle it. ‘Oh, God, help me! Keep my baby safe!’ My baby’s body was so little, so small, and we were terrified, you understand? It went on like this and then my parents came and then they said, ‘Now you have to come home with us! If you stay here, it just won’t work!’ While she was still at her home, Ibu Tati’s husband managed to visit her secretly. Worried that the mobs would attack them, her husband told Ibu Tati to take the baby and go with her parents back to their village. [My husband, Pak –] had managed to come there [ … and he’d said], ‘It’s like this, Bu, it’s better if you go home [to your parents’ village]. Take the baby. I’ll be OK, I’ll be fine,’ that’s what he said. [ … ] So I went back home to the, to the house. But he wasn’t able to join us, because he was scared as well. Some had been caught already [and … ] there were those that were still on the run, and some already had to go report to the Korem === [PDF page 50] === Getting caught and being killed 35 [Military Area Command post]. Who knew what would happen to us? We didn’t know what would happen in the end. [ … ] The situation had started to get quite heated. About 5 October, people had already started being apprehended. Meaning that the leaders of the organisations like Pemuda Rakyat, Gerwani, the farmers, the workers, they were arrested. Including [my husband]. At the time, he’d only recently been put in charge, if I’m not mistaken. He was the leader for the party in the – area. He was only newly instated, really [ … ] It had only just recently been announced. Who knows what happened to him. Who knows? It’s been a long time since, so I’m, I don’t know … With her husband arrested and having disappeared, Ibu Tati decided to make her way back to her parents’ village with her new baby. She ran into an ambush on the way but managed to avoid it and eventually made it to the village. Shortly after she arrived, however, the mobs began attacking and kidnapping people. It was less than a week after I got to the village that the operations started. People were taken from the village, about five people were taken. Farmers! People who didn’t know anything! They were taken to the police station [and … ] tortured there at the [station], and so on. Forced to admit to things, like [being involved in the] G30S coup, gouging out eyes. [ … ]7 Ibu Tati was arrested not long after. Because her husband was a BTI leader and because of the circumstances under which she returned to her parents’ village, not only Ibu Tati but also many of her family were imprisoned. ‘Because of the way that I went back to the village then, I was considered, well, as if I were someone from the regional level [of the PKI]. All of my family, my mother, my younger sister, myself, Pak – [my husband], everyone went in! Imprisoned!’ Ibu Tati’s experience was similar to that of many women who took part in this project who talked about their family members being ‘caught up’ or ‘affected’ by their or another member of their family’s involvement in the Party. Husbands and wives, parents, children and even extended family members all sometimes became victims through familial associations. Membership within the PKI or one of its associated organisations in this way became a social contagion which could spread to family members and affiliates. Hostages and guarantees In addition to family members becoming targets because of their association with those considered PKI or Communist sympathisers, there were occasions when family members were held hostage by either the police or local military in order to capture fugitives. Sometimes called ‘fishing’ (mancing) or having a ‘guarantee’ (garansi, jaminan), usually the hostage would be a member of the immediate family of someone who was in hiding or on the run and wanted by === [PDF page 51] === 36 Getting caught and being killed the police or military. On one occasion, Ibu Lia took me to meet a woman who had been one such hostage. Ibu Susiani’s husband had been an activist in the PKI’s union organisation, SOBSI, while she remained at home to take care of their seven children. After the coup, her husband fled into hiding while Ibu Susiani and the children remained at home. My husband was a union activist … how to explain it? I didn’t really know what he did. I knew that he had a job there but I didn’t really get involved because that was his job. As a wife, it was my job to take care of my husband, make sure he was healthy, could work well, so he could do his job well and could take care of his wife and children. Honestly, that’s all I knew. That’s it. Then after what happened in 1965, they were looking for my husband, but because they couldn’t find him, they went after me – first at my house in [an area of Jakarta], and then my house was seized by the government and I was ordered to vacate with my children [ … ] So, when the event [the coup] happened, my husband had already gone, I have no idea where, but [he told me] a few things before he left, ‘You take care of the children. Don’t worry about me, I can take care of myself.’ So, because we were being hunted, and my husband had gone, the house was confiscated and we had to vacate it. (Interview with Ibu Susiani and Ibu Lia, Jakarta, October 2005) With her house confiscated and her husband missing, Ibu Susiani managed to get together enough money to rent a house for herself and her seven children. Shortly after, however, she was called in to report to the local District Military Command post (KODIM). There she was questioned about her husband’s whereabouts over several hours. After repeatedly answering that she did not know where he was, she was allowed to return home. ‘And when I arrived home, I cried because I was safe. Because I hadn’t been detained, and that I was set free. I was free and not in detention.’ Greatly relieved, Ibu Susiani returned home to her children, hoping that they would remain safe. Soon after, however, she had to leave her rented house and so moved in with her younger sister’s family. The burden of eight additional family members was too much so, in the end, she moved to another rented house in another area of Jakarta. We were [there] for a while then, that was about in ‘67. Yes, in ‘67, we were [in the second rented house] when the Kalong8 team people turned up. ‘Bu, where’s your husband?’ they asked. ‘He’s gone. He’s been gone for a long time and hasn’t come back. He’s gone.’ ‘Why don’t you know where he is?’ ‘I really don’t know. I don’t know where he is.’ ‘You’re supposed to be a wife, but you don’t know where your husband is?’ he said. === [PDF page 52] === Getting caught and being killed 37 I really didn’t know where he was, but [my husband] had been honest with me from the beginning, he’d wanted to take care of his children, and so I’d believed him. I would never try to find out where he was going, or what he was doing, it wasn’t my business. What was important was that he came home and brought home his wage to provide for us. But, in fact, until this day, he’s never come home. ‘I too worry about him,’ I said. ‘Ok, then, then you should start looking for him as well,’ he went on like that. And then, straight after that, I was taken. Ibu Susiani was taken by the officers to another KODIM post where she was interrogated again about her husband’s whereabouts. This time, however, she was not released after a day of interrogation, but was detained along with her oldest son as ‘guarantees’ for her husband. Soon after, her husband’s younger brother was also detained and tortured in front of Ibu Susiani in order to force information from either her or her brother-in-law about her missing husband. During her second period of detention, she was repeatedly interrogated and tortured at the detention centre. Towards the end of this period, she was tortured by a man who was, as I discovered later, a notorious traitor-turned-torturer named Burhan. As one man who was also detained in Jakarta described him; [E]veryone knew who he was. Burhan Komalasakti! Just like his name, he was truly dreadful. Once a member of the PKI’s Central Committee, he became a part of the interrogation team for the ‘Kalong Operation’ led by Major Suroso [ … ] Burhan was known to be a sadist even towards his own friends. He had no hesitation in ordering his men to whip prisoners with sting ray tails until they were destroyed, to electrocute them over and over again, or to beat them to death. He really enjoyed his role, because he would roar with laughter whenever the person being tortured groaned or moaned in pain. (Munadi 2008) As Ibu Susiani explained, she had been interrogated numerous times and could only keep repeating that she did not know the whereabouts of her fugitive husband. Soon after her arrest, the torturer Burhan was brought in to question her. In the end, at about ten in the morning, he came, Burhan Komalasakti. Burhan Komalasakti was from South Sumatra. He had been in Pemuda Rakyat, and had been moved to this [detention centre] and had betrayed us. He’d been moved there to be with me so they could uncover secrets about my husband.9 In Chapter 5, when I analyse various forms of sexualised violence perpetrated against women and girls during interrogations, I examine in-depth Ibu Susiani’s === [PDF page 53] === 38 Getting caught and being killed torture by Burhan. Tortured for information that she was unable to give, different ‘interrogation teams’ continued to question her on several occasions to illicit information about her husband. On some of these occasions, the interrogators would attempt to cajole her with promises of freedom, but Ibu Susiani remained silent. After one torture session and subsequent hospitalisation due to the severity of her injuries, Ibu Susiani was imprisoned at the Bukit Duri women’s prison in Jakarta for three years, all the time as her husband’s ‘guarantee’. While in Bukit Duri, she met another woman who was also being held as a guarantee for her husband. This woman knew that her husband had already been killed, however, the interrogators did not believe her and so she too spent a number of years in incarceration as ‘bait’ for her dead husband. Ibu Susiani never saw her husband again. After her release in 1970, she managed to open a small food stall to support herself and her children. As Ibu Susiani described, with a great deal of hard work and much support from her family, she rebuilt her life and now has many grandchildren whom she sees often (see Pohlman 2010). Amongst the women whom I interviewed, only a handful had been detained as guarantees, all of them in place of their husbands, who had either fled or had already been killed. Anecdotally, it seems that this practice of hostagetaking was relatively common and, furthermore, that the hostages tended to either be the wives or children of fugitives. The testimony of another former hostage, Ibu Lasmini (cited in Hasworo 2004), for example, reflects a similar experience to that of Ibu Susiani. Her husband, Kusdi, was a farmer who became involved in organising farmers’ activities. Ibu Lasmini did not know which organisation he was a part of, though it is probable that he was a part of the BTI. All she knew was that he organised the local farmers. After the coup, their home was ransacked as Kusdi became a local military target. My husband was involved in organising the other farming families. He did the organising and I was happy for him to do that. Because I took care of the house, so I was happy. I didn’t really know what he was up to. I just supported him [ … ] In ‘65, I can’t remember which month, I was at home when I was arrested. Yes, I was at home, and they forced10 me, ordered me to tell them where my husband was. But because I had no idea where he’d gone, I had to say that I didn’t know, and so on. I said that I didn’t know. Then they threatened me with their weapons, their guns, in my house. The one who threatened me was the one who’d forced me earlier. The ones forcing me were RPKAD (Army Strategic Command) soldiers, maybe, because they were all dressed up in their uniforms. There were lots of them. Some were outside, some came inside, some of them who … it upset me. And I was afraid, so much so that I fainted … When I’d been asked to say where my husband was, and I didn’t know where, because he’d already left. Then I was taken to the police station and held (Cited in Hasworo 2004: 45–46) === [PDF page 54] === Getting caught and being killed 39 Attacked in her own home and terrorised by the soldiers, after she was taken to the police station, she could only repeat that she did not know the whereabouts of her husband. One week later, Ibu Lasmini’s husband was caught and she was released. She managed to visit him a few times before he was moved to another prison camp. Not long after, however, Kusdi became one of those who ‘disappeared’ from the camp. Ibu Lasmini sold all of their belongings in order to take care of their five children and worked as a market vendor, selling things she gathered in the forest in order to support her family. She never saw nor heard from Kusdi again. Cases of mistaken identity Cases of mistaken identity arose a few times during my fieldwork interviews; some people with whom I spoke either knew of such cases personally or through the accounts of other survivors. In most of these instances, these stories were of people arrested or killed because either their names or physical appearances were similar to others wanted by the military and police. These cases of mistaken identity reveal two unsettling truths about the persecution of PKI and Communist sympathisers following the coup; first, that perpetrators were willing to arrest and/or kill people without first establishing their actual identities; and second, that becoming a victim could be as arbitrary as the misfortune of having a similar name or appearance to a wanted fugitive. Ibu Tasmi was one such victim of mistaken identity. She was kidnapped, imprisoned and almost executed because her name was similar to that of a wanted Gerwani leader in South Blitar in 1968. As part of his project at Sanata Dharma University in Yogyakarta, Antonius Sumarwan interviewed Ibu Tasmi and told this part of her story: At that time, she was forty-two years old. She was working in the fields. All of a sudden, a mob of people came along with some soldiers. ‘You’re Yasmi, aren’t you?!’ they shouted. Without taking any notice of her cries of protest that her name was Tasmi, not Yasmi, they dragged her away and threw her into a military truck, then they took her away. In the truck there were many people, most of them women. They were crying in great terror. She had already resigned herself, ‘If this really is my time to die, what can I do?’ They arrived at a military camp, and were interrogated one by one in a number of groups. It was only there that they realised that they had the wrong woman. She wasn’t Yasmi, the Gerwani leader they were looking for. ‘Thanks be to God that the person interrogating me was a good man,’ said this old grandmother while holding in her feelings of anger. She then told me that she had heard that the people who had been with her in the truck, in the end, had been executed and thrown into a pit not far from there. As Ibu Tasmi said, she was fortunate that a ‘good man’ interrogated her and, once the mistake had been discovered, she was released and not murdered === [PDF page 55] === 40 Getting caught and being killed along with the others taken to the military camp. Ibu Nana, however, told a different story about a woman with whom she was arrested. This woman had the misfortune to have the same name as her, Ibu Nana, a known member of Gerwani. The other Ibu Nana was, in fact, detained twice because of her name (interview with Ibu Nana, Ibu Sri and Ibu Lani with Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005). The first time, she had been interrogated then released by a local policeman who discovered this error. This same policeman later revealed this case of mistaken identity to the officers who interrogated her during her second detention. [Another woman and I were arrested] together. [ … ] We were arrested, then taken to [another town, some hours from our home]. So there was no way to get news to our parents. While we were in prison, they had no news. What’s more is that they were already praying for us because they thought that we’d been killed. Because they hadn’t received any word from us, and we were in a cell. So when we returned, [they] were shocked, eh, astonished to see us … [The other woman and I] were related by name. Her name was Nana [which was] exactly like my name, Nana. So these people tortured her [ … ] There was a policeman at [that place] who [had previously] detained her, who had interrogated her, who knew her. ‘She’s not her [the one you’re looking for],’ he said, ‘She’s [another] Nana, and you took them both!’ he said. ‘But we have to detain them,’ [the officer] said. ‘Ok, well then, detain her if you have to. But stop torturing her,’ said the policeman, ‘Because this is the Nana who was with us before [and not the one we were looking for]. We released her [previously].’ Despite the policeman’s attempt to have her released by telling them that the ‘real’ Ibu Nana, the Gerwani member they were looking for, was detained with her, this second Ibu Nana was not released. During my interview with her, Ibu Nana did not say what had eventually happened to this other woman, however, she did say that they had both remained imprisoned for some time. The story of the two Ibu Nanas was not, however, an isolated one. Ibu Sumilah’s story shares many similarities. The author HD. Haryo Sasongko, who was a former political prisoner himself, interviewed Ibu Sumilah as part of the Lontar Foundation’s ‘Historical Memories’ project into the experiences of detainees held following the 1965 coup (Sasongko 2003: 195–216; see also Susanti 2006: 1–10). When Sumilah was fourteen years old, a man came to her house saying that he had been sent by the head of the village outside Yogyakarta. Sumilah was playing in her front yard with her little brother whom she took care of as her parents both worked as gule [a type of broth] vendors. The man asked if her name were Sumilah, which she confirmed. He then took her to the village head’s place where a truck, filled with mostly women prisoners, was waiting. Haryo Sasongko (2003: 201–202) recounted part of her story thus: === [PDF page 56] === Getting caught and being killed 41 The man who had been sent to pick me up didn’t take me over to the headman who he had said was ‘waiting for me’. In fact, I didn’t see the headman around at all. And then I was told to get into the truck. I was quite pleased actually. In my whole life, I had never had the fun of riding in a truck. And now I was being ordered to get into the truck. In my mind, of course the headman would let those of us in the truck stop for a picnic. However, after passing through a few streets in the city of Yogyakarta, the truck stopped in front of a large building. I knew what it was, it was Wirogunan Prison. In my heart, I’d begun to ask myself, why would we picnic at a prison? And why would all these women who’d left the village office with me remain silent? None of them spoke to one another, or even laughed. Just me – the youngest of them – was happy because I had always wanted to ride in a truck. ‘Hey, get down!’ yelled the guard who wore a soldier’s uniform and a blue beret on his head. We all got down one by one. Then we were immediately herded into a small room with a solid, black, iron door. The people who went into the room with me called it a cell. Sumilah was later taken for questioning during which she insisted that she had no idea why she was being held. After eight months at Wirogunan Prison in Yogyakarta, she and some of the other women were told that they were to be moved to a special women’s prison near Semarang in Central Java. Her parents finally managed to find out where she was being held and obtained permission to visit her. My mother had found out that I was arrested and detained because I was accused of having been involved in Gerwani. And my mother refuted this. It was impossible for a little child, a fourteen year old girl to be member of such an organisation. But, who would listen to the explanations of a small warung vendor? Ibu Sumilah then spent five years at the women’s prison near Semarang in Central Java. In 1971, she and the other suspected Gerwani members were moved again, this time to Plantungan, the women’s camp in the highlands of the Kendal region (see Lestariningsih 2006; Syarikat 2004). As I learned from other women who had been imprisoned there, Plantungan had been a leper hospital and colony during the Dutch colonial days. During the 1970s, however, it was used as a detention or ‘inrehab’ (meaning political ‘rehabilitation’) camp for approximately 500 women political prisoners. It was only at Plantungan that Ibu Sumilah found out from a guard there why she had been imprisoned. PAK HARYO: So you heard [that you had been arrested] because of a case of mistaken identity? IBU SUMILAH: Yes, that’s what he told me. The one they were looking for, Sumilah, was a teacher, but it turned out that … === [PDF page 57] === 42 Getting caught and being killed PAK HARYO: You’re the Sumilah who was caught. Yes, me. PAK HARYO: Who did you hear this from, that they’d made an error? When did you find this out, at Wirogunan, or when you were in Bulu? IBU SUMILAH: I found out when I was at Plantungan. PAK HARYO: So who told you about the mistake? IBU SUMILAH: The guard. PAK HARYO: What did the guard say? IBU SUMILAH: ‘Miss, there’s been a mistake, Miss. The one we were looking for isn’t you.’ Yes, Pak Prayogo told me that. PAK HARYO: But he didn’t say, yes, there’s been a mistake, so we’ll release you, did he! IBU SUMILAH: No, he wasn’t brave enough to do that. PAK HARYO: Wasn’t brave enough, so he just went along with it? IBU SUMILAH: Yes. PAK HARYO: Even though Pak Prayoga told you this, you were still detained? IBU SUMILAH: Yes, and I remained in detention until ‘79! (cited in Sasongko 2003: 209) IBU SUMILAH: From the limited number of cases such as those of Ibu Tasmi, Ibu Nana and Ibu Sumilah that I was able to find out information about, it appears that they were more common when the ‘target’ for capture was a well-known member of the PKI or one of its associated organisations. This was certainly true in the cases described to me by Ibu Lia, my main contact in Jakarta, a former member of the PKI’s Central Committee and a fugitive who managed to remain on the run in different parts of Sumatra for over a year after the coup. We talked many times about how she had managed to stay on the run for so long, her strategies to evade capture and the numerous close calls when, through quick thinking, great help from friends or luck, she escaped. During one of our discussions (interview, Jakarta, December 2005), Ibu Lia revealed that there had been a large reward offered for her capture. IBU LIA: [It] was spread about in the newspapers there that anyone who could find me would receive Rp. 5 million or who knows how much. Rp. 5 million was a lot of money back then! At the time, rice was only Rp. 300 [per kilo]. It was a lot of money! But no one could catch me! And all that time [whilst in hiding], I would just walk on by the government house, past the military station … you couldn’t imagine it! (She stops to laugh.) And in the end … ANNIE: But how did they know you were there? IBU LIA: Sorry? ANNIE: How did the government know you were in that area? How did they find out? IBU LIA: Well, from the people they’d caught. [ … The authorities found out] because they had been tortured. They were tortured, and they were forced to talk. === [PDF page 58] === Getting caught and being killed 43 Ibu Lia was eventually captured in late 1966. She became one of the few to be put on trial and imprisoned for her involvement in the PKI, and was eventually released in the early 1980s. During imprisonment, Ibu Lia later discovered from other political prisoners that a number of women had been falsely arrested and interrogated because they were thought to be her. As Ibu Lia said, ‘They were taken [because the authorities] thought they were me [ … ] It was madness, they suffered because they were captured, not me.’ She was not sure how many women had been affected, but she believed that they had ‘suffered horribly’ (benar-benar menderita) because of it. Exploitation of existing conflicts and finger-pointing Of all the different types of victims of the anti-Communist killings and arrests following the coup, those who were victims of the exploitation of existing conflicts and, to a lesser extent, incidents of name-calling or finger-pointing, are the most difficult to qualify. These incidents more commonly developed and were shaped by local configurations of existing conflicts. This meant that, within a particular area, some of those who became victims during the killings and arrests may have become so not because of their membership within the PKI or one of its associated organisations, but because of how a communal conflict was exacerbated or played upon, particularly by military personnel once they arrived (see van Langenberg 1990; Anonymous 1986). One example of how previous conflicts were exploited during the killings can be seen in Robert Hefner’s research on the killings in the Tengger highlands in the Pasuruan region of East Java. In his books, The Political Economy of Mountain Java (1990) and Civil Islam (2000), Hefner does much to clarify the roles that civilian and military perpetrators played in the killings. In particular, he outlines how in the turmoil that followed the coup, that was a product of heightened tensions during the late Guided Democracy era, ‘rival political factions created extra-constitutional alliances that linked forces in the state with those in society against rival syndicates organised in an equally segmentary manner’ (Hefner 2000: 65). In Hefner’s research on Pasuruan, these rivalries played out in the conflicts that stratified the communities of the ‘lowland’, ‘midslope’ and ‘upland’ regions over land, ideology, religion and politics. To trace the origins of some of these conflicts, Hefner looks back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to plot how some areas were more influenced by more orthodox Islamic beliefs (lowlands), while other communities retained more strongly Javanist (kejawen) traditions (highlands) (see Hefner 1990: 1–30). These tensions were overlaid with others related to viable agricultural land holdings, wealth, labour, local immigration, status, declining economic circumstances, and a myriad of other concerns, all of which saw a process of sociocultural polarisation in the Tengger highlands, just as there was in many other places in Java (Hefner 1990; see also Mortimer 1969; Jay 1963). By examining the killings in the lowlands and in the highland areas, Hefner shows how the violence in the lowlands regions was shaped more by these === [PDF page 59] === 44 Getting caught and being killed local configurations of conflict in comparison to the highlands. In the lowlands, where membership in the Muslim group Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) was strong and the social and political divisions between Islamic and Javanist traditions sharp, civilian youth militia associated with NU began the massacres in that region against PKI cadres shortly after the coup and before the military arrived in the area. Hefner describes these actions by the NU as ‘uncoordinated violence, the attacks were undisciplined and brutal, destroying whole families and involving widespread mutilation and torture [ … ] By the time the bloodshed was brought under military control, most of the lowland PKI cadre had been killed’ (1990: 210). In contrast, the highland areas which had extensive numbers of Nationalist Party (PNI) members as well as a large following of the PKI did not experience any killings during the initial months following the coup. Instead, the killings were carried out by co-ordinated groups of military and NU lowlanders who rounded up PKI cadres and executed them systematically (Hefner 1990: 211). Unlike in the lowlands, these were not the ‘spontaneous’ killings spurred on by local tensions. By comparing the two cases, Hefner shows how, in the case of the lowlands, existing conflicts were exacerbated or exploited during the killings. Unlike the violence in the lowlands, as he states, ‘the violence in highland Pasuruan was not in any simple sense a product of local class or religious cleavages. It was thoroughly regulated by agents of the state’ (1990: 212). By showing the clear differences in the patterns of killings between the two areas, Hefner’s research highlights how existing tensions had a significant impact on the timing and intensity of the massacres, as well as on who coordinated and participated in them. Others were also not members of the PKI yet became victims during the killings. As Robert Cribb (2001) has argued, as there is so little primary evidence and research about the details of the killings, a number of misconceptions about the violence have continued. One of these misconceptions has been that the massacres were the result of mainly apolitical conflicts, that is, that they were the result of people taking revenge for petty grudges or else using the opportunity of the killings for personal gain (Cribb 2001: 234). My research confirms Cribb’s argument that the majority of victims were those in some way affiliated with the PKI or one of its associated organisations. This does not, however, preclude the examples of what I will loosely term ‘name-calling’ and ‘finger-pointing’; that is, cases when individuals were named ‘PKI’, and consequently arrested or killed, in order for another individual to gain some personal advantage. Leslie Dwyer, who has investigated the violence of 1965–66 in Bali, writes of the power that words had in the aftermath of the coup. Dwyer (2004: paras 5–6) offers this powerful indictment of how name-calling could bring about terrible consequences: ‘There was so much in those days that wasn’t spoken,’ Ibu Ari says. ‘People used to talk about 1965 as the time when ulian raos abuku matemahing pati’ – when you could die just because of a word. [ … I]n 1965, === [PDF page 60] === Getting caught and being killed 45 words became new kinds of triggers. Improperly articulated words – an insult never quite forgotten, low Balinese spoken to someone who thought they should have been addressed in high Balinese, flirting exchanges with someone else’s wife – could return from the past to provoke horrifically exaggerated responses. A fifteen-year-old neighbour of Ibu Ari’s who ‘talked too much’ for some people’s liking was corralled in a wicker cage used to transport pigs and then thrown into the river to drown. A man who witnessed his neighbour helping to burn down someone’s house called out in protest and the next day was dead. A woman food-stall vendor whose welcoming small talk was heard as a promise saw her husband killed by her would-be suitor. And one word above all, the word ‘communist,’ held the power to determine who lived and died, a power no one word had even been known to have before. [ … ] Heady, extraordinary, horrific: language became an unstable weapon in terror’s fantastic arsenal [ … ] As another of Ibu Ari’s cousins expressed it: ‘Today you call me a communist, tomorrow someone calls you a communist. Anyone could be a communist as long as someone was willing to name them as one.’ One example of labelling another person ‘PKI’ for personal gain is in I Ngurah Suryawan’s thesis (2006) on the killings in Jembrana in Bali. During his research, he spoke with a policeman, Pak Damar, who told him a story about one such case that occurred in Desa Baluk, a village near Tegalbadeng. According to Pak Damar, a member of one of the youth militias (in this case, the Front Pancasila) killed the husband of a woman whom he had admired for some time. To prove that her husband had been killed, this man showed her the husband’s ear which he had cut off and, according to Pak Damar, ‘More or less he said, your husband is dead, here’s the proof. Now I want to marry you. How about it?’ (cited in Suryawan 2006: 108) What happened to this woman, whether she married her husband’s killer or not, Suryawan does not say. While Dwyer and Suryawan both discuss the killings in Bali, such stories can be found in many other parts of Indonesia. During my fieldwork in various regions of Java and Sumatra, I heard about other examples of name-calling and of petty rivalries which resulted in the death or detention of people who had no connection to the PKI. While the majority of people persecuted following the coup were Communists, there were also cases whereby opportunist individuals used the violence of the killings for personal gain. The many victims of 1965 The violence of 1965 brought about suffering for millions of Indonesians. The majority of those killed or arrested were members or associates of the PKI or another Communist organisation. Family members, friends and others connected to PKI members through familial and social ties also became victims. In some cases, people were killed or arrested due to personal conflicts or mistaken identity, or as a consequence of social conflicts tied to local political antagonisms. === [PDF page 61] === 46 Getting caught and being killed This discussion is by no means exhaustive and is only intended to give scope to some of the ways that victims experienced the killings. Among the millions affected by this violence, there were many aside from those groups identified here who also suffered. As time went on and Suharto’s militarist regime consolidated its power, Leftists were not the only ones who were persecuted. Supporters of Sukarno’s government, by then called the ‘Old Order’, also had to be repressed, and the new administration, including the military and police, ‘cleansed’ of remaining PKI ‘elements’. Over the thirty-three years of Suharto’s regime, the spectre of the killings remained as a warning to those who would contest the regime’s power. In the end, therefore, it is unlikely that we will ever know the full extent of the suffering experienced by so many following the coup. Notes 1 Transcript obtained from the Indonesian Institute for Social History (Institut Sejarah Sosial Indonesia, ISSI), Jakarta. 2 The names of parliamentary houses in Indonesia during this stage of Guided Democracy were the MPRS (Provisional Peoples’ Consultative Assembly) and the DPRGR (the House of Respresentatives of Gotong Royong – ‘Gotong Royong’ roughly translates as ‘mutual aid and cooperation’). 3 The fact that the alleged ‘Gerwani’ members were in fact young prostitutes from the area coerced into signing confessions of having tortured the generals at Lubang Buaya has been noted by others. See Wieringa (2002: 296–98). Ibu Sudjinah, Ibu Lia and Ibu Kartinah also discussed this with me. 4 Such as the trials for Sukarno’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Dr Subandrio, PKI Leader Njono, or PKI general secretary, Sudisman. See Amnesty International (1977: 45–47). See also Flanagan and Southwood (1983: 132) for a discussion on how the timing of these show trials was used to keep the ‘Communist spectre’ alive in Indonesia during the New Order. 5 Interview with Ibu Astuti by Narny Yenny, Sumatra, October 2002. Transcript obtained from Narny Yenny. 6 For example, interview with Ibu Wanti, Jakarta, October 2005; interview with Ibu Lia, Jakarta, December 2005; and interview with Ibu Astuti with Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005. 7 Interview with Ibu Tati and Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005. The reference to ‘gouging out eyes’ relates to how, during the 30 September Coup, the kidnapped generals were allegedly tortured by having their eyes gouged out, genitals cut off and their bodies sliced with razors at Lubang Buaya. 8 The ‘Kalong’ operation was one of the clean-up operations later in the 1960s to seek out and detain further Communist ‘elements’. ‘Kalong’ was also the name used for an interrogation centre in central Jakarta, a place renowned for the brutality used against detainees there. 9 Interview with Ibu Susiani with Ibu Lia, Jakarta, October 2005. Burhan Komala Sakti was a former member of the PKI who was turned to become an interrogator renowned for his sadism and was mentioned a few times by different informants. He is also mentioned for his torture at the infamous Kebayoran Baru interrogation centre (Gang Buntu) in South Jakarta in a recent book about interrogation centres, see Margiyono and Yunanto (2007: 89). 10 The word Ibu Lasmini uses here is ‘terpaksa’, literally ‘forced’. Within her testimony, however, it is unclear exactly what she means. By the use of the same word later in this part of her testimony, I believe ‘terpaksa’ here may refer to rape. === [PDF page 62] === The violence of detention There were so many people in [the detention centre]. Men, women, everywhere. Our bodies were thin, there wasn’t enough to eat. We were beaten, sick, people died [ … ] Sometimes we would scream for death when we were being beaten. They [the interrogators] would stand on you, two of them together, they’d put a chair leg on your foot and sit on it, and you would want to die, we’d want to die. Oh, I felt that life was too much for me. There was no humanity in that place. It was like we were animals. (Ibu Eny, West Sumatra, October 2005) Ibu Eny’s testimony of her experiences in detention following the 1965 coup reflects the desperation, pain and fear that many of the men and women who took part in this project described when talking about their time as detainees. While my focus in this chapter is primarily on experiences of interrogation and torture, the testimonies analysed here recount the degradation, humiliation and violence that were endemic to the broader experience of being detained following the coup. The first section discusses victims and perpetrators of violence in the detention centres, as well as the degradation of detainees. The places, forms and methods of detention and torture are then examined in the testimonies of some of the women who survived these places. The stories told by survivors about their experiences of detention and torture recount terrifying places where fellow inmates die from beatings, starvation or disease, or are taken away in the night, never to be seen again. The violence of detention and torture, in the testimonies of Ibu Eny and many others, is retold as catastrophic periods in the lives of survivors, and reveals how bodily integrity and human dignity can be eroded by extreme brutality. As these experiences are a central part of many survivors’ testimonies, it is essential to examine them in detail. Interrogation and torture of detainees For many who were detained for their alleged involvement in the coup, there were repeated interrogations and the use of torture. Who was interrogated, who was tortured during those interrogations, what was done to them, by === [PDF page 63] === 48 The violence of detention whom, and for how long it went on, all seemingly depended on the circumstances in which victims were detained. Some were never questioned, never interrogated and never tortured. Others were interrogated but not physically or mentally abused, at least not during interrogation sessions. Others, however, were repeatedly and brutally attacked, the torture sometimes going on every day for months on end. Why some were treated in this way and not others is not known, and perhaps searching for a rationale is to give credence to the very idea that torture is somehow able to be rationalised. If there were determining factors for why some were hurt, or hurt more than others, they would involve location, time of detention, gender and age of the victim and, to some extent, the victim’s perceived level of involvement in the Communist party. Location and leadership, as discussed in the previous chapter, were determining factors for numerous characteristics of imprisonment. Who was in charge of a detention centre could have a great influence on how badly detainees were treated. For example, some guards/interrogators were described as particularly sadistic, while others displayed acts of kindness or sympathy. Particular locations also determined how brutally detainees were treated. The interrogation centres on Gunung Sahari Street and Kramat V in Central Jakarta; a library in Yogyakarta; an old film studio; the Salemba men’s prison in Jakarta; the confiscated Chinese shop, Toko Wong, in Negara, Bali; the prison in Kalisosok, near Surabaya in East Java; and many others are examples of such places. Thus, the location where detainees were held and who was in charge had some influence on how they were treated. Gender and age also made a significant difference: young children of either sex were infrequently detained – usually only with a parent and, when detained, they do not appear to have been interrogated or tortured – though they were killed during some massacres and executions. However, threats of violence against children were a form of torture and coercion against their parents. Older teenage boys and men made up the majority of inmates and were more frequently interrogated and tortured than women and girls. Men and women above approximately the age of sixty do not seem to have been detained as often as younger men and women. In comparison with male victims, older teenage girls and women were less frequently detained as well as less frequently tortured during interrogations. A victim’s real or perceived position within the Communist Party or one of its associated organisations also appears to have had some bearing on the treatment meted out. As discussed in Chapter 2, leaders of party organisations were often the first to be identified for detention or murder, and they were also frequently interrogated and tortured. Yet, as the examples below will show, many others who had no position within the PKI or its organisations were also tortured, as were lower-ranking members and cadres, relatives and associates. In addition, as the various civil and security services were ‘cleansed’ of their ‘Leftist’ and ‘Sukarnoist’ members during the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were reports that these prisoners were tortured badly by their former fellow officers (see Amnesty International 1977). Thus, numerous factors had === [PDF page 64] === The violence of detention 49 a bearing on who the victims were, where they were held, and how they were treated in detention. Time appears to have been a key factor in determining who was interrogated and tortured. By this I mean that the arrests, interrogations and torturing seem to have become more routine as time went on. In the first couple of months after October 1965, the security services and those working with them expended much of their efforts in finding enough space to detain the thousands – and probably tens of thousands – of people being brought into detention every week. While there were many interrogations during these early months and many people were executed, as the months passed, it seems that those carrying out the interrogations became inured to it and more adept at hurting their victims. Tools, tactics and strategies for questioning and harming victims were refined through operational use. Talking about interrogation and torture Analysing women’s testimonies about ‘interrogation’ and ‘torture’ is fraught with many challenges. The two are often indistinguishable in many testimonies, both in the ways that these experiences were described and in the ways they were carried out. Some women used the word ‘disiksa’ (tortured) to refer to physical and mental torture as well as to questioning, while others gave distinct names to different abuses and processes, including ‘ditanya’ (questioned), ‘disiksa’ (referring only to physical abuse), and ‘penyiksaan/tekanan mental’ (mental torture/pressure). Others used borrowed terms such as ‘dikontrol’ (checked or questioned) and ‘diinterogasi’ (interrogated) to describe both physical and mental abuse as well as questioning. The details of what was done to them also were described in a variety of specific and euphemistic terms: verbs that described specific actions such as ‘dipukul’ (beaten), ‘disabet’ and ‘disentrum’ (electrocuted). Sexual forms of violence were sometimes described in specific terms such as ‘diperkosa’ (raped) and ‘raba-raba/merabai’ (to grope), but were more commonly referred to in ways that avoided naming sexual violence as such (see Pohlman 2008). In the ways that victims described being treated, there was also a great deal of slippage between what was ‘interrogation’ and what was ‘torture’. Although the majority of women who had been interrogated or tortured described being questioned, this was not always the case. For Elaine Scarry, ‘Torture consists of a primary physical act, the infliction of pain, and a primary verbal act, the interrogation’ (1985: 28). Scarry makes a valid point here, that to explain the ‘false motive’ of torture, it is necessary to see the false relationship between violence and interrogation. As she points out, [W]hat masquerades as the motive for torture is a fiction. The idea that the need for information is the motive for the physical cruelty arises from the tone and form of the questioning rather than from its content: the === [PDF page 65] === 50 The violence of detention questions, no matter how contemptuously irrelevant their content, are announced, delivered, as though they motivated the cruelty, as if the answers to them were crucial. (Scarry 1985: 28–29, emphasis in original) Questions and answers The absurd and often nonsensical questions that were asked of detainees following the coup make Scarry’s argument about the false motive for torture compelling when trying to understand the cyclical exchanges between victims and their interrogators/torturers. Many of the women were asked questions about matters of which they had no knowledge. They were questioned about their relationships with high-ranking members of the PKI, such as the leader of the party, D. N. Aidit, and were accused of meeting with leaders, giving them shelter, and so forth. Questions about detainees’ involvement in planning or carrying out the coup in Jakarta were also common, even if the detainees had lived their whole lives in their village on another island altogether and had never been to Jakarta. Some questions also derived from and reinforced the various lies about the PKI spread by the military’s propaganda, particularly those about alleged arms caches and ‘night PKI’ movements (PKI malam), the supposed PKI forces regrouping to attack the government and wipe out their enemies after 1965. These accusations often revolved around the suspected plans of the Communists to slaughter non-PKI supporters, for example, by digging mass graves in preparation for the bodies of their enemies. One woman who recalled such accusations was Ibu Riya, who had been working as a member of President Sukarno’s ‘National Front’ volunteer forces1 in Jakarta in 1965 and was arrested shortly after the coup. While in the interrogation centre on Gunung Sahari street in Jakarta, she saw friends and others interrogated, tortured and asked ‘incomprehensible’ (nggak masuk akal) questions. Having seen what was done to the other detainees, she tried to avoid being tortured by ‘agreeing to everything’ her interrogators demanded: ‘Did you know Aidit?’ [they asked me]. I didn’t know him, but I said that I did. After all, it was already too late. If we said ‘no’, then we’d be in danger. ‘Do you know him, and him?’ ‘Yes’ [I said], I confessed to everything. If we said that we didn’t know, then we’d be beaten some more [ … ] so I just confessed.2 Aside from these seemingly irrational questions, interrogators also often demanded the names of other PKI supporters. These were orders to give up the names of colleagues and friends so that they too could be rounded up and brought in for questioning and tortured into giving up the names of colleagues and friends. Sometimes detainees were told to sign written documents, allegedly accounts of their ‘confessions’, all of the documentation adding further ‘proof’ of the detainees’ guilt. As John Roosa, who has also examined accounts === [PDF page 66] === The violence of detention 51 by survivors of torture perpetrated during the 1960s, explains, when victims named alleged PKI supporters and provided ‘evidence’ in the form of confessions of PKI insurgent activities, the ‘Indonesian army officers imagined themselves to be involved in a real war against a formidable, well-organised foe’ (2008: 43). As Roosa makes clear, Every time they uncovered the hideout of a PKI leader for whom they were searching, the effectiveness of torture seemed confirmed. Yet their resort to torture created a new reality for them. As they threw the dragnet as widely as possible, catching and torturing anyone whose names were obtained, the interrogators imagined hundreds of thousands of people to be clandestine operatives storing arms for a large-scale insurgency. The very lack of material evidence to confirm such assumptions became evidence of how deviously clever the enemies were in concealing their plotting. Many of the women I interviewed described what they saw as the nonsensical process of being interrogated and asked ‘ridiculous’ or ‘crazy’ questions and the seemingly endless procession of victims who were arrested, interrogated and tortured. As Scarry points out, however much ‘torture is a form of savagery and stupidity’, for the regime it is crucial, because from it comes a fiction of power and, in turn, an illusion of legitimacy for its actions (1985: 51). The slippage between the terms ‘interrogation’ and ‘torture’ in survivors’ accounts and in my own analysis is, on my part, sometimes intentional. It may be difficult to separate the two for the sake of classifying different sorts of treatment received by victims, but I am conscious of the fact that it is also wrong to conflate interrogation with torture. Interrogations, when conducted legally, without coercion, and with adequate safeguards in place to protect the rights of the person being questioned, are acceptable evidentiary mechanisms in jurisdictions around the world. In my research to date, I have not heard of anyone out of the hundreds of thousands of those detained as part of the mass arrests that followed the coup who was interrogated legally and without coercion. That said, neither were all of those detainees who were questioned tortured. Torture is a form of extreme harm done by humans to other humans and is so universally condemned that the protection from and punishment of torture, one of the most serious violations of human rights, required one of the world’s first human rights treaties with the obligation of universal jurisdiction, the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT).3 How torture is defined, however, is less certain. The most widely held and cited definition is that provided in Article 1.1 of the CAT which states, ‘[T]orture’ means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of === [PDF page 67] === 52 The violence of detention having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. While the CAT’s definition clings to a traditional, State-centric interpretation for the seemingly required involvement of a public official at some stage in order for actions to be considered torture (see Nowark and McArthur 2008: 77–79), it does adequately provide for inclusion of three crucial elements of the crime, those being: the infliction of severe pain or suffering, be it physical or mental; the intent to inflict this pain; and that it is done with a purpose, as outlined in the Article, whether that be to extract information, punishment, coercion or intimidation. In the cases described in this book, much of the treatment received by detainees during ‘interrogations’ clearly lies within the CAT’s definition. Many of these were cases of intentional infliction of severe physical and mental harm on persons in order, at various times, to punish, coerce, extract information, intimidate as well as to humiliate and degrade them by State actors and those co-opted by the State. This clarification is necessary because it is important to name violence for what it is. Torture involves severe pain and suffering, and many of those detained following the coup in 1965 were tortured. Once again, this does not mean that all ‘interrogations’ following the coup involved torture and it is wrong to equate the experiences of a detainee being questioned – albeit in a coercive environment – with those of another who has severe4 mental or physical harm done to him or her. Both are crimes and both demand redress, but they are not the same and should not be treated as such. Perpetrators and victims It is a simple truism: most torturers are not born, they are made. My research supports earlier findings from studies conducted in cross-cultural contexts that torturers are clearly ordinary men – and they are overwhelmingly men – who are transformed into perpetrators of extreme violence. They are not crazed sadists, nor do they have severe personality disorders or dysfunctions (see HaritosFatouros 2002; Huggins et al. 2002). This transformation of ordinary men into torturers takes time, support, encouragement and coercion. Whether initially driven by political, ideological, religious convictions or other motivations, those who became torturers after the coup were shaped by the conditions in which they operated: improvisation and learning from others developed into routines and the honing of violent skills; techniques were identified and replicated; actions were supported and reinforced by superiors and peers. In the testimonies of those who survived these tortures, particularly those who spoke about === [PDF page 68] === The violence of detention 53 interrogations in the late 1960s, their torturers seem well-practised. By this time, the torturers had had time to become used to their routines, to work systematically and brutally on their many victims. By this, I do not mean that torturers simply performed act after act of repetitive violence. On the contrary, in some testimonies, torturers seem to have been inventive and varied in their ways of intimidating and hurting victims. It seems that however inventive they were in their methods, the violence became habitual. On some occasions, victims also became torturers. There are a few stories of this happening amongst the interviews that I conducted and secondary accounts of victims who were tortured, forced to ‘turn’, and become torturers themselves. Burhan Komalasakti, who was a notorious torturer in Jakarta, for example, was one man who was ‘turned’ from being a member of Pemuda Rakyat into an interrogator. Furthermore, the many political detainees rounded up in the years following the coup were depersonalised and dehumanised. Torturers appear to have had high numbers of victims and carried out their violent work over months and sometimes years. It is likely that tens of thousands of people were tortured in the many interrogation and detention centres across Indonesia. As time went on and they spent longer periods of time in detention, they became dirty, stinking, hungry, frightened, less-than-people. Thus, to begin to understand the interactions between torturers, jailors, guards and their detainees, it is necessary to examine also the institutional or organisation aspects of the detention centres. To do this, we need to understand how they became the kinds of ‘atrocity environments’ where torture, murder and starvation ended the lives of many (Huggins et al. 2002: xx). As the testimony of one man, Pak Kusumo, who nearly starved to death shows, the detention centres gradually became filled with injured, sick, hungry, weak and dying people. Pak Kusumo had been a teacher before he was arrested in 1965 and taken to an old school that had hastily been converted into a detention centre. Imprisoned for months with thirty other men in a filthy room that only ten men could lie down in, Pak Kusumo described how they were all tortured, starved and made ill from the conditions. At first, they were given two spoonfuls of rice a day, but this was soon cut back to around twenty grains of corn. Gradually, all the detainees became ‘just bone covered with skin.’ Detainees were dragged from their cells one by one and tortured, most of them taken back to their cells covered in blood. People also began to disappear from the detention centre, never to be seen again. Each night, several names were called, and they would be taken away. One night, in July 1966, Pak Kusumo heard his father’s name called and this was the last he heard of him. As he described, each prisoner asked himself, ‘Will it be my turn to die today?’ Every day, detainees died from starvation or as a result of torture or because they were taken away and executed at night. One day, a fellow teacher Pak Kusumo knew was taken out of his cell and told to stand in front of it. The man was sick from vomiting and diarrhoea, but was taken out into the sun to die. As Pak Kusumo described; === [PDF page 69] === 54 The violence of detention He was whimpering and kept saying to [me]: ‘Please, Kusumo, please, Kusumo … ’ [I] kept hearing this until his pleas gradually became weaker and weaker until they stopped altogether. During this, [I] was locked in [my] cell and could do nothing. Finally, the teacher died and his body lay decomposing, swarming with flies, and yet still did not get taken away by the guards. His former cellmates could do nothing. (Transcript of interview with Pak Kusumo, Lontar Foundation, 2001) Detention and destruction In Pak Kusumo’s testimony, the detainees were destroyed by violence, starvation and humiliation. Starvation made victims emaciated, ill and exhausted. Lack of access to bathing and toileting facilities, and being forced to live in overcrowded, cramped conditions made them ill, encouraged the spread of disease and vermin and contributed to their emaciation. Physical abuse in the form of torture and various punishments meant untreated injuries and death. Being kept, as many ex-prisoners described, ‘like in a sardine can’, meant squatting or standing close together all day, trying to sleep pressed up against one another with not enough room for everyone to lie down, defecating and urinating next to one another, and being unable to escape their own and everyone else’s filth. This process of starvation, physical and mental violence, humiliation and the spreading of disease erodes people: physically, with the gnawing pain of starvation, they became exhausted, ill, their skin like sagging parchment as muscles burned away and collapsed; mentally, individual autonomy and dignity also gradually wasted away. Ibu Lia too described in detail what she called being physically and mentally ‘eaten away’ whilst in detention. As a former Communist Party leader, she was kept, along with a handful of other ‘high up’ tapol, mostly in solitary confinement during the early years of her imprisonment. While not crammed in together with other inmates, as so many other political prisoners were, these high-ranking tapols starved, watched their bodies waste away and endured prolonged mental suffering. To explain to me what she meant, she used her hand to encircle her upper arm and then grabbed her thigh, already very thin with age, and said that she had been ‘half of what she is now’ and that she and the other prisoners had been ‘nothing but bones’. Then she pressed one of her palms under her armpit and told me how she had hidden things, such as soap and paper, in the hollow which grew larger as she became thinner; so that, even if she stood up and spread her arms wide, the soap would not fall out. As she became increasingly emaciated, her muscles had been ‘eaten’ up so that she was ‘only bones’. Ibu Lia also stressed how the many, many hours of lonely confinement tormented her and the others. The small cell in which she was kept for so long became horribly familiar.5 The places described by Ibu Lia, Pak Kusumo and many other survivors are places of premature, unnatural dying. Dehumanisation is an embodied process that is both a justification for, and a product of, the degradation, humiliation and destruction of victims. As Franz === [PDF page 70] === The violence of detention 55 Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka and Sobibor, once said, the ‘nakedness, the whips, the horror of the cattle pens’ were all part of a system designed ‘to condition those who actually had to carry out these policies; to make it possible for them to do what they did’ (quoted in Sereny 1974: 202 and 232; see also Lang 2010). Essentially, if you make people degraded and wretched, in circumstances of extreme subjugation, then you will have made them into Agamben’s homines sacri – ‘bare life’ without protection and without value – and they are much easier to torture, maim and kill.6 When people are reduced in such a way, their degraded and wretched condition becomes evidence of their non-humanness (see Agamben 1999; Oliver 2011). In the detention camps in Indonesia, both the physical and emotional violation of individuals played a role in their degradation. One way of interpreting this process by which victims were eroded and eaten up in the detention centres in Indonesia is to see it as part of, and driven by, the incremental steps necessary to transform both the victims and the perpetrators: to degrade victims sufficiently to enable perpetrators to harm them; to help perpetrators to distance themselves from the victims as individuals; and for this sustained subjugation to transform individuals into a mass of non- or subhumans. Various cross-cultural studies of other concentration-camp and mass atrocity situations, predominantly by psychologists, social-psychologists and sociologists, have explained this process mostly by applying a variety of dehumanisation paradigms (see Bandura 1999; Bandura et al. 1996). Various genocide scholars have also seen the process of dehumanisation as an important part of creating these situations of atrocity and perpetrators ready and able to kill en masse (see Milgram 1974; Staub 1989; Browning 1992; Waller 2002; Zimbardo 2007; Baum 2008). As almost all of these studies have found, dehumanisation is one of a number of important processes that is necessary (in that it needs to happen) in order to facilitate this kind of treatment of so many by so many. When reflecting on the many testimonies of survivors of the atrocities following the coup in Indonesia, in the end it is difficult to understand these interactions and the motivations of perpetrators. Yet there is nothing inexplicable about atrocities committed by humans against other humans, nothing unspeakable or unimaginable about the things that we will do to each other. Atrocities are carried out by human beings and therefore we must find ways to understand them as entirely imaginable, speakable and explainable. Places and forms of interrogation and torture The situations and environments that women described when talking about being interrogated and tortured have some common characteristics. Interrogations often took place at night and often in a separate space from where they were detained. This could either be a separate room in a detention centre or sometimes a separate facility where they were taken for the purpose of interrogation. These places of interrogation/detention ranged widely from houses, businesses, === [PDF page 71] === 56 The violence of detention and schools, to guard posts, police barracks and military headquarters. Most detention and interrogation centres were located in populated/urban areas; cities, towns and villages. Over time, however, most of the longer-term detainees were eventually moved to more remote areas, such as to Plantungan (the women’s detention camp in the highlands of Central Java) or Buru Island (the detention camp island where mostly male detainees were held during the 1970s). The forms of violence, intimidation and ill-treatment that they experienced in these interrogation centres and rooms were varied; some forms of violence were more frequently used while others were more rarely deployed. The most common form of physical violence recounted by survivors was beatings; with hands, fists, and various objects, most of which were depicted as long and blunt, such as bamboo poles, metal/iron bars or sometimes long pieces of rubber. Perpetrators appear to have used their fists and hands to beat their victims’ faces, while long, blunt objects and kicks were more commonly used to beat their bodies, particularly the back, abdomen and pelvic areas. Other forms of physical violence involved electrocutions (with the leads attached to the nipples, the genitals, the extremities, and sometimes to parts of the face and neck), whipping (with whips or long, flexible items such as wire and even string-ray tails or tali ekor ikan pari), and the use of common objects found in the interrogation room. Such objects included chairs and tables which were commonly used for physical torture of the extremities such as the feet and toes. A victim’s foot would be put under one of the legs of a chair, and the interrogators would either sit or jump on the chair.7 This sudden or prolonged pressure caused blunt and sometimes penetrating trauma to the foot, and often, as Ibu Lia said, broke the bones and caused permanent damage. One man introduced to me by Ibu Sri and Ibu Lani in Sumatra had one of his legs permanently damaged by this kind of torture and could only walk with the aid of a crutch. Even daylight itself can be used against prisoners as the skin burns and the body weakens and becomes ill when left to ‘dry out’ in the sun. Prisoners were forced to stay in the sun all day without water or food. Two men, Pak Agus and Pak Pramano, who had been imprisoned in Sumatera told me that victims would be forced to take off their shirts (or all their clothes) and stand in the sun all day, which ‘made them sick’. On one occasion, Pak Agus was forced to stand in the sun for three days.8 In the very hot climate of Indonesia, the signs of sun stroke such as nausea, vomiting and dizziness would have presented within only a few hours. One woman told me that her baby was left out in the sun as a way to torture her, the baby’s screams meant to force information out of her.9 These were not the only forms of physical violence used against detainees in interrogational settings. Torturers seemed to develop routines to their violence, but they were also inventive and varied their methods. Other forms of physical torture that were described to me or that I found in secondary accounts included: having a victim’s tongue being pulled out with a wire, leaving her mute;10 burning with cigarettes and flames; parts of the body, particularly the head, being hit up against walls and tables; cutting with razors or knives; and === [PDF page 72] === The violence of detention 57 having the body suspended by a rope for days at a time (see Margiyono and Yunanto 2007: 15, 68 and 79). As Elaine Scarry found in her study on torture, The Body in Pain (1985), the prisoner’s body itself can be manipulated to cause extreme pain. An example of this is being suspended by a rope in what would be termed a ‘stress position’ so that ‘the person in great pain experiences his own body as the agent of his agony’ (1985: 47–48). As Scarry points out, everything in and around the interrogational space is ‘inevitably assimilated into the process of torture, so too the contents of the room, its furnishings, are converted into weapons’ (1985: 40). The many forms of harm Over time, the victim’s ‘world’ is ‘reduced’ or shrunk to the place in which the torture is perpetrated (Scarry 1985: 40). Physical pain, combined with intimidation, threats and mental suffering, isolate the victim. In many ways, the psychological threats and intimidation are just as damaging as the physical torture. A study on the effects of torture amongst nearly 300 Croatian, Serb and Bosnian torture survivors (Bağoğlu et al. 2007: 277), for example, found that, Ill treatment during captivity, such as psychological manipulations, humiliating treatment, and forced stress positions, does not seem to be substantially different from physical torture in terms of the severity of mental suffering they cause, the underlying mechanism of traumatic stress, and their long-term psychological outcome. Thus, although physical torture may have significant effects on both short- and longer-term physical and mental health, other forms of torture, such as the infliction of psychological and mental suffering, may be as harmful in terms of victims’ long-term psychological health. The point here is not to diminish nor indeed hierarchise different forms of suffering, only to point out that mental or psychological forms of violence are also torture and also have long-term effects. Fear, intimidation and torture The physical forms of violence described above were perpetrated against both men and women, however, more men were detained and were more frequently physically tortured than women prisoners. Many of the women I interviewed who had been interrogated, whether physically tortured or not, described intense mental pressure and coercion. Many talked about being able to hear or being forced to watch others being tortured and the effects that this had upon them. Some women, such as Ibu Siti, identified this as deliberate ‘mental abuse’ of detainees. In her testimony, Ibu Siti described how she and her young child were both forced to watch repeated sessions of torture. By making it ‘required viewing’, their interrogators made sure that detainees at === [PDF page 73] === 58 The violence of detention the centre were terrified and intimidated (see Sasongko 2005: 60–64). Other women described being able to hear and/or see the torture of others as part of the terrible anticipation of their own interrogation. For example, Ibu Susiani, whose testimony was discussed in the previous chapter, described how being able to hear the torture of other prisoners made her and the other women imprisoned in the cell terrified and anxious because they knew what was to come. Ibu Susiani and the other women could hear the screaming that came regularly from the interrogation room and she described how this terrified them. They could also see detainees being taken past their room by the guards, many of them severely beaten and unconscious. Ibu Susiani also said that some of the people taken for interrogation never came back. ‘Every night we could hear them. My cell was near where they were tortured. I couldn’t bear to hear them screaming,’ Ibu Susiani explained. One of the women imprisoned with her, Ibu Nur, was tortured repeatedly, and Ibu Susiani described how the treatment of Ibu Nur badly affected her and the others (interview with Ibu Susiana and Ibu Lia, Jakarta, October 2005). Every night there, there was a woman there, Ibu Nur, who was tortured, and I couldn’t bear to hear it [ … ] Oh, she was tortured! [ … ] we saw what had happened to Nur, what they did to her, and I was terrified. I prayed, oh God, please God, keep me safe [ … ] we were all terrified. Ibu Susiani also described how, during one of her own interrogations, she was forced to watch the torture of another. As discussed in Chapter 2, Ibu Susiani had been arrested as a ‘guarantee’ for her fugitive husband who had disappeared shortly after the coup and whom she never saw again. While in detention in 1967, she found out that her husband’s younger brother had also been arrested and was also a ‘guarantee’ for her husband. Her interrogators had questioned Ibu Susiani about the whereabouts of her husband and, when she could only reply that she did not know where he was, her brother-in-law was brought into the interrogation room. And then Panut, my husband’s younger brother, was caught. He was brought in and questioned too, and beaten. ‘Stop it!’ I yelled, ‘He doesn’t know anything [ … ] he has no connection to any of this.’ However, because he was a relative, he was beaten, whipped with wire, with something like a sting-ray tail. And poor him, and the other things [that they did to him], I couldn’t understand why they did it. Panut was nearly whipped to death in front of Ibu Susiani while the interrogators demanded information about the whereabouts of her husband, which neither she nor Panut could supply. After this, Ibu Susiani was interrogated and tortured further and in her testimony, she describes how terrifying it was to see the torture of others. The interrogation room, the interrogators, and the implements used to torture others were then used on her. As she explained, she ‘knew what === [PDF page 74] === The violence of detention 59 they would do’ to her, and this knowledge made her anxious and terrified in her anticipation of being tortured. Her interrogators appear to have planned this and used her anxiety and anticipation of violence against her during later interrogation sessions. Ibu Susiani referred to the whip that Burhan used to beat her brother-in-law a number of times in her testimony. After she was forced to watch the torture of Panut, Ibu Susiani was taken back into the same room with the same interrogator who brought out the same whip. Once again, Burhan began by asking her for the whereabouts of her husband to which she again responded that she did not know. ‘Bu, try to answer my questions,’ he asked slowly, ‘Please tell us, where is your husband?’ ‘I don’t know. You can do whatever you want to me.’ They thought I was pretending, but I really and truly didn’t know. And then, by the end of it, he started playing with his sting-ray whip to frighten me. ‘You’re not afraid of it?’[Burhan said, meaning the whip, which Ibu Susiani mimed being thrust towards her], ‘You’re not afraid of this?’ While the threat of a whip is terrifying in itself, this whip belonged to Burhan, the man who was renowned for his sadism and whose violence she had witnessed first-hand. As Ibu Susiani explained again to me, in order to make sure that I understood the significance, this was the whip which he had used to beat her brother-in-law almost to death a few days beforehand. In her account of this particular interrogation session with Burhan, the whip loomed large in her memory; she mentioned it a number of times and it was clearly an item of fear and loathing for her, a fear which Burhan deliberately used to intimidate her. More than that, she seemed to personify this whip, so that it was both the man who used it and the whip itself that were intent on harming her. Ibu Susiani never described Burhan using the whip on her; she was physically tortured in other ways with other implements (described in Chapter 5), but he only used the whip to intimidate and terrify her. Coercion and threats Threats and other coercive tactics were also frequently used. The women were threatened with physical violence, sexual violence and/or death. They were also threatened with the perpetration of such acts against others, such as family members. These threats took the form of explicit verbal statements, as well as a fear for their own wellbeing after witnessing the treatment of others. The women feared that they would be killed when they were dibon (‘borrowed’), which sometimes meant being taken for interrogation,11 but often meant being taken away for execution. Ibu Lia, for example, described how explicit threats of death were used to intimidate detainees. On the run for over a year before she was finally caught, === [PDF page 75] === 60 The violence of detention she was taken by some soldiers to a house which had been set up as an interrogation centre. There she was stripped naked and made to stand amongst a group of twenty male detainees in order to humiliate her. She was also tortured and forced to undergo other physical punishments: I was stripped naked there [and] there were twenty other people there, and I was in the middle. [They] were forced to look at me. They did this because, well, I was ashamed to be naked there [ … ] they ordered me to do all sorts of things. And then I was tortured, stabbed. Ordered to eat terasi [a type of fermented fish paste] until I threw up, ordered to do all sorts of things, God! While she was being tortured, Ibu Lia was also repeatedly told to ‘confess’. She recounted how her interrogators always shouted, ‘Confess! Confess or else!’ and how they threatened her with death if she did not. When she refused to participate, they continued to torture her, and then threatened to bury her in a mass grave. ‘Do it! Confess now!’ [and I thought] well, if I’m going to die, then I’m going to die, and so I stayed dumb. ‘Confess! Confess now, or else you’ll die … ’ I didn’t blink an eyelid (tak bergeming). Because, in the end, death is the risk that you take. I didn’t have any regrets. The important thing was, well, I’d already been beaten, dragged this way and that, and so I just remained silent [ … ] Then a truck arrived with a big lamp on it. [They] said it was here to help bury my body. In a mass grave! Just one truck, a big truck. They were going to bury [the bodies] in a metre-deep [hole], one metre [down] into the dirt over there and then the truck moving [the bodies] would back up to it [to the hole], then the truck would turn around and go back. Then they would all be put into [the hole], then bulldozered. We were forced to stand about ten metres from where they were going to do it. We were about five, or six, of us, friends, who saw it. My heart was beating so fast [ … and they said] afterwards trees would be planted over the top [of the mass grave]. The trees that they would plant would be the ones that live a long time, for years and years. Although Ibu Lia was not killed, she was often threatened with being ‘thrown in as well’. She survived these interrogations and later became one of only a few women detained to face trial as a prominent tapol. She and her husband, who was also a PKI leader, were sentenced to life in prison, but after the ‘interference of Amnesty International’ as she laughingly called it, she was eventually released in 1982. Ibu Lia actually spoke at length about the kindness and help that she received from Amnesty International, and attributed her release to their efforts. On one occasion, she told me about how she spent a great deal of time in solitary confinement in a small 3 metre-by-3.5 metre concrete cell without any bedding. After some people from Amnesty International conducted a visit, she was given a thin mattress and a sheet (sarong). === [PDF page 76] === The violence of detention 61 Women also described mental suffering caused by separation from family members, particularly children. Separation from children, especially when women did not know where they were or if anyone was caring for them, caused a great deal of anxiety and suffering. One woman, Ibu Kunthi, who was separated from her children when she was taken into detention for about six months in 1966, explained how concern for their wellbeing made her ill and that it was all she could think about; ‘I didn’t know where they were. I had been taken and I didn’t know what happened to my children after that. That was the worst. I didn’t know and that was the worst thing that happened to me’ (interview with Ibu Kunthi, Central Java, October 2005). Fortunately, when Ibu Kunthi was released and returned home, she found her children had been taken care of by some people in her village and she was reunited with them. Conclusion The experience of detention for many of the men and women who took part in this project was remembered and retold as times when their bodies and minds were torn apart by violence and deprivation. Torture destroyed victims through atrocious bodily pain and emotional torment and many of those who survived carry the scars and other reminders of this violence. The violence of the detention camps, prisons and interrogation centres where hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were detained following the 1965 coup, however, was not confined to torture and interrogation. The system of deprivation and degradation in which people were treated inhumanely and without dignity was a fundamental part of the experience of detention. As the testimonies presented in this book reveal, the mass detention of so many as part of the eradication of the Left in Indonesia, created a malignant, terrifying network of places where atrocities were normalised and where the people became less than human. Yet little remains known today about these centres, the perpetrators who committed the crimes, or the victims who suffered at their hands. The building which housed one of the interrogation centres in central Jakarta where men and women were tortured for their alleged involvement in the 1965 coup is now – in a strange and somewhat obscene turn of events – home to the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM). One day in late December 2005 when driving past this office with Ibu Lia on our way to conduct an interview, she told me about how she had known a man who had been taken there in 1966 and nearly beaten to death. I remember the taxi driver glancing at her numerous times in his rear-view mirror, obviously disturbed by her story, though he did not say anything about it. As with the taxi driver, many in Indonesia today would not know that this and the many other interrogation and detention centres existed. Nevertheless, these places of detention and torture, such as the Komnas HAM building, should not be forgotten. These places of past suffering have now mostly been converted into shops or torn down and other buildings erected === [PDF page 77] === 62 The violence of detention in their place. Scattered across many towns and cities in Indonesia, millions pass by these places every day, disconnected from them by the silence that surrounds the events of 1965. Fundamental to the project of uncovering the history of 1965–66, therefore, must be the acknowledgement and memorialisation of these detention centres, in memory of those who lived and died in them. Notes 1 For information about Sukarno’s populist ‘National Front’ and the volunteers who joined, see, for example, discussions on this period in Elson (2008: 218–21) and 2 Interview with Ibu Riya, transcript obtained from ISSI (Jakarta, 2000). 3 The United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1984 and entered into force on 26 June 1987. For commentary on the sections dealing with universal jurisdiction (Article 5), see Nowark and McArthur (2008: 313–20). 4 Of course, the qualifier here is ‘severe’, which constitutes the very murky distinction between ‘torture’ and other acts, such as ‘inhuman treatment’. As one clear example of this, see the now infamous memo sent to W. J. Haynes II (General Counsel of the Department of Defense in the US) ‘Re: Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States’, sent by the John C. Yoo (the Deputy Assistant Attorney General) on 14 March 2003. With regard to what constituted severe physical pain (and thus torture), Yoo advised that so long as the treatment did not cause a ‘physical condition or injury sufficiently serious that it would result in death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions’ then it was not torture (or, at least, that it could not be construed as such) (pp. 38–39). To view the memorandum online, go to <www.justice.gov/olc/docs/ memo-combatantsoutsideunitedstates.pdf> (accessed 8 November 2010). 5 Ibu Lia talked about starvation a number of times. One afternoon she tried to explain to me how starvation made prisoners ‘crazy’ and ‘nearly dead’, and that being in prison was like being ‘eaten’. Recorded and unrecorded conversations, Jakarta, September and December 2005. 6 I realise that by making this equation, I have conflated a number of Agamben’s ideas about sovereignty, the monitoring and control of biological life by nationstates and zones of ‘indistinction’; which are discussed frequently together with Foucaudian notions of biopower and sovereignty. The three works by Agamben that are most relevant here being Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998), Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive (1999) and States of Exception (2005). 7 Interview with Ibu Lia, December 2005, Jakarta. This was a frequently described torture in many testimonies that I came across during the course of this project. For one example of a collection of testimonies in which this type of torture is mentioned a number of times, see Pudji Raharjo et al. (2004: 80). 8 Interview with Pak Agus and Pak Pramano (along with Narny Yenny’s husband, Zairi Waldani), Sumatra, September 2005. 9 Interview with Ibu Tati with Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005. 10 Ibu Tri, transcript obtained from ISSI (Jakarta, 2000). 11 As previously mentioned, dibon was also used by women on a few occasions in interviews which meant that women were taken away to be sexually assaulted. The most common action implied by ‘dibon’, whether for interrogation, execution or sexual assault, however, was that it meant being taken away to another location. === [PDF page 78] === Explaining sexual violence Sexualised forms of violence were pervasive during both the massacres of 1965–66 and the mass political detentions that followed the 1 October 1965 coup in Indonesia. This violence took many forms, including rape, gang rape, sexualised mutilation and torture, sexual humiliation, enforced prostitution, sexual slavery, and forced abortion. While some forms of sexual violence were perpetrated against men (particularly in torture as part of interrogation and in spectacularised display killings), the focus of this and the following chapters is on women’s and girls’ experiences of this violence during the massacres and political detention. I examine testimonies of survivors in order to discuss common themes of sexual violence. In this chapter, I consider the role that gender plays in mass violence and offer some fundamental explanations for why sexualised forms of violence occurred during the massacres and in detention. I propose four main reasons for the violence – opportunism, perceived sexual excess on the part of the PKI, sexual violence as a way to mark the boundaries of groups, and as a deliberate strategy to destroy the Left. This study of sexualised forms of violence against women draws attention to how women’s bodies and sexual identities are located at the centre of violent conflicts. The ubiquity of sexual violence points to the necessity of examining the killings of 1965–66 from a gendered perspective. For that reason, such a perspective is central to understanding the massacres and their legacy in Indonesia. This focus on gender and sex when examining the violence of 1965 is essential to understanding both the violence itself and its legacy in Indonesia. How sexed and gendered bodies and subjectivities were performed during the violence and how forms of violence were sexualised and gendered reveal certain aspects of the events following the 1965 coup that would otherwise remain unclear. As Ariel Heryanto (2006) has affirmed, the violence of 1965–66 was the foundation for the New Order’s long-lasting authoritarian rule. In Derridean terms, 1965–66 was the violent, performative and foundational event of New Order Indonesia. Just as that foundational event is both self-creating and self-rationalising, an ex nihilo fiction that serves to authorise itself, as Derrida argues, each subsequent violent act by the regime enforces and reinscribes that foundational violence (1990: 997). Thus, if 1965–66 is to be seen as the foundation upon === [PDF page 79] === 64 Explaining sexual violence which the New Order was built, then the regime’s intermittent displays of its willingness throughout its thirty-two years to use suppression and state terror to retain and maintain power must be seen as productions of ‘repetition at the heart of the originary’ (Derrida 1990: 997). Furthermore, numerous feminist scholars have made clear just how important it is to interrogate the intersections of gendered and sexed subjectivities with national projects, identities and belonging as well as state formation (Yuval-Davis 1997; Das 1996). Therefore, this focus on sex, gender and the violence following the 1965 coup is about questioning and reviewing aspects of the killings, mass political detentions and their legacies in Indonesia that can otherwise become naturalised or even occluded. Explaining sexual violence against women following the coup In the months and years that followed the 1965 coup, there were many, complex and interconnected forms of violence carried out against those labelled ‘PKI’ or ‘Communist sympathisers’. These forms included massacres of civilians, mass arrests and political detentions, executions, torture, interrogation, spectacularised atrocities, starvation, forced labour, and sexual violence, in addition to ongoing structural and cultural violence against survivors and their descendants. There were many gendered aspects to this violence. Incorporating a gendered approach to the study of the events after 1965, however, means more than examining what are commonly thought of as sex-selective forms of violence, such as the pervasive use of rape against women ‘Communists’ or the evidence that far more men were killed and imprisoned than women (and children). Thinking about gender and 1965 also means considering the individual, performative and structural ramifications of sex and gender in situations of mass violence. Sexual violence during the massacres and during detention had multiple dimensions and multiple causes. All violence during conflict situations is inherently multi-causal and involves the interactions of actors at national, regional and local levels. Therefore micro- and macro-level dynamics, motivations and actions must be taken into account when mapping violence in conflict (see Kalyvas 2006; Henry et al. 2004). The explanations for sexual violence that I offer here are based on interviews with no more than 150 women from a small number of regions affected by the killings. As more information is collected and analysed, better and more comprehensive explanations will come to light as the patterns of violence and the behaviour of various actors are revealed. Sexual violence following the 1965 coup was a strategy to terrify, humiliate and torture victims. It was also opportunistic and committed with impunity. Sexual violence was a weapon by which the Indonesian military and civilian militia groups attacked and destroyed ‘Communists and their sympathisers’ as part of a larger and intentional strategy to eradicate the Left. Yet many testimonies by those who survived these incidences also reveal the sometimes haphazard, arbitrary nature of these events that were driven by an individual === [PDF page 80] === Explaining sexual violence 65 perpetrator’s lust, greed or desire for revenge. In addition, the influence of the Indonesian military’s highly inflammatory and misogynous propaganda against the PKI cannot be discounted when explaining sexual violence during 1965–66. Sexual violence was also a way to distinguish who the PKI supporters were and to mark them as such. In this section, I discuss these intersecting explanations for sexual violence; first, I address some of the ways in which this violence during 1965–66 was at least partially opportunistic and motivated by the desires of individual perpetrators; second, I examine the influence of the military’s propaganda; and third, I discuss how sexual violence was both a means to identify and a strategy to destroy the PKI and their sympathisers. Opportunism One persistent explanation for sexual violence during conflicts is that, in environments such as war or genocidal campaigns, when the likelihood of negative consequences for antisocial and violent behaviours is low, some men – and these explanations focus almost exclusively on male perpetrators – will commit sexual violence because they can (Malamuth 1981). It is, however, not only the lack of fear of retribution which may contribute to this opportunistic behaviour, but also individual motivation and desire (see Ward and Hudson 1998). The actions of some individual perpetrators appear to have been motivated, at least as they are depicted in the testimonies of victims about some sexual assaults, by an individual’s desire to engage in some sort of sexual activity with a particular female and that, given that there were no perceived serious negative consequences for this behaviour, there was no deterrent from doing so.1 This argument that some rapes and other forms of sexual assault may be partly a result of individual perpetrators’ sexual desires is a contentious one. Feminist analyses of sexual violence against women, particularly rape, posit this violence as aggression and desire for dominance exhibited through sexual means. Ruth Seifert, for example, argues in relation to the mass rapes in Bosnia– Herzegovina during the 1990s that ‘there are good reasons to assume that rapes do not have much to do [with … ] sexuality. Rather, they are acts of extreme violence implemented, of course, by sexual means. [ … R]ape is not an aggressive manifestation of sexuality, but rather a sexual manifestation of aggression’ (1994: 69). For a great many of the cases of sexualised forms of violence studied as part of this research, I agree with Seifert and others such as Stiglmayer who have argued along a similar vein (Stiglmayer 1994; Washburn 2003). These forms of violence were ways of expressing dominance, of reinforcing masculinity amongst male group perpetrators, and of attacking and destroying the culture of the victim group. This study also indicates, however, that sexual desire cannot be discounted entirely from explanations for some opportunistic sexual violence during the massacres and detentions in Indonesia. Some women interviewed described guards who ‘fell in love’ (jatuh cinta) with particular female prisoners. This included stories of guards who repeatedly raped a particular woman because === [PDF page 81] === 66 Explaining sexual violence he ‘chose’ her (pilih), cases where a female prisoner married a guard or a member of the armed forces and was therefore released from incarceration, as well as rare examples of when a guard and a female prisoner developed what was described to me as a mutual relationship (sama suka) which led to the woman’s release so that she could marry the guard.2 However, situations where a woman was forced into a sexual relationship were the far more common. The conditions under which these sexual relationships developed were extremely coercive; the female prisoners were dependent upon those who ran the detention facilities, not least of all for their survival. What these relationships reveal, however, is that sexual desire was part of the motivations for some of these men. My research findings therefore support the work of scholars such as Wendy Jo Gertjejanssen (2004) whose recent research into sexual violence on the Eastern Front during World War II points to the inclusion of perpetrators’ sexual desire within a broader understanding of sexual violence during mass conflict (see also Csete and Kippenberg 2002). The actions of individual perpetrators were also opportunistic in the sense that, particularly in the various detention facilities, soldiers, policemen, guards and the members of the civilian militia gangs who occasionally worked in these facilities, abused their positions of power (see Enloe 2000). This abuse of power by perpetrators in relation to sexual activity included acts of rape, sexual assault, torture and harassment of victims, but also the manipulation by perpetrators of essential resources to coerce victims into sexual activities. Their access, in particular, to food and other basic supplies was one way that these guards could occasionally compel female prisoners into performing sexual acts. This abuse of position by those working within the detention facilities went beyond sexual activities performed under duress and included a broad range of other forms of corrupt and coercive practices. For example, many testimonies by survivors of these facilities describe how guards would often require bribes from friends and relatives who visited the detention centres in order for them to see or to pass on food or supplies to prisoners. Whether or not these bribes were paid, very often the guards would then eat some or all of the food meant for the prisoners. Other examples of opportunistic behaviour on the part of guards and officials included some instances when prisoners, or their family members, were able to bribe their way out of jail altogether, though this seems to have been a relatively rare occurrence. For example, in the testimony by Ibu Arie from Central Java, when she was arrested a few days after her husband, she was able to bribe the prison officials with Rp. 300 in order to be released. When she got home, she sold her house in order to get enough money together to buy her husband’s way out of jail, but by the time she got the money together, he had already disappeared. She then went to a nearby town where she thought he may have been moved to, but he had already ‘gone’, meaning that he had already been killed. When Ibu Arie tried to find out about him, the police beat her. She looked for her husband for many years, but she never found out what had happened to him.3 === [PDF page 82] === Explaining sexual violence 67 Apart from the extensive use of forced labour of detainees, another example of how officials took opportunities for self-enrichment was threatening newly released prisoners with re-arrest if they refused to work for free on ‘projects’ organised by officials. Ibu Arum from Lampung in south-eastern Sumatra, for example, discussed how her husband and many other men from her village had been forced to work for free after their release. She also discussed being forced to pay bribes to visit her husband while he was in detention. Aside from being forced to work, her husband also had to report once a month to the local command post and had to pay the guard there money each time.4 ‘Wife-taking’ (istri diambil), discussed in Chapter 8, can also be seen as an example of opportunistic motivations for sexual violence during 1965–66. The more common forms of this violence occurred when male relatives of a woman (usually the husband) were killed or captured. As these incidents were described to me in interviews, the loss or disappearance of a husband left the wife vulnerable to sexual assault. These assaults took the form of single cases of rape by one or multiple perpetrators, repeated incidents of rape where an individual assailant or assailants returned to attack the same woman on multiple occasions, as well as more long-term sexual relationships in the form of either sexual slavery or forced marriage. Conditions of sexual slavery included both women taken into detention and forced to have sex with men at a particular facility (such as the local military command post), and women who remained in their homes but who were then ‘visited’ by individual or multiple perpetrators. The perpetrators themselves ranged from military and police personnel, to members of the civilian militia groups, to men from the local area who took advantage of the woman’s new status as a ‘widow’ (janda) to engage in predatory sexual behaviour. It appears to have been more common, however, for long-term sexual relationships to have resulted in marriage. While not all of these marriages were forced, the situations in which the women found themselves compelled some of their choices. ‘Wife-taking’ was particularly opportunistic and I heard numerous stories about wives being forced into second marriages by men soon after the death or disappearance of their husbands. I encountered many secondary accounts of how a husband would be accused of being a member of the PKI, which would result in his death or detention, and then another man would ‘take’ the victim’s wife. In some of these stories, the accuser would be the one taking the wife, along with the husband’s personal possessions and land. It was, however, extremely difficult to find and interview women who had been ‘taken’ in this way in order to confirm details of cases.5 Perceived sexual excess and propaganda After the coup, the Indonesian military’s incitement and dehumanising propaganda created a sense that anti-Communist violence was legitimate and necessary. From this arises the second explanation, which is that sexualised violence was a response to perceived sexual excess on the part of the PKI.6 Researchers such as Saskia Wieringa (2002) and Steven Drakeley (2007) have demonstrated the === [PDF page 83] === 68 Explaining sexual violence connections between the Indonesian military’s misogynous hate-propaganda that following the 1965 coup, its ramifications for women Communists (particularly Gerwani), and the on-going legacies of the appallingly damaging lies created about Lubang Buaya.7 This perceived sexual excess of the PKI as legitimation for sexual violence during the killings and political detention was a theme that was raised many times during my interviews with women survivors. In some interviews, women talked about how perpetrators explicitly named the alleged sexual torture of the generals by Communist women as their justification for perpetrating sexual assault. In a number of testimonies, women recounted being taunted and ridiculed thus by guards and interrogators who sexually assaulted and abused them. These taunts included allegations that they, as Communist women, were sexually promiscuous and that they were used to sexual torture because not only had Gerwani women taken part in the torture of the generals at Lubang Buaya – cutting off the generals’ penises and indulging in an orgy with the coup participants – the PKI had also allegedly indoctrinated their women in all manner of sexually deviant behaviours (see Wieringa 2002). Some of those who assaulted the women interviewed accused them of being ‘used to it’ (sudah biasa) or asked them, ‘isn’t this what you do?’ The accusation that Communist women were ‘accustomed’ to violence also extended beyond sexualised forms. For example, Ibu Wanti, one of the former national level leaders of Gerwani, explained that during one of her interrogations, a young man was brought into the room and almost beaten to death in front of her, supposedly to make her ‘talk’. When she protested against this treatment, her interrogator insisted that this was ‘normal’ for her, as a Gerwani leader, and said that, ‘You are used to seeing people being tortured’. Ibu Wanti then explained that he had said this because he believed that she was used to seeing torture at Lubang Buaya (interview, Jakarta, October 2005). In other interviews, some women said that they had been called ‘tukang bunuh’ or ‘tukang nyilet’, meaning expert or professional killers and slashers/slicers, in reference to Gerwani women allegedly having sliced the generals with razor blades.8 Communist women, as with Communist men, were also described using various other negative characteristics and phrases. During the course of my research, there were many stories of women being called a range of derogatory names, including very strong epithets, both sexualised and non-sexualised, Sexually promiscuous Communist women are also a common theme in the few available fictionalised stories about the killings. This theme appears a number of times, to take just one example, in Gerson Poyk’s A Woman and Her Children (1975). The story revolves around ‘A’, an anti-PKI civil servant who seeks out Hadijah, his former lover and widow of his old enemy, the murdered PKI leader ‘K’. As with many women who lost husbands during the violence, Hadijah is now almost destitute and is desperate to find help for her five children. Despite the stigma of associating with PKI families and his hatred of K, A decides to help Hadijah by taking care of her children. During the story, there are a number of occasions when both Hadijah and other === [PDF page 84] === Explaining sexual violence 69 women referred to loosely as ‘Gerwani’ or ‘PKI women’ are described by other characters as sexually available with the implication being that they are prostitutes. In one exchange between A and a street vendor, the vendor implies that A had gone to have sex with Hadijah because, ‘it’s what most of the Gerwani who aren’t in prison are doing now’ (Poyk 1975: 68). In another exchange between A and some anti-Communist vigilantes, they accuse Hadijah of trying to trick A into taking care of her children, saying that, ‘Then she’ll be free to do whatever she wants to. She can be a real first-class slut then’ (1975: 74–75). The implication within the story is that Hadijah will need to become a prostitute in order to survive. At the end of Poyk’s story, however, Hadijah dies as a result of ‘the prison, her husband’s death, no one to look after her children … public opinion … shock’, and A takes her children away with him (1975: 76). Returning to the experiences of women who took part in this project, the testimony of Ibu Susiani, a woman who was taken into custody because the military was looking for her husband – a member of the PKI who had disappeared months before – also reveals some of these accusations of sexual promiscuity (see Pohlman 2010). In Chapter 3, I discussed how Ibu Susiani was called for interrogation soon after being detained at a guard post in Jakarta. Her interrogator began by trying to find out the whereabouts of her husband. When Ibu Susiani could only repeat that her husband had disappeared and that she did not know where he was, her interrogator became angrier and more violent. The following brief statement is taken from her recollection about this interrogation, and illustrates some of the highly sexualised, abusive language used to interrogate female detainees. All the things he asked me, all I could say was, ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Wow, you really are PKI! Porno! You’ve been indoctrinated with thousands of filthy things! Tell me the truth!’ [the interrogator said.] ‘Truly, Pak, I don’t know anything to tell you.’ Comments such as these were often framed in terms of women Communists supposedly being accustomed to sexual deviance, for example, that women were already ‘used to’ sexual ‘excess’, various sexual activities and sexual violence. It is likely that the perpetrators used these assumptions of the women’s implied familiarity with sexual violence, both as justification for and as motivation to assault women detainees. In the example above, ‘PKI’ is equated with sexual deviance, uncleanness and treachery. When Ibu Susiani does not provide the answers her interrogator desires, she is lying, because she is a Communist woman and therefore deceitful and sexually rebellious. After this particular encounter, she recounted that nothing ‘physical’ happened to her ‘that time’ but that her husband’s younger brother, also detained to find the whereabouts of her fugitive husband, was nearly whipped to death in front of her in order to force her to talk. While her brother-in-law was being whipped, her interrogators said that this torture should not be too ‘shocking’ for her because, === [PDF page 85] === 70 Explaining sexual violence after all, she was a Communist and therefore accustomed to it. Ibu Susiani stopped my interview with her at that point for a few minutes before moving on. After this interrogation, she was sent back to the guard post where she and other women prisoners were being detained. A later part of Ibu Susiani’s testimony also illustrates how female Communists were accused of being sexually deviant. This time, she recalled a later session with her interrogator who, once again, tried to find out the whereabouts of her husband. In this interrogation, Ibu Susiani remembered that her interrogator showed her photographs of men’s genitals. I [was forced to look at] pictures of men’s genitals, and I shuddered. I was revolted by looking at them. ‘Open your eyes! Look at this! Who’s it a picture of? Look at it, open your eyes! Tell us who this is. After all, your husband has left you so you must be hankering after something like this!’ he said. Why Ibu Susiani was forced to look at the pictures, she could not say. She did not know if she were supposed to be able to identify individual men from pictures of their genitals – on the assumption that she had had sexual relations with these men because Communist women were promiscuous – or if it had been an intentional strategy to humiliate her, or both. What she did outline, however, was that being forced to look at the pictures and being taunted about them was the first step in an escalating sequence of violence. I will return to Ibu Susiani’s testimony about her interrogation and torture in Chapter 5. What is clear from these sections of Ibu Susiani’s testimony, however, as with many other women’s testimonies, is that the perceived sexual excess of the PKI and, in particular, Communist women, often became part of perpetrators’ interactions with women detainees. This perceived sexual excess and its use to legitimise and rationalise sexualised forms of violence against accused Communist sympathisers was also a central theme in testimonies that recounted forms of violence outside the detention centres. In the following chapter, this theme will arise again, particularly in testimonies about mutilation, rape and murder. In essence, from testimonies about the violence of 1965, it is clear that allegations of sexual excess, orgies and sexual torture of Lubang Buaya portrayed PKI members as the very worst kind of people who deserved what they got. Thus because members of the PKI were the very worst kind of people, horrific forms of violence, including the many and varied forms of deeply dehumanising and sexualised violence, were used upon them. Sexual violence as identity marker and strategy They destroyed us, our names, our lives, our morals were trampled on, for many, many years [ … ] They tortured us, the women PKI, with sexual abuse, it was sexual abuse against us. They attacked us by destroying our === [PDF page 86] === Explaining sexual violence 71 morals, our dignity as women. As women, we became worthless because they destroyed [our dignity], trod on it, we were worthless after that. We were made worthless! People thought that [about us], society thought that, that’s what it was like! Normally, we’d be worth 100%, but things turned a complete 180 degrees. We weren’t valuable to other people any more. It was just terrible … With the sexual abuse, they wanted us dead, dead! (Ibu Astuti, West Sumatra, September 2005) The above quote from Ibu Astuti’s testimony draws attention to how sexual violence was a way to attack and degrade victims, particularly women and girls. A further explanation for sexual violence during the massacres and political detentions is that this violence was one of the strategies to destroy the Left in Indonesia. To explain this, I draw on research findings into gendered experiences of mass violence from other cases in other countries. Sexual violence may serve as a boundary marker for identities and their construction during conflict. As these identities become reified during conflict, this facilitates sexual and other forms of violence as a strategy to destroy and degrade victims. Examining sexual violence as a tool for oppression during the killings and political detentions of 1965–66 is particularly salient given the history of this kind of violence against alleged enemies during conflicts in post-colonial Indonesia.10 For example, some of the findings in a report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women undertaken in 1998 concluded that rape was an ‘instrument of torture and intimidation by certain elements of the Indonesian army’ as well as that ‘torture against women detained by the Indonesia security forces was widespread’ (Coomaraswamy 1999: 10). The report also emphasised that these and other crimes were most common in areas where the Indonesian government was engaged in some form of localised conflict, and the Special Rapporteur drew particular attention to violence against women in Aceh, Papua and East Timor (Coomaraswamy 1999: 10). Examining sexualised forms of violence against women following the 1965 coup as a strategy perpetrated by state and co-opted militias therefore must be placed on a continuum of violence that occurred both during and following the New Order period, as well as within post-colonial Indonesian history more broadly. What is clear from this project and other studies is that Indonesian state security personnel have a long history of using sexual violence as a way to attack, humiliate and destroy their (perceived) opponents (see Aditjondro 1998; Subono 2000; Kamaruzzaman 2003; Human Rights Watch 2007). Examining sexual violence following the 1965 highlights how it was used as part of deliberate strategies to destroy the Left and the processes that facilitate this. The research on sexual violence during conflict situations is extensive. This is partly due to the fact that sexual violence during conflict is as inchoate and multidimensional as all forms of violence, as the sexual violence perpetrated during the months and years that followed the 1965 coup in Indonesia reflects. The purpose of this section is not to revisit this supporting literature in its entirety but only to highlight those studies which are useful when examining === [PDF page 87] === 72 Explaining sexual violence sexual violence in Indonesia in 1965–66. To place these studies within the overall body of works on sexual violence, however, it is important first to discuss briefly some of the foundational research on sexual violence which posits it as a form of intergroup mediation and marker of identity, in order to then focus on those studies which examine sexualised forms of violence as either strategic or goal-oriented in some way (see Pohlman 2004). Sexual violence and group identity Much of the research carried out to date centres on the relationship between sexualised violence and social, political and gendered power structures. Some of the most influential works by feminist researchers have elucidated how sexual violence is a crucial part of contested power structures by showing how it is a way to mediate conflict both between (and within) male groups and between men and women. For example, Catherine MacKinnon’s widely-cited analysis (1994) of the mass rapes and pornography during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia locates the cause of the rapes in the construction of male/ female power relations before and during the conflict (see also Nikolic-Ristanovic 2000). The early, ground-breaking research carried out by Susan Brownmiller in Against Our Wills (1975), on the other hand, clarifies how sexual violence mediates both male/female relations and power struggles between males. She argues, ‘Men of a conquered nation traditionally view the rape of “their women” as the ultimate humiliation … and appropriate [it] as part of their own male anguish of defeat’ (1975: 38). For Brownmiller, sexual violence is a vehicle for the display, production and maintenance of dominance; that is, domination by men over women but also domination of one group of men over another. Studies by Brownmiller and others also show that sexual violence during conflict is a way for one group of male perpetrators to construct and exert their superior masculinity while at the same time to deprive the defeated male enemy group of their masculinity; some argue that this, in turn, feminises the defeated male group (see Kesic 2001; Thompkins 1994). In essence, the argument is that women’s bodies become the symbolic battlefield upon which men communicate their dominance over other men. The studies by MacKinnon, Brownmiller and others provide evidence of how sexual violence can be an expression of intra- and intergroup conflict. In the case of sexual violence in 1965–66 against those identified as supporters of the PKI, this violence was a way for perpetrators – whether soldiers, members of the various youth militia gangs and others who took part in the violence – to communicate their aggression towards or dominance over Leftist supporters. Given the perceived threat the PKI and its supporters posed to the nation, it is plausible that some felt the desire to express domination, aggression and victory over a dangerous enemy through sexual violence. However, this explanation describes only part of this relationship. How this violence is a marker of group identity must also be addressed in order to understand more fully interactions of sexual violence as expressions of male/female and inter-male group conflict. === [PDF page 88] === Explaining sexual violence 73 While in many conflicts, sexual violence is a product of and vehicle for these intra/intergroup forces along gendered lines, it is also mediates other forms of identity-based violence, such as racialised or ethnicised violence. Both McKinnon’s and Brownmiller’s works have been criticised for not taking into account how sexual violence may also be a significant marker of ethnic, racial or other categories (Rejali 1997; Lentin 1999a). Ronit Lentin, for example, in her discussion of war-time rape, argues that ‘constructions of gender must be intersected with racialisation processes if we are to begin to understand rape as a strategy for making and re-making boundaries on women’s bodies, and hence to theorise women as national and ethnic subjects whose symbolic positioning marks the ever-shifting geo-conceptual boundaries of the nation’ (1999a: para. 3.9; see also Mostov 1995). Lentin (1999a) argues that sexual violence is, in part, a product of multiple social constructions which become reified in times of conflict. As such, the violence in part functions as a boundary marker for racial, ethnic, gendered, and other identities (Mayer 2004; Baines 2003). In the case of Serb and Bosnian Serb policies of rape against predominantly Muslim Bosnian women during the civil war in the 1990s, essentialised ethno-national identities were conflated with gendered and religious identities, the result of which was sexual violence primarily against women as Bosnian, Muslim (Bošnjak) women (Zarkov 2007). Another, much-debated case from Indonesia also highlights this conflation of ethnicised and gendered identity in violence. In the final days of the New Order regime in 1998, there were increasing numbers of demonstrations against the government, particularly by student protestors. On 12 May in Jakarta, four Trisakti University students taking part in a 10,000 strong anti-government protest were shot dead by security forces. Partly in reaction to this event, there were riots, widespread lootings and burnings in Jakarta and some regional cities over the following days. As part of these riots, there were attacks particularly against ethnic Chinese Indonesians – who were made scapegoats for the spiralling food prices and cost of basic goods – and their property. This highly ethnicised violence on 13 and 14 May also saw the mass rapes of predominantly Chinese Indonesian women by ‘unknown’ assailants. The exact number of victims of these rapes is unknown because it is believed that the majority of cases went unreported, but estimates range from between eighty-five and four hundred (see McCormick 2003).11 As Monika Swasti Winarnita (2008) has convincingly shown through an analysis of various representations of these events, the mass rapes of May 1998 reveal the intersection of gendered and racialised violence. In the case of Indonesia in 1965–66, there was a consolidation of categorical identities through violence. As I have argued elsewhere, social categorisation of the PKI and its supporters as internal enemies created an essentialised, politicised identity and victims were marked as such through violence (Pohlman 2012). At this time and in this context in Indonesia, this political identity functioned in ways similar to other essentialised identities, such as the often naturalised concepts of race and ethnicity, which are constructed during violence. That is, violence became an identity marker to delineate alleged supporters of === [PDF page 89] === 74 Explaining sexual violence the PKI though a homogenising or reified construction of identity. In most cases, people were killed or arrested because they were perceived to be part of this political group. In cases of sexual violence following the coup against women (and men) deemed PKI supporters, this violence again mediated both gendered and politicised constructions of their identity. Women more often became targets for sexual violence not only because they were women but also because they were perceived as women PKI supporters.12 Sexual violence as strategy Seeing sexual violence during 1965–66 as the means to construct gendered and politicised identities is essential for understanding this violence as a tool or strategy to attack, humiliate and destroy those perceived as PKI supporters. This relationship between sexual violence as a way to identify and a way to attack PKI women was brought up in many interviews. For example, in some testimonies, women described being attacked with sexual violence because they were Communist women and therefore this was the best way to attack them. As Ibu Astuti remarked in the quote at the beginning of this section, they, ‘the women PKI’, were ‘attacked’ with sexual abuse. For Ibu Astuti, as with other women who talked about this, she is referring to how sexual abuse harmed, humiliated and demeaned them but, moreover, that they were attacked in this way because they were PKI women. As she said, this was a means by which PKI women were ‘destroyed’ and ‘made worthless’. Explaining sexual violence in this way was the most common frame of reference that women interviewed as part of this project created to explain what had happened to them and others. This theme of sexual assault as a means to humiliate victims will be discussed further in the following chapters. While some women, such as Ibu Astuti, described the attacks in these more general terms of how sexual abuse or harassment (pelecehan) was used to degrade them, others such as Ibu Titiek gave more details of how sexual violence was an intrinsic part or strategy of the attacks. Ibu Titiek described a number of ways in which women were assaulted or murdered in her area of Sumatra. In particular, she described what happened to women and girls who became victims and showed that sexual abuse was a part of the murders or, perhaps more correctly, a form of killing. To take one example, she told me that; The sexual abuse was with the killing (dengan pembunuhan) … that’s how horrible the ways in which people were killed were! That was in my village. This happened to four of the girls killed there. [They were] raped, and raped to death (diperkosa mati), these four girls who were killed. Raped until they died.13 Whether Ibu Titiek meant that they died as a result of injury during gang rape or whether they were raped then killed is not certain, but her specific identification of sexual violence as a method or tactic of assault and murder is clear. === [PDF page 90] === Explaining sexual violence 75 Apart from being a method of attack, sexual violence, and the threat of sexual violence, are also effective instruments of terror and pacification. There has been a great deal of research from cross-cultural analyses of conflicts, cases of ethnic cleansing and genocides that highlight how sexual violence serves this strategic function as an instrument of terror (Allen 1996; Card 1996; Human Rights Watch 1996).14 As with other forms of violence, sexual violence forms part of what Carolyn Nordstrom calls ‘terror warfare’, a strategy of attack which is ‘predicated on a bastardised understanding of cultural transmission that posits that maiming and murder of a few will terrify the many into political acquiescence’ (1998: 107). The way that this terrorising function of sexual and other violence operates within Nordstrom’s ‘dirty war tactics’, however, is by seriously undermining social and community life and making normal or everyday practices uncertain and dangerous. As Nordstrom points out, sexual violence is a ‘mainstay’ of these tactics, and they transform everyday communal life into unknowable and frightening terrains. These tactics construct a ‘culture of terror … by forcefully deconstructing accepted realities within daily life so as to “disabilise” fundamental meaning and knowledge systems – epistemological and ontological – that define people’s life-worlds’ (Nordstrom 1992: 261). By disrupting people’s everyday lives and their normal social interactions, and by making these effects routine, violence and the threat of violence intrude and permeate those everyday interactions to the extent that they are inflected with insecurity, anxiety and fear (see Koonings and Kruijt 1999). For Nordstrom (1992), these effects of violence and the threat of violence are the power of dirty war tactics. This position that violence can influence the behaviours of people and communities through this terrifying function is a long-standing one. Leaving aside the many arguments surrounding the state, monopolies of violence and the legitimate use of force,15 studies carried out in a variety of contexts such as those by Gambetta (1993), Semelin (2000) and Waler (1969) show how violence can be a coercive and controlling force on the behaviour of others. For Gambetta, for example, ‘[v]iolence is a means, not an end; a resource, not the final product’ (1993: 2). Violence has a controlling force on others. As Stathis N. Kalyvas points out, however, coercive violence can often be both strategic and tactical; it can be both a ‘punishment’ or attack on enemies as well as an ‘example’ to current and future ones (2006: 27).16 With regard to sexual violence during 1965–66 in Indonesia and its strategic value for terrifying, humiliating and harming alleged PKI members, however, it is important to make a clarification. By arguing that sexual violence was a strategy used by perpetrators at times to attack and terrify their victims, I am not claiming that it was a top-down, calculated policy designed by military commanders and then passed on as orders to soldiers and civilian militia groups, for indeed, there is currently insufficient evidence of this.17 By saying that sexual violence had strategic value for perpetrators, this should not be understood to mean a concerted, widespread strategy to rape and sexually abuse victims systematically as a planned part of their other violent activities. === [PDF page 91] === 76 Explaining sexual violence Rather, sexual violence was widespread and systematic to the extent that it was carried out by perpetrators against almost anyone they perceived as enemies, wherever they wished.18 In a climate of general impunity for violent acts against those perceived to be PKI sympathisers, the independent initiative of individual perpetrators and groups – clearly derived from an overarching policy to destroy the Left – meant that sexual violence was an effective instrument of terror and weapon against these perceived enemies. Sexual violence in 1965–66 Sexual violence during the massacres of 1965–66 was a product of many, interconnected factors related to the individual contexts in which the acts occurred as well as their larger milieu. As such, this study confirms the results of other studies within the field of genocide studies that posit the phenomena of genocidal episodes as multidimensional and which defy any single explanation.19 Sexual violence, therefore, was simultaneously and separately part of intentional strategies to destroy the PKI, a way to mark the identities of victims (and perpetrators), part of opportunistic crimes that could be committed with impunity as well as a result of the Indonesian military’s hate propaganda following the 1965 coup. Sexual violence during this period, as with the many other forms of violence, could also be explained using a range of additional paradigms.20 The point, however, is not really to find the correct explanations for this violence or even to account for the many different viable explanations. In the end, what is important is how this violence affected the lives of individuals and communities. Violence is a many layered phenomenon and the forms of violence that people use against one another are never fixed either in motivation, practice or outcome. How individuals experience and participate in violence is also multilayered. How people become victims, become involved in, stand by or prevent violence in their everyday lives during conflicts speaks to the fact that all involved have, to varying extents, agency over their actions. In the following chapters, I explore women’s testimonies about sexualised forms of violence during the killings and in detention in order to reveal the ways in which they experienced, responded to and overcame this violence. Notes 1 Although I did not encounter any stories about male–male rape, or indeed about the rape of a man by a woman or of a woman by another woman, the same argument would hold true; that actions by individual perpetrators to engage in sexual assaults could be partially motivated by his/her desire to engage in sexual activity with a man/woman. 2 Ibu Titiek, who married a guard and her experiences are discussed in the following chapter; interview with Ibu Titiek, Ibu Lani and Narny Yenny, Sumatera, September 2005. 3 Testimony by Ibu Arie, Central Java, transcript obtained from ISSI. === [PDF page 92] === Explaining sexual violence 77 4 Testimony by Ibu Arum, Lampung, transcript from ISSI. Ibu Nada from East Java tells a similar story of having to bribe guards and military officials with money and cigarettes when wanting to see her relatives in detention or to find out anything about them. See testimony by Ibu Nada, East Java, interview transcript obtained from ISSI. 5 I interviewed one man whose wife had been taken by a perpetrator, Pak Karto, October 2005. Over a decade later when she discovered that her first husband was released from the prison island of Buru, she returned to him and was living with Pak Karto at the time of the interview. Pak Karto’s wife, however, declined to be interviewed and Pak Karto indicated that she never liked to discuss it. From the few details Pak Karto mentioned of her ‘other’ marriage, she had had a couple of children with this other man and it was unclear where those children were, discussed further in Chapter 8. 6 I wish to thank Robert Cribb for pointing this out to me. Personal communication, February 2006. 7 Here I am referring to the military’s propaganda created about the alleged events of the 30 September Movement Coup, i.e., that Gerwani women had participated by sexually torturing the kidnapped generals, gouged out their eyes, cut off their penises, and held an orgy with the other coup participants. It is worth noting also that the connection between misogynous hate propaganda and the incitement of sexual violence is a clear phenomenon in other cases of genocide. A well-known example is the deeply demeaning propaganda about Tutsi women in the hate media before and during the Rwandan genocide and its incitement of sexual violence against predominantly Tutsi women. On this, see the works by Nowrojee (1996; 2007). 8 See, for example, interview with Ibu S –, Jakarta, 28 June 2000, interview transcript from ISSI. 9 There were also various threats/insulting verbs, such as ‘diancuk’ (fuck it/you) and ‘mampuslah’ (die, imperative). Whether these were the actual insults used against alleged Communists at the time or not, I cannot say. They were, however, the insults used in some testimonies. 10 Sexual violence during the colonial era, during the 1940s (the Japanese Occupation and subsequent Revolution period) and in the pre-colonial era are outside the purview of this research. There is indeed little research into women’s experiences during these eras in general. For some exceptions, see Locher-Scholten (2000) and Creese (2004). Of course, the exception to this is sexual violence against women who were forced into sexual slavery during the Japanese Occupation – who became ianfu, or ‘comfort women’. For works relating to the experiences of comfort women in Indonesia, see Hartono and Juliantoro (1997) and Tanaka (2002). 11 On these mass rapes, and allegations that the perpetrators are likely to have been members of the military, see also the report by the Volunteers’ Team for Humanity (Tim Relawan untuk Kemanusiaan – TRuK) which estimated between seventy-six and 168 victims were raped, see TRuK (n.d.) and Heryanto (1999). 12 Men also had sexual violence perpetrated against them, particularly during interrogations. In these cases, various forms of genital attack and mutilation appear to be the most common forms of sexual assaults. This will be discussed further in Chapter 6. For a discussion of sexual violence against men during conflict situations, however, see Sivakumaran (2007). 13 Interview with Ibu Titiek, Ibu Lani and Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005. On whether acts of sexual violence that result in death can be interpreted as victims ‘being killed’ or that such acts ‘cause death’, with regard to how these acts have been prosecuted under international law, see The Prosecutor v. Clement Kayishema and Obed Ruzindana, Judgement, Case No. ICTR-95-1-T, 21 May 1999 (‘Kayishema and Ruzindana Judgement’), paras 102 and 103. 14 Compare with the 2001 judgement in the Kunarac et al. case (also known as the ‘rape camps’ or Foca case) before the International Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, === [PDF page 93] === 78 Explaining sexual violence in which rape was described as an ‘instrument of terror’, Prosecutor v. Kunarac et 15 Notions of the state and the need for it to have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force are too vast to be covered in this book. Here, I am referring, in particular, to Max Weber (1946), Walter Benjamin (1996), Jacques Derrida (1990) and Giorgio Agamben (2005). 16 While not the specific point that I am making here, the idea of acts of violence as ‘exemplary atrocities’ or ‘cautionary’ acts to others is explored by Kalyvas (2006: 27–29, for example). See also, for example, the work on mutilation victims as ‘walking examples’, Leites and Wolf Jr. (1970: 105–08) and Richards (1996: 6), both cited in Kalyvas (2006: 28). Compare with Campbell (2009). 17 If this claim were to be examined, a researcher would need to have adequate access to perpetrators, which was far beyond the scope of this project. With further research, however, I believe it could be substantiated that sexual violence, as interrogators developed what appears to be routines of violence as time went on, became an integral part of interrogation and torture after the coup. 18 That said, with further research, I believe sexual violence during the killings and in certain detention/interrogation centres could be shown to be organisational policy on the part of participating military and police, in that attacks on persons could be shown to follow regular patterns. As discussed in a recent case of rape as a crime against humanity before the International Criminal Court, to prove that such a policy existed does not require that the policy be formalised, it need only be shown to have been organised and not spontaneous or isolated incidents. This, I believe, could be shown in the case of Indonesia. See Pre-Trial Chamber II, ‘Decision Pursuant to Article 61(7)(a) and (b) of the Rome Statute on the Charges of the Prosecutor Against Jean-Pierre Bemba Combo’, The Prosecutor v. Jean-Pierre Bemba Combo, ICC-01/05–01/08–424, para. 81. Compare with Pre-Trial Chamber I, ‘Decision on the Confirmation of Charges’ (the ‘Katanga decision’), ICC-01/04–01/07–717, para. 396. 19 Alexander Laban Hinton, for example, is one who approaches his groundbreaking analyses of genocide during the Democratic Kampuchea regime from multiple perspectives. See his discussion of his framework in Hinton (2005: 1–35). Compare this with other works which stress the importance of examining sexual violence during conflict as multi-causal, for example, Boesten (2010). 20 There are numerous other explanations for sexual violence during conflict. For just one comparative overview, see Wood (2006). In some current scholarship, for example, there have been attempts made to explain (predominantly male) group violence manifested in sexualised forms during conflict by tracing this violence in the evolutionary history of our species. In Potts and Hayden’s recent book, Sex and War (2008), for example, the authors argue that human aggression is mostly a form of male behaviour that stems from evolutionary advantages this violence once provided. While there is perhaps some viability in comparing these evolutionary patterns between humans and the ancestors of the other four extant great ape species, this line of argument is well beyond the scope of this book (see Wrangham and Peterson 1996; Diamond 1991; Docker 2008). === [PDF page 94] === Sexual assaults during the killings and in detention In this chapter, I examine testimonies and secondary accounts of various forms of sexual violence, predominantly against women and girls. I describe and analyse different forms of sexual assaults and sexualised violence, highlighting commonalities and differences. The testimonies and accounts describe events which occurred both in and out of detention and thus they cover experiences of violence in a variety of places and times. As with other forms of violence after the coup, sexual violence was perpetrated within homes, detention centres, police stations, prisons, villages and towns, in fields, in forests and plantations, on roads, on riverbanks. This violence also went on for many years after the coup and thus, although most of these accounts describe events which occurred in the mid-to-late 1960s, some recount events that happened well into the late 1970s and beyond. It should also be noted that most of the information discussed in this chapter refers to events which occurred in detention settings, simply because the majority of women participants in this research were those who had been political prisoners. Talking about sexual assault and rape Women and teenage girls affected by the massacres and mass detentions following the coup often experienced sexual assault and rape. A small number of the women who took part in this project spoke openly about sexual assaults perpetrated against themselves and others, describing incidents, perpetrators and their reactions. Most women, however, alluded to incidents only in abstract terms, using various linguistic and pragmatic strategies to negotiate talking about sexual violence, such as avoiding naming sexual assaults as such. Instead, they often employed euphemistic language or physical gestures to indicate actions or used deflection to avoid describing assaults as personal experiences, such as by describing experiences of other women but not their own, or telling their own experience as that of another (see Berman 1999). When I brought up the topic of sexual violence during interviews, some women veered away from this area of discussion which I understood to mean that this was not a topic that they were willing to discuss with me. This chapter is therefore an analysis of these testimonies as well as secondary === [PDF page 95] === 80 Sexual assaults during killings and detention material that I was able to obtain concerning sexual assaults and rapes perpetrated following the coup. There was a particular incident that stands out in my mind which highlighted both the pervasiveness of sexual violence following the coup and the continuing difficulty for women survivors in talking about this violence. Six months into my fieldwork in Indonesia, I attended a meeting of ex-tapol women in late 2005.1 The meeting had been organised by some of the civil society organisations in Indonesia that advocate on behalf of 1965 survivors and I found out about it only a few days beforehand from one of my contacts in Yogyakarta. Approximately forty ex-tapol women arrived on the day, accompanied by husbands, children and other relatives, most from Yogyakarta itself, some from the surrounding districts. The remaining people at the event were young activists from Yogyakarta and Jakarta. Once greetings were exchanged, the ex-tapol women sat down around the large middle table and the event began. I sat with some of the younger people and family members at the back against the wall, making notes. After the initial opening remarks by one of the activists, women sitting around the large table in the middle began standing up, one by one, and each talking for a few minutes about her experiences. They spoke about the harsh conditions in imprisonment, the kidnapping or death of loved ones, the difficulties of bringing up children on their own, the many economic hardships, the social stigma of being ‘PKI’, the need for the government to acknowledge the harm done to them and calls for reconciliation. As each woman stood up and spoke, the gathered crowd would murmur agreement or support as appropriate. After almost all the women had spoken, one of the last women sitting around the large middle table stood up. She hesitated for less than half a minute, standing there as everyone in the room watched and waited, then began by apologising to everyone. She said she was sorry, but that she had to talk about what happened to her. Visibly upset by what she was saying and apologetic when she again said that she was going to upset others in the room also, she said, ‘I was raped. I was raped and so were many other women. I’m sorry for talking about this, but what happened to us was horrifying (ngerikan).’ Again she apologised but continued to talk briefly about her time in detention at one of the prisons near Yogyakarta. She described how the guards were ‘professional torturers’ (tukang pukul/tukang penyiksa) and that they had treated the women there like animals and whores. She said that the women in the prison had been raped and sexually abused and that this treatment had been common. She did not talk for long, only a few minutes in all, and ended by apologising once again before sitting down. The next woman to stand up said that she should not apologise for talking about sexual abuse and thanked her for being courageous (berani) enough to talk about it. This woman confirmed that sexual violence had been a large part of women’s experiences during detention and went on to say that she too had been ‘a victim of this violence’ but left it at that. As each of the remaining women spoke after this, some also thanked the first woman for bringing up === [PDF page 96] === Sexual assaults during killings and detention 81 the topic, said how difficult it was to talk about it but that it was nonetheless important to say what had been done to them.2 It took about another half an hour for the rest of the women at the table to speak, and then the meeting broke for everyone to go into the adjoining rooms for food. While there was some discussion in the little group that I sat with about what had been said about sexual violence against women detainees, when the group adjourned to the large room to continue discussions, the topic was not raised again. For a brief while, the topic of sexual violence had circulated in that room filled with women former detainees, their family members and young activists. A month and a half later back in Jakarta when talking with Ibu Lia, I recounted this discussion at the meeting and asked what she thought. In her usual way, she said quite plainly, ‘It happened everywhere, Annie, you cannot understand what they did to the women.’ She then talked briefly about women being sexually, physically and mentally abused but ended her words on the topic with, ‘but how can we talk about it? Yes, women were abused, yes, many women everywhere, but I don’t know, it’s too hard.’ Women and sexual assault From the information that I was able to obtain from Ibu Lia and many other women survivors, it is clear that rape and sexual assaults were perpetrated frequently against women who were suspected Communists and supporters: against women who were killed; against women detainees; and against the women relatives and associates of men who were detained or killed. In this section, I focus on experiences of rapes and sexual assaults perpetrated against women who were detained or killed. Although sexual assault was not a formal part of the Indonesian military’s strategies or tactics to eradicate the PKI and leftist supporters more generally following the coup, this violence was committed without fear of reprisal and was an effective means to terrify, humiliate and attack suspected Communists and communities. More importantly, for many women, rape and sexual assault were inescapable realities. Unarmed women and girls were vulnerable in numerous ways. Some of the women I interviewed talked about being terrified and staying indoors as much as possible out of fear of the uniformed and militia men who were carrying out the purges. These men were a threat, particularly in the evenings when the gangs of militias would often congregate. Predominantly in the early months after the coup until early 1966 when the military and militias were most active in detaining and killing suspected Communists, many described being generally afraid to go outside in the evenings. For women, however, this fear seemed to have been compounded by the threat of sexual assault. For women and teenage girls who were held in detention, night-time was also a time of heightened threat and fear of sexual assault. Many of the women I interviewed talked about women detainees being ‘called’, ‘taken’ or ‘borrowed’ during the night, which meant being forced to undertake sexual acts, usually with male guards, policemen or soldiers, but also with members === [PDF page 97] === 82 Sexual assaults during killings and detention of the militia groups. Aside from performing sexual acts, women were also sometimes asked to massage the men (often a precursor to or following sex), to clean living quarters/clothes and to prepare food. As the testimonies discussed below show, although women of various ages, professions and circumstances were sexually assaulted, it was predominantly younger women and older teenage girls between the ages of approximately fifteen and forty who were assaulted most frequently. Rape and sexual assault were commonly perpetrated as part of torture during interrogations which also took place predominantly at night-time and tended to occur within the first weeks and months of incarceration.3 For most of the women who were detained for many years, these sexual assaults decreased in frequency over time. This was, in part, due to the fact that many of the longer-term female political prisoners were moved to a women’s prison or women’s internment camp and thus seemed to have been less exposed to sexual exploitation, although their exploitation for forced labour continued. The two centres where most of the women I interviewed were detained for longer periods, during the late 1970s and one during the early 1980s, were the women’s prison in Jakarta, Bukitduri, or Plantungan, the women’s internment camp in the Kendal region of Central Java.4 Although there were still cases of sexual violence against women detainees at these places, the frequency of this violence decreased significantly for most women. Whether the routine of the prison/camp or the more bureaucratised prison system provided some sort of protection from sexual violence is unclear. Whether the perceived rationalisation for sexual violence lessened as time went on is also unknown. As with interrogating and torturing prisoners, sexual violence was committed against detainees predominantly during the earlier stages of detention. What is clear, however, is that longer periods of detention meant some changes in how prisoners were treated and, for the women who took part in this project, sexual violence, as well as interrogational torture, seemed to have ended once women were transferred to long-term detention facilities. Nevertheless, other forms of violence continued. Punishments and the treatment of detainees still involved physical violence and mental harm. Access to food and other basic supplies was still limited and prisoners still had to perform forced labour. Hunting down the PKI and sexual violence Sexual violence against women and teenage girls began shortly after the 1 October coup.5 In much of my research there were descriptions of the last months of 1965 and the first few months of 1966, when the rounding up of suspected PKI members, in some places, turned into what could be described as a hunting down of people by the military and militia groups. During these hunts, sexual assaults and rape were perpetrated predominantly against women and girls when they were captured, or when the mobs came looking for PKI members, and found women whom they perceived as PKI sympathisers and therefore legitimate targets for assault. Women described mobs attacking and === [PDF page 98] === Sexual assaults during killings and detention 83 burning houses (see Komnas Perempuan 2007: 68–69), being forced to flee and hide, and often taking children and trying to find immediate safety from the groups of men who attacked them. While there were only a small number of women whom I interviewed who could give direct eyewitness testimony about escaping this violence, and there are only a few accounts available from other sources, it appears that for women caught by the mobs in this situation, sexual assault was common, as was murder (see Anonymous 1990). The threat of sexual violence One of the women who went on the run into the forest near her home in Sumatra and who survived this hunting down of PKI members was Ibu Titiek. Ibu Titiek had been teaching at a local school, but as with many teachers, was forced to stop work after the coup because of her connections with the PKI. To avoid being captured, she joined a dozen other associates of the Party and fled into the forest. Ibu Titiek described how hundreds of people in ‘mobs’ came into the forest with weapons to hunt them down, and to hunt the many others who had hidden there. After some time hiding, the group that she was with was eventually spotted and one of the women with them, Bu N–, caught and killed. Bu N– was the one who suffered the most (she groans). It was as if we weren’t humans anymore! [She was] tortured like this, like that, her face and her body were destroyed, digini-ginikan (she mimes thrusting an object) with a knife, she was the leader of [one of the PKI’s associated organisations] in this area. (Interview with Ibu Titiek, Ibu Lani and Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005) While Ibu N– was being killed, Ibu Titiek hid beneath a tree and stayed there until the mob moved on. After hiding in the forest on her own for a while longer without food and frightened, Ibu Titiek decided that she would rather be killed than be eaten by an animal, so she made her way out of the forest to a village. I was all by myself, alone in the forest. Rather than be eaten by an animal, I came to a decision then and there. It was better to be killed by a person than to be eaten by an animal. Obvious, wasn’t it? I was going to be killed. Let someone kill me, kill me, I’d die, rather than be eaten by an animal. It was silly, wasn’t it? She made her way to the back of one of the huts on the edge of the village and hid. Ibu Titiek then described how she knew that if the villagers found out who she was, they would rape her, but that she had made up her mind to resist them. ‘If they wanted to kill me, then go ahead, kill me, there was nothing === [PDF page 99] === 84 Sexual assaults during killings and detention I could do [ … ] but I’d made up my mind, at that time [ … ] even if they went to work on me I would resist them with all my strength. Even until I fainted, I wouldn’t give up.’ My colleague, Narny Yenny, who was with me during this interview, asked if she meant that she would resist sexual abuse, to which Ibu Titiek replied, ‘Yes, sexual abuse. Because I was a virgin, you understand? If they tried to do that to me (digini-ginikan), I would resist, I didn’t want it.’ As Ibu Titiek explained, this is ‘what happened’ to women if they were caught, saying that it had happened to many of the women she had known. Shortly afterwards when Ibu Titiek was caught, she managed to avoid being raped but was taken to the nearby police headquarters for interrogation. Soon afterwards, Ibu Titiek formed a relationship with a policeman where she was being detained and was released when she married him. Sexual violence and attacks on PKI members The testimony of Ibu ‘D’ is an example of how women caught by anti-PKI militias in attacks experienced sexual violence. Recounted in the report on violence against women during the 1965 killings by the women’s human rights organisation, Komnas Perempuan (2007), Ibu D, while not a member of a Communist-aligned organisation herself, had helped her husband in his activities as a union member in Sumatra. Ibu D’s husband had been captured a short time before she was attacked in her home by a mob of young men. At around five in the morning, a group of young men suddenly came and surrounded, then broke into our house. They came in carrying knives and sickles, while they were yelling: ‘Hand over your weapons!’ Because they couldn’t find any weapons at all apart from a knife in the house, they approached me. They stripped me naked. Because I was screaming and resisting, they hit me in the face and breast too. They insulted me by saying, ‘You savage! You woman who kills generals! Communist!’ I was struggling to get away, but the more I resisted, the more they tortured me. (Cited in Komnas Perempuan 2007: 68) Several details are clear in Ibu D’s account of the attack. The young men who invaded her house had come prepared with weapons to attack a lone woman who had been identified as a Communist through her relationship with her husband. They invaded her home under the pretence, or perhaps even belief, of searching it for a weapons cache. As discussed in Chapter 1, the military’s propaganda created stories that PKI members were storing weapons in order to kill non-PKI supporters. Ibu D describes what appears to have been frustration on the part of the intruders at not finding any weapons, and then their physical attack on her. As was common amongst many testimonies, the physical violence was combined with verbal abuse and sexualised humiliation. Also common was the verbal abuse that equated Ibu D, as a female Communist sympathiser, with savagery and accusations that she was a murderer, therefore making her into a === [PDF page 100] === Sexual assaults during killings and detention 85 dangerous enemy and deserving of the violence used against her. At this point in her testimony, Ibu D recounted how the attack escalated into gang rape. They threw me down on the floor, and someone yelled out, ‘Rape [her]!’ Then suddenly, one of the young men, a tall, big one, pulled off my pants and raped me. Then the other men took it in turns to do the same thing. I don’t remember how many men raped me then. I wasn’t aware of what was going on and I was bleeding a lot. After raping me, they herded me down the street completely naked, walking towards the police office that was about five kilometres away. All the time the blood was flowing out of (D points to her genitals). Along the road, people shouted out, screaming at me. ‘Communist woman! Kill her! Cut up her body, just like she cut up the Generals!’ (Cited in Komnas Perempuan 2007: 68) The gang rape was performed by multiple assailants. The young men watched each other, performing for each other and assaulted Ibu D until she became unconscious and blood flowed from her vagina.6 Although she had been seriously injured by her rapists, that morning they then forced Ibu D to walk naked for kilometres in public to the police station. Their humiliation and degradation of Ibu D was essentially performative; not only did the young men parade Ibu D as spectacle – rather than person – but some of the people living in the area consumed and contributed to the spectacle along the way, shouting and urging further violence against her. The performance of Ibu D’s treatment was a spectacle of a body in pain, with the pain displayed to harm and humiliate Ibu D on the one hand and, on the other, to demonstrate the success and dominance of the group of young men, perhaps as a warning to others as a highly staged event created for the audience. The treatment of Ibu D also shows that, in this case, the violence is not just about the attack on and harming of a dangerous Communist sympathiser, but the display of this violence. Rape and murder of women Amongst the limited information that I was able to obtain about direct attacks on PKI members was a ‘verified’ list of ‘people raped and killed’ in a few regions of Sumatra, given to me by Ibu Wanti whom I met in Jakarta on a number of occasions.7 The information in the list is succinct; personal details about the victims are restricted to their names, ages, and where they were from, and the details about what happened to them take up only a few lines for each. This information, however, depicts the violent nature of their deaths. Below are four of the names and details from the list, selected because each is a partial description of how women were directly attacked during the killings: 1. INTAN. Age 27. Resident of [village name], Sumatra. Raped in 1965, taken at night while she was bathing in her own home in [her village], perpetrated by a group of people under the command of === [PDF page 101] === 86 Sexual assaults during killings and detention S– and [a local militia group … ]. Intan was taken by force by them all and gang raped by them all in [a nearby place]. Then she was trampled to death and thrown into the river [ … ]. 4. KEMALA. Aged 20 years. Inhabitant of [village name], Sumatra. In 1965 she was caught by a gang of [a militia group], during the night she was taken to a railway coach then raped and killed, and her body was thrown from the train at the A– river. Her body was found by people and buried next to the river [ … ]. 5. SENJA. Aged 27 years. From [village name], Sumatra. She was a member of Gerwani. In October 1965, she was taken from her home in the middle of the night and in the morning her body was found in [the town’s park], naked [ … ] 14. WENING. Aged 27. In 1966 [Wening was] arrested in [name of a town] in 1966. Wening was a member of Gerwani from B– who went on the run and went to where some of her family were, [people] by the name of A–. She was captured by [one group of militias] two days later and then released at about 7pm, then she was captured by a mob of [another militia group] from the town of S–. She was gang raped. Three days later her body was found by people [in the town] at the harbour. The descriptions of what happened to these four women do not reveal much. Each of the women was sexually assaulted – or it is presumed was assaulted – and murdered violently, their bodies dumped in rivers or left out for the surrounding community to find. Each appears to have been kidnapped at night, either from her own home or while travelling. There is no explanation for why they were attacked; Senja and Wening were presumed members of Gerwani, whereas there is no Communist affiliation mentioned for Intan or Kemala. As this list was compiled to record the names of those ‘raped and killed in the 30 September 1965 Event’, however, it is assumed that all four were attacked because of some perceived Communist affiliation. No identifying factors other than their ages, where they were from or arrested, and where their bodies were found are recorded. There is also little detail about the perpetrators; the names of various militia groups involved in the massacres are given (but obscured here for de-identification purposes), and the occasional leader named. Although there are few details given about the identities of the victims and perpetrators, and what happened, the list provides some insight into the ways in which women victims were sexually assaulted, murdered and what happened to their remains. For Intan, Kemala and Senja, they were kidnapped and taken to another location to be assaulted and murdered, whereas it is unclear whether Wening was removed to another location or not. This removal of victims to other locations – presumably somewhat private such as, in Kemala’s case, a === [PDF page 102] === Sexual assaults during killings and detention 87 disused railway coach – is a common theme in stories about the killings. When people were executed, they too were usually removed in some way from areas of public view – to isolated beaches, forests, and so on – before being killed. In each of these cases, however, the women’s bodies were left out and found by others, sometimes in public areas, such as at the harbour (Wening) or in the town’s park (Senja). Given how and where their bodies were dumped, it is likely that the perpetrators in these cases meant the women’s remains to be found by locals. This differs from many cases of body disposals in which victims’ remains were hidden, buried, thrown down crevices, left in caves and other places or dumped into rivers or into the sea from secluded beaches. That these women’s bodies were left out in this way may say something as to the performative and communicative intent of doing so; to put it crudely, these bodies may have been intended as warnings to others. It is just as likely, however, that these cases are only out of the ordinary because it was expedient at these times for these perpetrators to leave these women’s remains where they did. Thus, the little that can be learnt from what happened to these four women is that these assaults involved the kidnapping of victims and removal to other locations before the sexual violence and murders were carried out; a pattern that appears to have been common also in many murders during this period. Cases in which victims were assaulted and killed in public areas were less common but they stood out in people’s memories of these events. Cases of sexualised violence that happened in public were also rare and most information about such cases comes from secondary sources. These sources are rare, partly for the simple reason that most victims caught up in this ‘hunting down’ violence did not survive, and perpetrators and bystanders have been reluctant for the most part to record their memories of these events. It also seems that, in such cases, violent sexual assault and murder were accompanied by mutilation, either pre- or post-mortem. In one brief collection of information about the killings, predominantly accounts about the massacres in East Java, there are a number of descriptions of sexual assaults and murders of women victims, some of which depict assaults that occurred in public areas (Anonymous 1990). One description is as follows; Oerip Kalsum, a woman who was lurah (head) of the village of Dengkol in Singosari, was a member of the PKI. Before being killed, she was ordered to take all her clothes off. Her body and her honour (kehormatannya) were then subjected to fire. She was then tied up, taken to the village of Sentong in Lawang, where a noose was put around her neck and she was hacked to death. (1990: 171) In this case, Ibu Oerip was a village leader, a PKI member and likely also held a leadership position within the local PKI structure. Leaders of the PKI and its associated organisations were often amongst the first to become targets during local anti-PKI actions, both because they were easily identifiable as such by === [PDF page 103] === 88 Sexual assaults during killings and detention locals and because they appear to have been the most obvious targets of antiPKI sentiment. In this case, Ibu Oerip was made into a spectacularised display of anti-PKI violence. As with many women victims, she was first forced to take all her clothes off, a deliberate form of sexualised humiliation designed to degrade her and to be part of the performance. The description of Ibu Oerip’s ‘honour’ being ‘subjected to fire’ is more than likely a euphemistic account for her genitals and pubic hair being set on fire. It is probable that she was severely injured by being burned and it speaks to the commitment of her attackers to creating such a spectacle of violence from Ibu Oerip’s suffering body that they went to even further lengths. As described, Ibu Oerip was then taken to another location, strung up and ‘hacked to death’. In this case of assault and murder in a public area(s), the sexualised nature of the first part of the attack on Ibu Oerip is clear, as is the intent to inflict as much harm as possible on her, and to turn her suffering and her body into a spectacular object for local consumption. Sexual violence and torture After victims were arrested or captured, most were taken to detention centres. For many, this detention included repeated interrogations and torture. Sexualised forms of violence were a part of interrogation and torture. These forms of violence were frequently described in the testimonies of women who survived these crimes. As in other settings, sexual violence as part of torture was perpetrated more commonly against women and older teenage girls. Forms of sexual violence during torture Sexualised forms of violence were perpetrated almost always together with other forms of physical and mental abuse. The testimony of Ibu ‘AK’, parts of which are recounted in the Komnas Perempuan report (2007), gives a clear example of this. Ibu AK was arrested and detained together with her husband shortly after the coup in Solo, Central Java. They were interrogated and tortured together at first; her husband was accused of arming the local people in order to take over the government. Ibu AK was forced to lie on her stomach on a table while her torturer jumped up and down on her back until parts of her vertebrae were broken and, after blood began coming from her ears and mouth, she eventually fainted (2007: 47–48). As the Komnas Perempuan report continued; She and her husband were then taken back to a cell that contained about 15–20 men and women, all of whom were badly injured. The next day, AK was moved to the CPM [military police post], while her husband was taken to the Air Force post. AK was interrogated and tortured again. She was whipped, stripped naked, electrocuted, and raped with a kemoceng (a kind of feather duster). She was forced to confess that she was a member === [PDF page 104] === Sexual assaults during killings and detention 89 of Gerwani who had danced the genjer-genjer dance while mutilating the officers at Lubang Buaya.8 (2007: 48) In Ibu AK’s case, the ways in which sexual violence was combined with other forms of physical and mental torture are clear. There are few details about these various forms of violence in the report; Ibu AK’s rape and forced nakedness are but two actions in a list of violent crimes against her, undifferentiated and analogous. She was forced, however, in a way that a male detainee would not have been, to confess to being one of the Gerwani women who featured so prominently in the military’s anti-PKI propaganda about the coup. Ibu AK is made to confess that she was one of the women who mutilated the seven victims of the PKI’s coup – meaning ‘sexually mutilated’, as the propaganda focused greatly on the alleged removal of the generals’ penises – while dancing to the popular genjer-genjer song. As discussed in Chapter 4, the highly sexualised depictions and strong misogynist themes within the military’s portrayal of the coup can be seen to have had a direct impact on the treatment of women suspected of involvement with the PKI. In this case, Ibu AK’s violent and sexualised torture was combined with a forced confession to being one of the propaganda’s violent and sadistic women who sexually tortured the generals. Such forced confessions and accusations were very common in women’s testimonies about their experiences of interrogation and torture. These accusations also tended to follow similar themes, the most common that they were women Communists and therefore must be members of Gerwani and were therefore clearly enemies. Other accusations included that they had been one of the Gerwani women who took part in the coup and that they were dangerous and sexually promiscuous as well as evil, immoral, even supernaturally possessed because all Gerwani women were like that and had to be stopped. As was also very common in testimonies, and as is clearly seen in the treatment of Ibu AK, such accusations are both justification and motivation for sexualised forms of violence against women detainees. As the treatment of Ibu AK shows, the sexual violence perpetrated against her is part of other forms of accompanying violence; the rape taking place alongside electrocution and being whipped. As the report continues, Ibu AK was moved the following month to a government building in Surakata (Solo). This building had two stories; the lower floor was where she and the other prisoners were kept, while the upstairs was used for interrogations and torture. Ibu AK remembered that blood from the interrogations dripped down onto the prisoners below. Later she was again interrogated at other locations, including on one occasion when she was threatened with death when the interrogator forced the barrel of his pistol into her mouth and threatened to shoot. Ibu AK was eventually moved to the Plantungan women’s camp in 1971 where she was also sexually harassed by a male staff member. She was not released until 1979 (Komnas Perempuan 2007: 48). === [PDF page 105] === 90 Sexual assaults during killings and detention Sexualised humiliation The violence depicted in the account of Ibu AK’s interrogation sessions reflects a number of commonalities among women’s experiences of sexualised violence during torture. The most common of these was being stripped naked in these settings. Forced nakedness was an experience which most of the women I interviewed spoke about and involved being stripped either totally or partially. Forced nakedness, however, was also quite common amongst male detainees undergoing interrogation and torture. Stripping detainees naked seems to have had a number of ‘uses’ during interrogations and torture. For women and older teenage girl prisoners, one of its primary purposes appears to have been its part in strip-searching them for PKI ‘marks’ (cap or stempel), discussed further in Chapter 7. Also for women victims, forced nakedness was almost always a precursor to sexual assault. For male and female victims, forced nakedness also had the clear purpose of humiliation and intimidation. This humiliation was sexualised by forced exposure of the body, particularly sexual organs and other parts of the body which were normally covered. The intimidation was also an integral part of making detainees powerless by showing them that those in charge had control over victims. In detention, and perhaps even more so in the interrogation room, the full range of strategies to isolate, disempower and intimidate detainees were brought to bear. Being stripped naked, without clothes as a physical barrier between the prisoner’s body and interrogator’s was not only a sign of subjugation but also signalled a clear power differentiation between the naked prisoner and the often uniformed interrogator. As one woman, Ibu Eny, put it, being stripped naked ‘showed’ her that she was ‘powerless’ and that ‘they could do whatever they wanted’ to her (interview with Ibu Eny and Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005). These deliberate strategies to intimidate and humiliate prisoners were sometimes accompanied by ridicule and abusive language, also intentional ways of belittling and degrading victims. This is not to say that humiliation and intimidation were the same for men and women. Sexually differentiated bodies, stripped bare to the physicality of being male and female bodies, and old and young bodies, experience vulnerability and violation differently. Rape and torture The account of Ibu AK’s experiences also highlights another of the more frequent forms of sexual violence against women during interrogation, that is, sexual assault and rape. Rape was a ubiquitous crime perpetrated against women and older teenage girls in various stages of detention, but it was also frequently a part of interrogation and torture. Rapes took numerous forms; vaginal rape involving the insertion of the perpetrator’s penis, finger or other object was the most common form, but oral rape was also described in a number of women’s testimonies as well as anal rape.9 In Ibu AK’s account, === [PDF page 106] === Sexual assaults during killings and detention 91 she was raped by her torturers using a kemoceng (feather duster), but there were many other objects used to rape women detainees during interrogations (see Komnas Perempuan 2007: 57–58). Another woman who survived this type of sexualised torture was Ibu Susiani. In Chapter 2, I described how Ibu Susiani was detained, along with one of her children and her brother-in-law, as a ‘guarantee’ for her husband at one of the more notorious interrogation centres, known as ‘Kalong’, a shop on Gunung Sahari road that was converted into an ad-hoc interrogation centre in central Jakarta (see Budiardjo 1996: 77–83). This practice of taking guarantees usually involved detaining a relative/s of the fugitive sought by the authorities, the practice sometimes called ‘fishing’ (mancing) or having a hostage, a ‘guarantee’ (garansi/jaminan). In Chapter 4, I described how Ibu Susiani’s interrogations began with questions and intimidation, but that they quickly spiralled into extreme forms of violence. In that discussion, I also recounted how Ibu Susiani was interrogated and tortured by Burhan, a known ‘sadist’, who beat her brother-in-law nearly to death in front of her in order to force her to give up the whereabouts of her husband. After that occasion, Ibu Susiani was again taken for interrogation, once again with Burhan as well as two other men who interrogated her. Ibu Susiani recounted this interrogation session, which I quote at length here; ‘Bu, try to answer my questions,’ he [Burhan] asked slowly, ‘Please tell us, where is your husband?’ ‘I don’t know. You can do whatever you want to me.’ They thought I was pretending, but I really and truly didn’t know. And then, by the end of it, he started to play with the sting-ray whip in order to intimidate me. ‘You’re not afraid of it?’ [meaning the whip, which Ibu Susiani mimed being thrust towards her … ], ‘You’re not afraid of this?’ ‘Why should I be afraid, if you’re going to kill me anyway? Just kill me!’ I said. ‘You’re not, eh? You’re not afraid that there will be no-one to take care of your children?’ he said. ‘Oh, my children have God. Someone will take care of them. They will be fine, so long as they still have relatives, they’ll be fine. So you can do whatever you want. Just kill me now, go ahead!’ It really annoyed them that I could be like that about it all. Perhaps he thought I was a simpleton, but obviously, I wasn’t. So then he grabbed me, ‘Take off your clothes!’ ‘What do you want me to take off?’ He yanked and pulled off my clothes like this [she mimes pulling at her shirt], but I resisted. My God, what were they going to do to me? And then they were off! My thoughts were in a whirl, I was afraid I was going to be raped. What would they do to me? === [PDF page 107] === 92 Sexual assaults during killings and detention ‘Mum!’ I called out to my mother then. I was terrified! My clothes had been stripped off! Everything was off! I was naked! ‘And now will you confess or not?’ ‘Oh God … ’ I said. ‘Oh, you have a God, do you?’ ‘You can treat me however you like, but you had better remember about karma and that you will be punished!’ Goodness, who would have thought that I’d say something like that, about the retribution of karma? I had never in my whole life talked about karma. I was surprised that I had said it. ‘Aren’t you afraid of karma? You can do whatever you will to me. Just do it, I won’t fight you. You’re in charge,’ I said. I was surprised that I said all this, that I was brave enough to say it. ‘Oh, well, then I will!’ And I was thrown down over the cane chair. ‘You know what this is?’ ‘Oh God, what are they going to do to me?’ I thought. [Ibu Lia then asked,] ‘What was he holding?’ A bottle, a broken bottle! He grabbed it, the one called Burhan … [Ibu Susiani stopped then for a few seconds then said;] To talk about this kind of thing, as a woman, is strange, but, but because I didn’t do anything wrong [ … ] And then he put the bottle in ‘there’. Even though I’d only recently given birth. Everything inside me was lost. Wah! But still, I never thought of surrendering. Never! All I could manage to say was, ‘God.!’ It hurt so much, what he did. Bam! [She thrust her fist forward], ‘It’ll hurt more if I do it again!’ I, wah, I was so exhausted and hurt. Ibu Susiani’s testimony about her experiences of interrogation and torture reveals much about the escalation of violence that a number of women described when they were interrogated in repeated sessions. Discounting the first time that Ibu Susiani was briefly detained and questioned at the end of 1965, when she was re-arrested in 1967, she was forced to undergo numerous interrogations. In the first few sessions, she was questioned only, then, as time went on, she was also ‘slapped’ and ‘hit’. Then she began to be interrogated by Burhan and her brother-in-law was nearly beaten to death by him in front of her. The session recounted at length above was the final torture inflicted on her by Burhan, but it was not the last time she was interrogated during incarceration. In Burhan’s sessions with Ibu Susiani, the violence and intimidation that he used against her increased rapidly, until he nearly killed her in a violent, aggravated sexual assault, raping her with a broken bottle. In Ibu Susiani’s description of these events, Burhan appeared to be intentionally using increasingly violent means to torture her, perhaps indicating that he saw raping her with the broken bottle as a very violent, and therefore very ‘effective’, way of torturing her. The bottle itself was already in the interrogation room, but whether it was being used before her interrogation or brought in by Burhan to torture her specifically is unknown. === [PDF page 108] === Sexual assaults during killings and detention 93 Ibu Susiani eventually fainted as Burhan continued to rape her. When she regained consciousness, she was back in her cell with the other women detainees, bleeding profusely from her vagina. When the bleeding would not stop, the other women detainees begged the guards at the centre to take Ibu Susiani to a hospital and, to their surprise, they did. At the hospital, a doctor treated her wounds and kept her there while she recovered. He also intervened on her behalf by going to the interrogation centre and demanding that Ibu Susiani be moved to a prison so that she would not be tortured further. First, however, she was taken back to the Kalong centre. In what she described as ‘fate’ (karma), a week after Ibu Susiani was returned from the hospital, Burhan came to her to ask for forgiveness. As she recounted; About a week or so after that, he came, and we just sat there. I sat there, with my hands tied, and he said, ‘I’m sorry, ya?’ Then I said, ‘About what?’ ‘During the interrogation, I’m very, very sorry. I didn’t realise,’ he said. At first, I couldn’t say anything. [ … Then he said], ‘You see, my wife is going to give birth soon, so I just wanted to ask for your forgiveness.’ I remained silent. He pulled at me, ‘Please, say something, sister. Forgive me.’ ‘I’m not the one you should be asking forgiveness of, it’s God who you should say sorry to,’ that’s all I could say, that was it, ‘Ask God for forgiveness.’ As Ibu Susiani continued, Burhan’s wife gave birth a week later, and nearly died. As she explained, the ‘baby’s feet came first, and that’s very painful.’ This was karma to Ibu Susiani, as she put it simply, ‘because what he did to me, it [his wife’s difficult birth] happened.’ Shortly after, Ibu Susiani was moved to the Bukitduri women’s prison. There she was kept in isolation so that she would not be able to ‘influence’ (berpengaruh) other women political prisoners in the jail. She was again interrogated several times, this time by other interrogators, but she was not physically tortured again, commenting, ‘I was so surprised by that.’ Ibu Susiani was released at the end of 1970 and was reunited with her children. She had converted to Christianity during her time in detention and, with what she described as the help of some of the local Church members and her family, she rebuilt her life and began a small business making food in order to provide for her children. When I met Ibu Susiani in 2005, she was living comfortably, surrounded by her extended family. Sexual and other forms of violence during torture The experiences of Ibu Kusnah, who was also detained and tortured at the Kalong interrogation centre in central Jakarta, also reveal much about sexualised and other forms of violence during interrogations and torture (Margiyono and Yunanto 2007: 12–16). Ibu Kusnah and her husband were taken from their home in the middle of the night in 1966, forcing them to leave their twelve === [PDF page 109] === 94 Sexual assaults during killings and detention children behind to take care of themselves. After Ibu Kusnah and her husband were taken, they were separated, and she spent the first six months of her imprisonment in a cell that had been set up on a university campus in central Jakarta whereas her husband was taken to Likdam (the Jakarta military command’s headquarters, see Budiardjo 1996: 65–76). She was then moved to Kalong where she was tortured. ‘When I remember, I’m not joking, every night you could hear people being beaten, screaming and crying.’ When she was about to be taken in for questioning, her interrogator told her that everyone inside was already naked. ‘I was ordered to massage them. That was truly degrading. I’d rather be beaten and tortured than have to do that,’ she said (cited in Margiyono and Yunanto 2007: 13). In the six months that Ibu Kusnah spent at Kalong, every night, she was woken to be interrogated by a man named Asep who was ‘renowned for his brutality’.10 As she recalled from one of her interrogation sessions with Asep; One time Asep was questioning [me]. ‘What kind of person are you?’ [I] replied, ‘I’m Indonesian, Javanese.’ On hearing this answer, Asep immediately hit [me] and kicked [me] with his boots. My teeth were broken and blood flowed from my nose. Because I was wearing a white shirt, you could see all of the blood clearly. I fell down, bang! I didn’t want to get up again. They wanted to keep interrogating me, but [ … ] I didn’t want to get up again. (Cited in Margiyono and Yunanto 2007: 14) As with many of the prisoners interrogated and tortured at the Kalong interrogation centre, Ibu Kusnah was electrocuted in order to force her confession that she had been one of the women involved in killing the generals during the coup. ‘While I was electrocuted, they cross-examined me, asking about the generals who were killed at Lubang Buaya.’ When she replied that she did not know, her interrogators only continued to send electric shocks through her body. On another occasion, she was dragged out of her cell in the middle of the night, her cell mates whispering that she was going to be dibon, and driven away in a truck by some soldiers. As Ibu Kusnah described, ‘I was taken to the Unilever factory in Muara Angke, North Jakarta. When we arrived at the factory, I was ordered to point out my old friends at Unilever. I said that I didn’t know where my friends were, because it had been so long since I’ve been in work or that I didn’t know.’ The soldiers cursed her, saying ‘Just like a Gerwani woman, you really are bitches (bajingan)!’ These soldiers then burnt Ibu Kusnah’s legs and breasts with cigarettes (Margiyono and Yunanto 2007: 14–15). They drove her to a cross-road and made her stand out in the rain for a few hours. At 3am, they asked her if she were ready to confess yet, and when she remained silent, they all kicked her then took her back to the interrogation centre. Ibu Kusnah survived the Kalong interrogation centre and was later moved to Likdam, then to Bukitduri women’s prison and, finally, to the Plantungan === [PDF page 110] === Sexual assaults during killings and detention 95 women’s camp. While she was at Kalong, however, Ibu Kusnah saw the torture of other prisoners, including women prisoners. On one occasion, when Ibu Kusnah was pretending to go to the toilet, she saw a woman strung up and hanging from a mango tree in the back yard. The woman was Sri Ambar, a former leader of the left-wing union, SOBSI. ‘She had been stripped naked, then hung in a mango tree and her pubic hair set on fire’ (Margiyono and Yunanto 2007: 14). Another person who met Sri Ambar some time later was English woman Carmel Budiardjo, also detained as a political prisoner after the coup. In her autobiography, Surviving Indonesia’s Gulag (1996), Ibu Carmel described meeting Sri Ambar who told her the story of her interrogation and torture at the Kalong centre. Ibu Carmel also described Sri Ambar’s courage in the face of repeated torture and how ‘Stories about Sri were legendary. Even the guards spoke about her with awe’ (1996: 79). Ibu Carmel recounted how Sri Ambar had been stripped naked, flogged, and ‘tied to a tree by [her] wrists and left dangling with [her] toes just touching the ground till morning’ (1996: 80). Later she was stripped naked again and stabbed twice, causing her to lose a great deal of blood and pass out. She woke up in a military hospital with her stab wounds stitched shut; but in what Sri Ambar described as ‘more painful than anything I had suffered,’ the doctors were instructed to take the stiches out so that the length and depth of the wounds could be measured (Budiardjo 1996: 81). When she returned to the Kalong centre, she found that her two daughters had been detained and were beaten in front of her. The younger of the two, who was about ten years old at the time, was taken away by an army solider, and she never saw her again which was ‘the worst tragedy of all for Sri’ who spent many years looking for her (Budiardjo 1996: 81). Ibu Carmel described how Sri Ambar held out against her torturers on many more occasions; including when Sri’s own mother was beaten in front of her, her mother telling Sri to ignore what was happening to Sexual organs, pregnancy and torture The experiences of Ibu ‘H’, recounted in the Komnas Perempuan report (2007), also document numerous forms of violent assault of women detainees, many of them intentionally perpetrated to cause damage to sexual organs. Arrested shortly after the coup, Ibu H was detained and interrogated in a military complex in East Java in October 1965. As she recalled; In front of the interrogator [a soldier], I saw that cable that was attached to an electricity generator. They attached the cable to the ends of my fingers and toes, but I wasn’t trembling because of that. What made me stiff [with fear] was when they attached the end of the cable to my nipples and, God help me, they also put one into my vagina. When they connected the end of the other cable to the generator, I fell down and fainted. I don’t know what happened after that, but when I came to, I was back === [PDF page 111] === 96 Sexual assaults during killings and detention in one of the cells again. My breasts were burnt and my vagina was swollen and bleeding. I felt unbelievable pain. (Cited in Komnas Perempuan 2007: 57) Ibu H’s experience of interrogation is an example of the highly sexualised nature of torture experienced by some women detainees. In many cases of electrocution during torture, detainees often had electric currents passed through the body via cables attached to their extremities, particularly fingers and toes, as was done to Ibu H. In this case, however, the most obvious physical organs of sexual difference, Ibu H’s breasts and vagina, were also the direct object of violence. This was also sometimes the case for male detainees; as reported in some accounts, men also had electrical cables attached to their genitals in order to inflict direct physical trauma.11 The sexualised forms of violence experienced by women detainees during interrogations were often perpetrated before and after interrogation sessions as well. The experiences of Ibu ‘D’, parts of whose testimony were recounted in the previous section of this chapter and which were documented in the Komnas Perempuan report, are a clear example of this. Previously, I discussed the first part of Ibu D’s testimony in which she described being gang-raped during her capture by a group of militia and then being forced to walk, naked, for approximately five kilometres to the police station (Komnas Perempuan 2007: 54–55, 68). As Ibu D makes clear in her testimony quoted at length here, sexual violence continued to be perpetrated against her during interrogations and afterwards. Finally we arrived at the police station. They tied me up to the flagpole, still completely naked, in the middle of the field surrounded by the police station buildings. It gradually grew dark. Meanwhile, the rain ran all down my body. I felt very cold, but not one person paid any attention to me. I had to stand there all night, naked [ … ] then I was called for interrogation by a number of officers. That was when the disaster happened again. Each time I was interrogated, I was stripped naked; and each time one of my answers didn’t satisfy them, I was electrocuted. And because each time I was finished being interrogated, I was taken back to the cell, and the other people [in there] would have to help me, before I was able to walk by myself. These things went on for me for two months, until I was moved to the detention centre at Tanjung Gusta, Medan [ … ] On the third night at Tanjung Gusta prison, I was taken to a room by two of the guards. There were already four officials waiting for me there. Without saying a word, they took it in turns to pounce on and rape me. This didn’t just happen once to me, [it happened] almost every night. One night I was taken out of my cell to be raped. I don’t know how many times I had to serve [have sex with them]. I saw that my husband was in the room too … They wanted to make my husband have to watch it, how I was being raped by all those men one after the other. If my husband turned === [PDF page 112] === Sexual assaults during killings and detention 97 his face away, they would hit him in the face. After they finished raping me, they ordered us to have sex in front of them. When my husband couldn’t do it, they hit us until our noses bled. That’s the kind of treatment we received over and over again. (2007: 55) Ibu D’s testimony demonstrates how sexualised forms of violence were incorporated into torture during interrogation sessions and constituted a continual threat of violence perpetrated outside interrogations. After being forced to walk naked through the town to the police station, she was then made to stand naked in the station’s yard; a highly objectified and even fetishised body deliberately displayed as such. She was repeatedly raped and gang-raped by those imprisoning her, during her capture before her imprisonment, at the police station and then again at the prison. Some of her experiences of gang-rape at the prison in particular were also intended by her torturers not only to inflict severe pain and suffering on her, but also on her husband who was forced to watch and who was beaten when he tried to look away. This highly performative and deeply degrading torture perpetrated against Ibu K was instrumentalised by her torturers in order to abuse her husband. Some women who were pregnant or who had recently given birth were physically tortured in ways that reveal what can be seen as sex-specific forms of violence against women. For example, Ibu Riani, parts of whose testimony are recounted in a collection of essays on the violence of 1965, Tahun yang Tak Pernah Berakhir (The Year that Never Ended), spoke about the torture of one of her fellow detainees, Ibu M, who had recently given birth (Sukartiningsih 2004: 99–103). Ibu Riani, a member of the Leftist student organisation, CGMI, had been arrested in 1968 and was being detained at an interrogation centre in Surabaya. She was there when Ibu M, a young mother who had recently given birth, was brought in. Ibu M’s baby had been given to her mother to take care of while she was imprisoned. Ibu Riani explained how Ibu M was tortured; One of them was my friend, Ibu M. She’d just given birth, [she] was still breast-feeding, still feeding the baby milk, my friend Ibu M her name was. She’d just given birth, she was assaulted, her breasts were squeezed and crushed, and they really hurt after you just give birth, she even cursed them, saying ‘Bastaaards! (Banjingaaan)’ and so on, she kept cursing them, so then they burnt her mouth. They used pieces of paper to burn her, used bits of paper that were in the room there, burned her. And I saw how they’d burnt it all, so that [she] couldn’t eat, her mouth was burnt like that [ … ] (Cited in Sukartiningsih 2004: 101) Ibu M’s torturers appear to have known that she had recently given birth and used this knowledge to damage her breasts. After birth, the tissues in the breast usually swell as milk is let down, often causing discomfort. As Ibu M was === [PDF page 113] === 98 Sexual assaults during killings and detention recently separated from her baby, unexpressed milk would have also caused at least some discomfort in her breasts. Her torturers, therefore, appear to have deliberately attacked her breasts because of this. When she verbally abused and resisted them, they tortured her further by burning and maiming her face. Some years later, Ibu M’s mother and daughter came looking for her at the women’s detention camp at Plantungan. Ibu Riani, who was imprisoned at the camp, met with them and gave them the sad news that Ibu M had been amongst those taken away in the middle of the night and executed; M had been taken from the jail during the night, dibon, and was gone along with her friends, had been killed. [ … But no-one] had told the family, so they were hoping that she was still alive. Whereas she, along with five others, if I’m not wrong, in the jail, had been dibon in the middle of night. (Cited in Sukartiningsih 2004: 101) Political imprisonment and sexual assault Most of the women who spoke with me had been political prisoners for varying lengths of time and many talked about (or alluded to) sexual violence against women in various detention settings in addition to experiences of this violence during interrogation and torture. One of these women was Ibu Tati, whom my colleague, Narny Yenny, introduced me to in Sumatra. Ibu Tati was one of the women who participated in this project who spoke at length about her experience of being in detention after the 1965 coup. In particular, she talked about sexual assaults against women detainees and about the strategies she and the other women used to avoid rape. After finishing school in 1960, Ibu Tati left her hometown in Sumatra and went to Jakarta to train as a teacher. When she returned to Sumatra, she moved to a new town and taught at one of the Melati Kindergartens set up and run by Gerwani.12 There she met and married her husband a year or so later and they had a child in 1965. Her husband was a local leader of Pemuda Rakyat, and so she became involved in their activities as well. When the coup happened, she had just given birth to a baby boy. Her husband, as a local leader, was arrested along with the leaders of other PKI-affiliated organisations in the area. When she left hospital, Ibu Tati returned alone with her baby to her family’s village, where anti-PKI violence had already begun, and she recalled the militia gangs attacking people. Not long afterwards, Ibu Tati was arrested and detained along with her baby and several other members of her family. All of my family! My mother, my younger sister, me, Pak – [my husband], everyone went in! Imprisoned! The accommodation [detention facility], well, the accommodation was at the subdistrict level, I was in with my younger sister. My uncle was with my youngest brother, who was just a middle school student at the time. That was in the village, where the === [PDF page 114] === Sexual assaults during killings and detention 99 accommodation was. In the village there was a house just for that. Just for imprisonment. It was guarded by some civilian guards [ … ] I had my baby with me, and every one or two hours, or who knows, I was dikontrol [checked, questioned], interrogated by those guards. (Interview with Ibu Tati and Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005) Ibu Tati then described the unsanitary and cramped conditions in the ad-hoc detention centre where they were being held. She described herself and the other prisoners being ‘crazy’ (gila) from the lack of food,13 the lack of access to toileting and bathing facilities, and the seemingly casual physical assaults on detainees by guards, such as being slapped around when they ‘felt like it’. She also explained how detainees were tortured and made to confess to entirely unbelievable ‘crimes’, such as having collaborated directly with Aidit (the head of the PKI), gouging out the eyes and cutting off the genitals of the generals during the coup in Jakarta, and other accusations that were common amongst testimonies about experiences of torture and interrogation during this period. In her testimony, Ibu Tati also described the detention centre in more detail; explaining that where they were being held was a two-storey building which was probably a police quarters. The women detainees were kept in one of the upstairs rooms, separate from the men, with the police quarters located downstairs. The guards and policemen at the detention centre came regularly to assault the women sexually in the upstairs room. Ibu Tati’s disgust at the way the women detainees were treated was evident, but she reserved her particular loathing for the policemen. Before she continued, she gave Narny Yenny and I a warning. Don’t, whatever you do, ever get involved with a policeman [ … ] I’m giving you good advice. I’m giving you my advice. Even though policemen may try to sweet-talk you, and they can really sweet-talk anyone, however much you might be impressed by his rank, just don’t do it, alright? I hope in my heart that [neither of you] will ever be involved [with a policemen]. They’re cruel. There were no others like them, back then. The policemen came upstairs at night and took women away to rape them. Ibu Tati was reluctant to talk explicitly about her experiences of rape with me in the room, a stranger whom she only met once. Rather, she said to Narny Yenny, whom she knew well, ‘For the things I can’t [talk about], don’t ask, alright? If I wanted it [rape] to happen or not, it’s difficult to talk about [ … ] I’ll tell you about those things that happened, but only with you, [Yenny].’ Ibu Tati was, however, willing to talk about sexual violence against the other women in the police quarters and the harassment that they all experienced. In her testimony, she identified specific perpetrators and their actions. In particular, she identified one policeman, Pak Guntur (a pseudonym), as being more === [PDF page 115] === 100 Sexual assaults during killings and detention violent and ‘worse’ than the others. To emphasise how Guntur was the worst, she described some of his actions and how he was in no way concerned as to how he harmed them. There was a Pak Guntur there. Guntur was the absolute worst! He would just take anyone, there wasn’t anyone whom he wouldn’t grab by the hair. He didn’t care that he pulled/dragged us by the hair [ … ] he didn’t care! Didn’t care at all! If he felt like it, he’d do it! Ibu Tati mostly talked about the sexual violence perpetrated against women in the police quarters by describing how she and the other women tried to avoid being raped. As she explained, the women devised a number of strategies to avoid rape, most of which appear to revolve around pretences that they were menstruating. Ibu Tati, who was imprisoned shortly after giving birth and so had her baby with her, also explained how she would cling to her baby in the hope that the policeman would leave her alone. Well, they [the policemen] would want it every night. Just imagine that, each night they would only want it [sex]. I was lucky that I had a little baby, my baby that I would take with me everywhere. [ … ] They even said they would kill my baby so they could [rape me]. ‘It’s up to you, go ahead!’ [I said, but], ‘Pak, forgive me for speaking,’ I would say [ … ], ‘but how would you feel if it were your daughter being raped?’ That was all [I said], and that was pretty unusual, not the words, just [asking] them to treat us like human beings. ‘You talk too much, you talk and talk,’ [he replied], and we’d be trapped. But I held on tightly to my baby. I carried him everywhere [ … ] Other women were raped, [I was] sad. Every night! Every night when it was about 7pm, I’d start getting nervous [ … ] Which ever ones they wanted, they’d take them in turns. Keeping her baby with her at all times helped Ibu Tati to avoid being raped for a while, but she recalled being increasingly pressured by the policemen to sleep with them. In one exchange that Ibu Tati recounted, she explained how she was able to delay being forced into having sex with one of the policemen. ‘How about you come with me later, Tati?’ [he said]. ‘How can I? I can’t come, how can I? I have my baby.’ ‘If you have a baby, fine, hold on to him, I’ll go get some of the girls [gadis].’ But there weren’t any girls [gadis meaning young woman/virgin]. There weren’t any girls left! All the girls were finished [raped, no longer virgins]. Ibu Tati then continued, returning to the ways that the women had tried to avoid rape. As she said, all of the women at the police quarters had been raped and so they tried to invent ways of avoiding further sexual assaults. She recounted one such incident between herself and one of the policemen. === [PDF page 116] === Sexual assaults during killings and detention 101 Every day, at night, if necessary, we would add red colour to our underpants. [ … We would put] a small piece of towelling material in [our pants], basically you put a piece of material that you could put in your pants and then take it out later. Well, [we would] put colour on it. One time, ‘If you don’t believe me, Pak [that I’m menstruating], take a look at this!’ I’d say. He was pulling me down the stairs again, even though I was menstruating, ‘Look at this! Why don’t you look at this?’ Momentarily stymied by Ibu Tati’s strategy, she recounted then how the policeman let her go that time, then threatened her, ‘Fine, then I’ll have sex with you standing up later!’ At this point in the interview with Ibu Tati and Narny Yenny, it was obvious to the two women that I had failed to understand the significance of this threat. Ibu Tati and Yenny then explained together for my benefit. We would scream and wail, ‘Oh Allah, oh God, no …!’ And the one [who was to be raped] would have her clothes taken off, not covered up, you know, not [even] a screen would cover her up. The woman would have her clothes stripped off completely. Stripped naked to see in detail how [what happened to her]. What we experienced, [you] can’t imagine it! YENNY: Eh, Annie, that’s what happened to the women in the same cell as Ibu Tati, in the same prison. That sort of behaviour wasn’t normal, sexually, it wasn’t natural. The women were taken, taken to the back and [raped] while standing up. That’s right, yes, Bu? IBU TATI: Yes. YENNY: One of the girls would be ordered to stand up, and he would do sexual acts with her standing up. That sort of thing in Indonesia wasn’t done during those years. IBU TATI: As Yenny and Ibu Tati explained, rape was perpetrated against all the women, but the policemen who raped them assaulted them in ways that they perceived were further degrading. As Ibu Tati described, to be raped standing up, raped in front of others, or gang raped by a group of the policemen was depraved perversion. For Ibu Tati, this perversion was an intentional method of humiliating and degrading the women detainees. Sexual assault and degradation Ibu Tati’s disgust at the acts of what she described as sexual perversion perpetrated against women and at those who committed those acts was a common theme in a number of women’s testimonies about sexual violence. In particular, being forced to massage and perform oral sex on guards, soldiers, policemen and members of the militia were experiences that other women who had been imprisoned described. Ibu Sumarmiyati (who usually goes by the name Mamik14), whose experiences are recounted in the collection of === [PDF page 117] === 102 Sexual assaults during killings and detention testimonies by Fransisca Ria Susanti, Kembang-Kembang Genjer [Genjer Flowers] (2006), explains how she was forced into performing oral sex on her interrogators while in detention, her disgust at having to do this, and her repugnance for these men. Ibu Mamik was a student in Yogyakarta during the mid-1960s and a member of IPPI (Ikatan Pemuda Pelajar Indonesia, Indonesian Students’ Youth Association), one of the many organisations perceived to be aligned with the PKI whose members were persecuted following the coup. In December 1965, she was arrested for her involvement in IPPI and detained at the Cebongan prison in Yogyakarta, but was let out in April after a pastor intervened on her behalf and secured her release (Susanti 2006: 27–38). Very aware of the lack of provisions, after her release, she often took food to the prison to give to the inmates. In 1968, Ibu Mamik was arrested again and taken to an interrogation centre, the military police post near the Tugu Jogja monument in Yogyakarta. There, she was interrogated numerous times over the course of a few months, interrogations which involved various forms of sexualised violence against her and her fellow inmates. For example, she spent time handcuffed to a male detainee and both the man and she had been stripped naked. On another occasion, her interrogators forced her and a male detainee to sit in each other’s laps to imitate sexual positions for the guards’ enjoyment, as she described it, ‘like a blue film’. Ibu Mamik experienced many forms of sexualised violence during torture and interrogation, but the experience which she described as her ‘worst memory’ was when she was forced to ‘kiss the penises of the soldiers who interrogated her’ (cited in Susanti 2006: 30). Having been stripped naked, Ibu Mamik was forced to perform oral sex on her interrogators. One time, when she had finished her ‘task’ (tugas), one of the soldiers cut her hair off. Cutting or shaving the hair off women detainees’ heads was an experience that a number of women described during the course of this research and it appears to have been another intentional way of degrading women. For Ibu Mamik, the taking of her long, black hair was, along with being forced to perform oral sex, a way to show her that they could treat her however they wanted. As she described, ‘I was ordered to do this because, according to them, I deserved to be treated this way’ (cited in Susanti 2006: 30). Eventually, she was moved to the Wirogunan prison, located a few kilometres southeast of the Tugu monument, but she was still called on occasion for ‘interrogation’ to the post. Later, she was moved to another prison, Bulu, in Semarang, and then from there to Plantungan in 1971. Ibu Mamik was eventually released in 1978, later marrying and having two children. Fear and sexual violence For many women who had been detained following the coup, sexual assault and the fear of sexual violence were inescapable parts of being imprisoned, particularly in the first few years of imprisonment. This was often compounded with other forms of physical violence and deprivation – especially === [PDF page 118] === Sexual assaults during killings and detention 103 starvation – as well as intimidation and mental suffering. Some of the women I interviewed talked about sexual violence as being a major part of why they were afraid, depressed or anxious, as well as contributing to their feelings of helplessness and isolation. Ibu Sri and Ibu Lani, two women whom I met on a number of occasions in Sumatra with Narny Yenny, spoke at length about the prevalent nature of sexual assaults on female detainees in their area and the effect that this threat had upon them. We talked about many issues, particularly the difficult conditions during imprisonment and the problems this caused them. Sexual abuse, however, was singled out by the two women as a major threat and cause for anxiety. As they made clear, this anxiety was, in part, caused by the widespread nature of sexual violence against women detainees. Ibu Sri said simply, ‘It [sexual abuse] happened everywhere, to everyone (rata-rata).’ When I asked for more information, they said that this violence had been perpetrated against younger and older women, and that their captors would rape whomever they wanted, whenever they wanted. At the time [ … ] the young ones were tortured [ … ] They also raped the older ones too. IBU LANI: They did! IBU SRI: If you ask us, who were the ones who raped us? They were the policemen. IBU LANI: There were lots of people like that though, and once I asked [one of them] about it because he knew us. I just asked him, ‘Why are you like this, Pak, when you have such a beautiful wife? [ … ] Why do you do this to us, Pak?’ [The policeman replied,] ‘Well, that’s what men are like with women! If they’re ugly, you just cover their faces with newspaper. It still feels the same. Who cares if they’re ugly so long as ‘it’ still feels the same?’ That’s what he said. He’d just cover their faces with newspaper [ … ] And they could do whatever they wanted to. If you spoke out, you’d be shot. IBU SRI: What could you say anyway? It was worse when you were detained at the police station, they’d do whatever they wanted to you. They were guards, the poor women [ … ] They thought of us as nothing, women had no value. IBU LANI: We had no meaning. IBU LANI: IBU SRI: As Ibu Lani and Ibu Sri made clear, the women prisoners were worthless to the guards and policemen and they were treated as such. When Ibu Lani asked one of the policemen why he raped the women detainees with such ‘a beautiful wife’ at home,15 he responded saying that he was not concerned by physical attractiveness, but with sexual gratification. His response, however, also reflects his obvious sense of entitlement to rape women detainees and his depersonalisation of his victims to the extent that, at least metaphorically, they are faceless bodies, not people he injured with his actions. It is also clear that he expected no negative consequences for his behaviour; it seems that all the women in this detention centre were treated as sexual commodities, devoid of === [PDF page 119] === 104 Sexual assaults during killings and detention autonomy and dignity, an important factor contributing to how this man trivialised repeated acts of rape. The intimidation and violence against women detainees are also apparent when Ibu Lani and Ibu Sri talk about the consequences for attempting to resist perpetrators. Without ‘value’ or ‘meaning’, the policemen could do ‘whatever they wanted’ to the women detainees with impunity. While Ibu Lani and Ibu Sri stated that all the women who were detained were abused, they also highlighted that because they were perceived as attractive, particular young women were singled out for repeated assaults. They highlighted what happened to one girl as an example of this: IBU SRI: For example, there was one girl, she was a beautiful girl. She was a, what you might call a descendant of Bundo Kandung [a queen who was historically greatly loved and very beautiful in that area of Sumatera]. A beautiful girl. Wuih, every night. She used to like to dress up, liked to put make-up on. IBU LANI: They’d take it in turns, every night. IBU SRI: They’d take her over and over every night. IBU LANI: Who knows how many times it happened, they took it in turns. Every guard, each and every guard took her. Whoever was a guard took her, whoever was there took her. IBU SRI: At twelve o’clock, she’d be brought back, then at one o’clock, they’d take her away again. IBU LANI: It went on and on like this [ … ] NARNY YENNY: Who told you about this, Bu? IBU SRI: She was in the same room as me! [ … ] That was when I was in [a nearby detention centre]. I said to her, ‘Don’t get dressed up, don’t clean yourself up. This is our fate,’ and things like that. ‘If they take you again, it’s terrible that they take you again, we’re people that [they can] do anything to.’ And oh, and she’d cry. Of course she’d cry because that’s how things were for us. The young woman who was repeatedly taken away and raped was most likely in a position of sexual enslavement, discussed further in Chapter 8. At this point in the interview, it was obvious that Ibu Sri and Ibu Lani did not want to continue talking about the sexual abuse perpetrated against the women, and so we moved on to talking about other aspects of their life in detention. They talked about the lack of food, about the forced labour that all the detainees had to perform and about some of the people with whom they had shared cells. Towards the end of this interview, however, they returned to talking about sexual abuse, to say how it was difficult to talk about. As Ibu Sri said, ‘It’s hard to talk about because it’s shameful for [women]. Often that’s the emotion that comes out first, shame [ … ] But try to imagine what it was like. To be stripped naked every night.’ They ended the conversation abruptly at that point. === [PDF page 120] === Sexual assaults during killings and detention 105 Coercion and sexual violence In interviews with women survivors about their lives in detention and, in particular, their experiences of sexual violence, issues to do with coercion and choice, personal dignity and autonomy often came up, framing how women spoke about these experiences. The testimony of Ibu Astuti in particular highlights the coercion that women and girls faced to accept sexual relationships with men who worked at the detention facilities. As discussed in Chapter 2, Ibu Astuti and her husband were both leaders of PKI-related organisations in Sumatra during the 1950s and early 1960s. When the killings began, they fled into the mountains to escape the massacres with their baby son who was still being breast-fed, leaving their two older children with Ibu Astuti’s mother. They remained in the forest for a few months, living off what food they could scavenge and hiding from the gangs of vigilantes who hunted down the PKI members hiding there. Eventually, Ibu Astuti was captured and detained, and her baby son was taken away by an army officer and she never saw him again. In her testimony, she describes the conditions of the detention centre where she was held, some of her fellow inmates, their access to food, forced labour, and her interrogation sessions. With regard to sexual abuse, however, Ibu Astuti also clearly describes the coercive conditions under which female detainees, including herself, engaged in sexual relationships with male guards. As she explains, it was a matter of survival. [The guards] would hold us. They could do whatever they wanted to us. Grab us, whatever. If you were pretty, they’d do whatever they wanted to you, [treat you like] a doll. Like a doll, they’d just grab you like you were a thing, yes, just whatever they wanted. We’d be kissed, eh, they’d do whatever they felt like. [The guard would say,] ‘Do you want to be treated [badly] like that? Do you want to be beaten, to have whatever done to you?’ It was like they were fishing with us, and we’d be treated however they wanted [ … ] When they pinched my behind and all that, well, I was used to that. I remember it now and still feel it stinging. But it was better than death. Surviving was the most important thing. At the time, the thing that I thought about was surviving, being healthy, surviving. I thought, if I see my family again, God, I wanted to see them again, I’d be safe and alive. They could kiss me or whatever they wanted, whatever.16 For Ibu Astuti, being ‘treated however they wanted’ was better than death. Having been forced to hide out in the forest for months, watched friends and companions hunted down by anti-PKI forces, then finally arrested and having had her son taken from her, Ibu Astuti explained how her only concern at the time was to stay alive and to return to her two older children. To do this, she and the other women with her would do the cooking and the cleaning at the detention centre as well as make handicrafts that could be sold, such as embroidered sheets and crocheted tabled cloths. She did this work, put up === [PDF page 121] === 106 Sexual assaults during killings and detention with mistreatment, and ‘charmed’ the guards, because it was ‘smart’ and because that was how they survived. It was smart to be good to the guards. And all my friends and I, there were seventeen of us, lovely young women, we would always be sweet, always flatter them. And so we were always good to the guards, give them what they wanted, whoever was in charge. If he was bad, we didn’t want [to be treated] badly, so we would just be silent [and not complain … ] but that’s what we had to do. In detention, with no means of protection from abuse, Ibu Astuti and the other women with her had to be ‘smart’ in order to survive and to avoid further abuse. At some point early on during her imprisonment, Ibu Astuti heard that her husband, who had been hiding out with her in the forest, had been killed. Within two years, Ibu Astuti’s two daughters had also died. Her family, she explained, were frightened by what had happened to her and were fearful that they would also be harmed. Thus, with no family to return to, she married a soldier, left the detention centre, and later had another daughter with him. When I met Ibu Astuti in 2005, her second husband had passed away and she was living with her daughter, taking care of her grandchildren. Conclusion The testimonies and accounts about women’s and girls’ experiences of sexual assault and rape during the massacres, torture and in imprisonment discussed give only a small glimpse into the range of these experiences following the coup. Nevertheless, they also reveal a number of patterns. Women members of the PKI and its associated organisations, as well as the family members and associates of members, were the most frequent victims of sexual assaults and rape during this period, both during the rounding up of suspected PKI supporters and during imprisonment. It was also more likely that women were sexually assaulted if they were detained and for the frequency of sexual assaults to be highest during the early stages of detention. During detention, there were many forms of sexualised violence perpetrated against women and girls during interrogational settings. As with other forms of physical and mental abuse of detainees, sexualised forms of torture were varied, both in their forms and the frequency with which they were perpetrated against victims. The most common of these were forced nakedness and sexual assault, experiences of which were recounted often in women’s testimonies about interrogational settings. The experiences of interrogation and torture in general, however, were clearly gendered in many ways, most evidently in the techniques, motivations and treatment of women detainees, as well as in the way women responded to and recounted these experiences. Other common themes that arose when women survivors spoke about sexual assaults included that these assaults were meant to degrade them, that === [PDF page 122] === Sexual assaults during killings and detention 107 they were treated as worthless, and that the men who perpetrated the assaults were able to do whatever they wanted to them. The inescapable reality of being made powerless, and vulnerable to those in charge of the detainees, was described by the women in these testimonies as fundamental to the experience of sexual abuse during this period. Despite being put into seemingly helpless situations, however, women persevered, developed strategies to deal with problems, and survived. Notes 1 This date and place are true; all other identifying information about this meeting and its participants has been obscured. The real names of women attending were written on a board at the meeting and I have kept a record of these, but they are not included here. I did not use my digital recorder to record this meeting. I did, however, write down as closely as possible some of the statements made at the meeting in addition to my usual field notes. 2 The brief account by the first woman, and then the comments by the women after her, were all framed in a similar way; with passive voice construction and of things ‘happening’ to them, of general locations where the violence occurred, and no specific descriptions of events or actions that they themselves had taken at these times. That the first woman named the sexual violence as rape was in itself somewhat unusual; it was more common for women survivors to employ the linguistic strategies described, for example, in Chapter 2 when talking about this violence (see also Pohlman 2008). 3 There were also cases when interrogations persisted much longer and when some detainees were never questioned, or questioned after months of detention. The case of Ibu Nuri in Lampung is an example of this. She was ‘invited’ to the Koramil (subdistrict military headquarters) after her husband was arrested. When she got there, she was told she could not go home and was detained for months before she was interrogated. Interview with Ibu Nuri, Lampung, transcript from ISSI. 4 There were also special holding units for women detainees during the first few years of arrests, such as: Ambarawa, in Central Java; the women’s prison at Bulu, in Central Java’s capital, Semarang; a former government building/prison (?) in Solo, Central Java, etc. 5 Indeed, some of the first victims of the coup (aside from the six generals and the general’s aide, that is) were the teenage girls who were allegedly prostitutes captured by the military around the Halim Air force base in the first days of October. These girls were tortured, raped and forced to ‘confess’ that they were Gerwani women who had sexually tortured the generals; confessions that were then used as propaganda to incite anti-Communist violence. See, for example, Wieringa (2002: 296–98) and Sasongko (2005: 58–59). 6 The group of young men performed the violence in some of the ways described in the limited social–psychological research on multiple-assailant rapes. Common amongst this research are certain trends: violence as group-bonding or homosocial bonding; depersonalisation and diffusion of responsibility for acts; competition for and/or maintenance of status; peer pressure and risk of expulsion from the group (or victimisation by the other members of the group) through non-compliance; feelings of euphoria and acceptance; with many of the above factors contributing to and deriving from hyper-masculinisation of perpetrators. For a review of this literature in one article comparing the violence of groups of young men against gay men and gang rapes of women, see Franklin (2004). Observations of this behaviour in incidents of war-time gang rapes may be compared with, for example, === [PDF page 123] === 108 Sexual assaults during killings and detention Stiglmayer (1994: 160–61) in which she talks about how paramilitary groups used rapes ‘to build up a kind of solidarity’. 7 Institute for the Rehabilitation of the New Order Regime’s Victims (Lembaga Rehabilitasi Korban Rezim Orba, LPRKROB), ‘List: People Raped and Killed in the 30 September 1965 Event in the – Sumatra Area which have been Verified’, photocopied partial document, passed to me by Ibu Wanti, Jakarta, October 2005. Please note that all names have been obscured or de-identified by the use of pseudonyms, which was a condition of its use. I do not know the process by which this list was compiled or its purpose. 8 The explanatory note given in parentheses for ‘kemoceng’ is in the original. ‘Genjer-genjer’ was a popular song associated with the PKI during the 1960s and the description refers to the propaganda about what allegedly occurred at the ‘crocodile hole’ (Lubang Buaya). 9 I did not find any accounts during my interviews of women being raped anally, though it is likely that it also occurred. In the Komnas Perempuan report, it is mentioned that women were raped anally and one example is given (2007: 57–58). 10 As with Burhan, Asep (or ‘Atjep’) featured in the testimonies of a number of people detained in Jakarta. For example, Carmel Budiardjo (1996: 78) also describes Asep. 11 See, for example, Hersri Setiawan’s discussion on the use of ‘rings’ (ali-ali or cincin) during torture. Essentially, this was the slang term for electrodes being attached to various parts of the body, including the sexual organs, in order to torture a detainee with electrocution (Setiawan 2003: 7–8). 12 Saskia Wieringa, in her research on Gerwani, discusses the Melati Kindergartens. The crèche program was set up in the 1950s to help provide opportunities for mothers by organising child care facilities. As Wieringa notes, in the 1960s, the crèches were also used to recruit new Gerwani members; if you enrolled your child, then you were also asked to sign a Gerwani membership form (2002: 240–41). 13 Ibu Tati also talked about 1966 being a year of famine for many, not only the detainees. I heard this during a number of other interviews as well, such as with Ibu Lia and other women in Jakarta. 14 This is not a pseudonym as Ibu Sumarmiyati (‘Mamik’) has already spoken at public forums and had her testimony recorded in various places under her real name. Ibu Mamik was also the first woman I interviewed about her experiences as a political prisoner in September 2002 in Yogyakarta. 15 Here Ibu Lani’s comment about having a ‘beautiful wife’ at home to fulfil his sexual needs reflects a common rape myth that if men have adequate sexual fulfilment, they will not need to seek sex from (rape) other women. In a patriarchal society such as Indonesia, sex can be seen as a male right, with sexual entitlement a necessity given men’s strong, and often uncontrollable, sexual needs that must be met and therefore the assumption that women should meet them. 16 Interview with Narny Yenny, October 2002, Sumatra. Transcript obtained from Narny Yenny. === [PDF page 124] === Mutilation and sexual violence Various forms of mutilation during the mass violence that followed the 1965 coup seem to have been widespread yet infrequent occurrences. In many places where the killings occurred, so too did mutilations, yet this form of violence was employed in only a small number of killings. Disfigurement and/or disarticulation of human bodies and body parts occurred in a number of ways: as part of torture; as part of killings; and as displayed objects in what Daniel Rothenberg (2003–2004) has called ‘public presentational torture’, that is, the intentional display of mutilation, usually in public areas. In this chapter, I focus predominantly on the last two in order to highlight the presentational nature of this violence and its role during the massacres of 1965–66. I also focus on the sexualised aspects of these mutilations, emphasising the deeply gendered features of this violence. Those cases of mutilation where the bodies and body parts were displayed in public areas stood out in people’s memories. Most people who discussed this topic with me confirmed that there had been cases of mutilation of suspected PKI supporters, either as part of killings or as displayed objects in prominent places, or both. Most had heard of stories of partial or full decapitations, of heads on bamboo poles, or of victims bleeding to death by having other body parts removed. Of those who spoke about it, most could identify a particular place where mutilations had taken place and described the types of mutilations that happened there. Most also spoke about the blood-thirstiness (haus darah) or viciousness and savagery (keganasan) of perpetrators during the killings, leaving this as an explanation for both the perceived frequency of mutilations as well as the motivation of perpetrators to carry out such acts. Few of the women and men I interviewed during this project, however, had been direct eyewitnesses to mutilations. Some had seen displayed corpses or body parts, fewer still had been present when mutilations took place. That only a few were eyewitnesses to this kind of violence, however, is not surprising nor should it be taken as representative of the frequency of mutilations during the killings. Rather, from the limited number of participants who could give direct information as well as the information available from secondary accounts, mutilations appear to have been mostly perpetrated together or as part of murders. Direct eyewitness testimony of mutilations is rare because if victims === [PDF page 125] === 110 Mutilation and sexual violence were in the position to have witnessed such an act, it was highly likely that they would also have been killed. However, this is not the case in all mutilations. On some occasions, these acts were carried out in public places and were well-known events. For example, when researching cases of mutilation during the killings, I learned from a number of sources of the somewhat notorious case of I Gede Puger, a Balinese PKI leader and friend of the then Balinese governor, Sutedja. In these accounts, Gede Puger, reportedly a very fat man, had the flesh, sometimes described as ‘the fat’, cut from his body before being killed; some accounts saying that this occurred at a local cemetery in Jimbrana, Bali, while others did not name the place, instead simply stating that it was a well-known case (Sutton 1967: 27; Breman 1996: 999; Hearman 2009: 34). Added to this is the fact that it is likely that a large proportion of those killed were murdered in executions, not general or localised killings of civilians, with the often secluded nature of these executions limiting the number of witnesses. This trend is apparent in one unusual account written some twenty years after the coup, ‘By the Banks of the Brantas,’ by an unnamed young man who managed to avoid capture by hiding out in an old abattoir near the Brantas river. One night in late 1965, this young man became a rare witness to the mutilation and murder of victims. A group from one of the militia groups in the area, the militant wing of Nahdatul Ulama’s Ansor youth organisation, Banser, as well as uniformed and ‘military men’, drove a jeep up to the river bank near where he was hiding along with a truck filled with intended victims. The young man described knowing some of the perpetrators, among them an NU leader, Pak Harun, and a member of Ansor (cited in Cribb 1997: 249–52). ‘Is the sack ready?’ Harun asked. The others said everything was ready. An oil lamp flickered over my head and forced me to lie flat, hoping that the tall grasses would obstruct their view. I didn’t dare move, ignoring the ants and mosquitoes. A man was hauled off the truck, his feet and hands bound. A plump man, he was dragged around like a banana stalk. It took three people to do it. They were only ten meters in front of me when, reaching the abattoir, they untied his feet. He was wearing a white cotton shirt with brown stripes. He looked dishevelled, as though he hadn’t changed clothes in days. He seemed weak – maybe he hadn’t been getting enough to eat. The Petromax lamp suddenly illuminated his face, and I got a shock. It was Pak Mukdar, the elementary school principal in Kedurus [ … ] he was shoved from behind by a man in black [a member of Ansor] and fell flat. Maybe he fainted. With his hands still tied, his neck was hacked [ … ] My teacher – such a meaningless death, in an abattoir meant for slaughtering cattle. His head was removed and put in the sack. Then they dragged his body to the river and tossed it in. It washed away slowly in front of me [ … ] Another body was thrown in, also headless. I couldn’t count how many headless corpses passed by me. Every time, the head was put in the gunny === [PDF page 126] === Mutilation and sexual violence 111 sack. Then I heard a shout from a voice I recognised and froze; it was Pak Mataim, our bicycle repairman who I think was illiterate. He seemed very thin, and he too was dragged along like a banana stalk. He moaned, begging for mercy, for his life to be spared. They laughed, mocking him. He was terrified. The rope around his feet was taken off, leaving his hands still tied. He cried, and because he couldn’t keep quiet, they plugged up his mouth with a clump of earth. [The young Ansor man] went into action, and like lightning, his machete cut through the neck of his victim, the one-eyed, powerless, bicycle repairman. His head went into the sack. Then his hands were untied, so that it looked as though he died without first being bound. At first, his headless body disappeared beneath the surface of the water, then eventually it floated up. The next person killed was a woman; I don’t know who she was. The young man’s story is consistent with a number of patterns described by those who took part in my research. First, the secluded area of the old abattoir provided a location away from potential witnesses – except, of course, an unknown young man hiding in the long grass. The river bank provided a convenient and efficient place for the disposal of numerous bodies. The heads of victims were collected by the perpetrators, who were a coordinated mixture of: military personnel, or at least uniformed security service personnel of some sort; at least one older man from an anti-PKI organisation; and younger men from that organisation’s youth militia group. The victims too were somewhat typical; mostly the victims were male, but women were also killed. A school principal, as with many teachers who were rounded up as part of the purges at this time, was someone well-known and usually respected in the community. He was someone who was more than likely part of one of the Communist-aligned organisations, such as the PGRI (Indonesian Teacher’s Union, Persatuan Guru Republik Indonesia1), and had obviously spent some time in detention before his ‘meaningless death’. The probably illiterate bicycle repairman, Pak Mataim, was also killed, perhaps because he was a member or somehow associated with one of the Communist Party–aligned organisations, such as the union (SOBSI) or peasants’ organisation (BTI), or perhaps simply because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Other victims were unknown to the young man, but as he says, there were many of them and each had his or her head removed which was then added to the sack, and their bodies thrown in the river. What the perpetrators intended to do with the sack/s full of heads is unknown; they could have been trophies for individual perpetrators, objects for display at a command post or road-side, proof of having disposed of victims, or a conscious choice to desecrate the bodies of their perceived enemies and thus to interfere with mortuary practices and beliefs – or all or none of the above. === [PDF page 127] === 112 Mutilation and sexual violence Another rare example of a direct eyewitness surviving the killings is that of Pak Buwono. Pak Buwono, who was a boy of thirteen at the time of the coup, witnessed the beheading of his father and the disappearance of his mother.2 When people they knew had been arrested, the three family members fled their home to stay with his father’s relatives in a village in Central Java. One night, late in 1965, a grey truck pulled up in front of the house and the three of them were loaded onto it, and taken to a nearby police station. After being detained at the police station, they were all put back on the truck with other detainees. Just like the first time, there was already a number of people in the truck whose hands were all tied [ … ] All of the passengers remained silent. On the truck there were some ‘personnel’ who, I’m not sure if they were police or soldiers, who wore striped pants but with civilian black shirts and red head bands. We continued this journey for a while along this lonely road, then one of the ‘personnel’ shouted to the driver while hitting the top of the truck’s cabin. ‘We reached G–. Yes, this is G–. Try to find a road north to the beach so we can do this the easy way, hey!’ [ … ] It was lonely, dark, and I could faintly hear the sounds of the ocean. It seemed like the truck was approaching the sea. The truck stopped, but only the three of us were taken off. The others were left on the truck. One of the soldiers got off the truck. Another one got down too [ … ] he was carrying some kind of long thing which was wrapped up in black fabric. There were three more on the truck who were all wearing police uniforms and who didn’t get off. They were carrying guns. We were herded northwards, and so the sounds of the waves became clearer. We were ordered to stop. ‘Come on, squat down,’ the soldier ordered us, the one who was carrying the long thing wrapped in black fabric. The three of us squatted down. But my father was dragged over so that he was squatting apart from us, ‘You’re Wira, we’ve been looking for you for a while. Tonight you must die,’ the soldier said harshly. He unwrapped the fabric from around the long thing and then I knew that it was a golok [kind of short machete] or a sword. My heart was pounding and I must have wet myself. I would have only been about thirteen, because I had just finished primary school. I knew then that my father was going to be killed. ‘Hey, watch this!’ yelled the other soldier who forced my mother and I to watch my father while he squatted there waiting for death. My mother covered her face with her hands, so they kicked her. The machete struck. And my mother fell down, her body falling onto mine, pulling me down. I was still able to see how my father’s head parted from his neck. My mother fainted. All of this only took a few minutes and then I was dragged away and ordered to walk back to the truck. But I never saw my mother again. === [PDF page 128] === Mutilation and sexual violence 113 Buwono was put back on the truck and taken with the remaining detainees to another prison. He never found out what happened to his mother, whether she was beheaded and thrown into the sea along with his father, or if she survived. Pak Buwono was, however, imprisoned for thirteen years. Although he was only thirteen years old, he was interrogated and forced to ‘confess’ that he was a Pemuda Rakyat fugitive named Budiman.3 After he was released, he made his way to Jakarta to start a new life for himself, and later married and raised a family. Meanings and focus of mutilations The anonymous young man who hid in the long grass and Pak Buwono are both rare examples of victims who witnessed the mutilation and execution of suspected PKI supporters and who survived to give testimony. In both cases, they saw the decapitation of victim/s and at least the suspected disposal of these victims, as one of the soldiers in Pak Buwono’s testimony puts it, in ‘the easy way’, by throwing the bodies into the river or sea. Both men also spoke of what was perhaps the most common form of mutilation of victims during the killings, that is, the removal of the head. In the cases of mutilation during the killings that I came across during my research, the victim’s head was the main locus of much of the violence done to the body. As with other gendered trends noticeable within the victimology of the killings, most of the victims of mutilation were also men. Women victims of mutilation, fewer in number than men victims, seemed to have been mutilated in ways that concentrated on the torso (particularly sexual organs and breasts) as well as the head, though male genitals were also targets in cases of sexualised mutilations against men. In most of the testimonies and secondary accounts about mutilations, however, the victims’ heads – whether parts of the head or the head as a whole – were focal points for disfigurement and dismemberment (see Anonymous 1990; Oppenheimer and Uwemedimo 2009). In one interview with Ibu Titiek and Ibu Lani in Sumatra, for example, Ibu Titiek recalled a number of people who had been mutilated and killed and how victims’ heads had been a focus of the violence. Ibu Titiek told me one example of how a man was killed by having parts of his face cut off. When I asked her when this had happened, she described this incident where the victim was attacked whilst in prayer.4 Those times, my god! [It happened to] a friend of mine [ … ] It happened in the middle of evening prayers (maghrib). His ears were cut off, then his nose was cut off, right there and then, in the middle [of his prayers]. So he didn’t finish praying, he simply fell down. He lost so much blood, lots of blood [ … ], dead. That’s how cruel the types of killings were. That happened in my village [ … ] In this case, the victim probably died from loss of blood caused by the removal of his ears and nose. Ibu Titiek was not explicit as to when her friend === [PDF page 129] === 114 Mutilation and sexual violence was killed in this way; whether he was already in some form of detention when he was mutilated and killed, or whether this attack was part of capture, perhaps in the man’s home or another location. When I asked about further details, Ibu Titiek seemed reluctant and instead moved on to talk about other cases and mutilation, some also involving dismemberment that focused on the heads of victims. The majority of cases of mutilation that I found in secondary sources also involved the heads of victims used as display objects. Amongst the few journalists’ accounts made by foreigners at the time, for example, descriptions of victims’ heads being used by perpetrators as spectacularised objects feature quite prominently. To give some examples, there is a graphic account of the killings by Seth S. King, who published his feature in The New York Times Magazine in the first part of 1966. In it, he describes the heads of victims on spikes in public areas, some of whom were identified as PKI members. The places which he lists for these public displays include ‘at the base of a monument’ in the Flores capital, Ende, and a case whereby the ‘head that had belonged to the school principal, a PKI member, was stuck on a pole and paraded among his former pupils’ in Bali (King 1966: 25 and 89; see also Moser 1966). Another account, this one by fellow American, Horace Sutton, also gives some rather explicit details about mutilations and decapitations. In his article, entitled ‘Indonesia’s Night of Terror’, Sutton recounts numerous examples of this violence, including tales of a head being used as the ball in a football match, heads impaled on an iron fence, and of ‘[m]utilated bodies, some missing heads and hands, and some already decomposing [ … ] floating down the 375-mile-long Prantas [sic] River’ (1967: 29). These journalists’ accounts describe the killings in somewhat sensational terms and appear to seek to provoke a reaction, whether that be shock, horror or otherwise. Within this genre of media reports, the display of dismembered bodies feature prominently, probably because such displays are so shocking and provoke strong reactions. How and why mutilations have the power to cause reactions in those who witness them relates both to the conditions under which these acts occur as well as to the acts themselves. The focus on victims’ heads is perhaps not surprising. The removal, dismemberment and otherwise desecration of heads as part of the disarticulation of human remains have been human practices has a long history.5 Removing and displaying body parts has occurred across human populations throughout all inhabited continents and over hundreds of thousands of years (Chacon and Dye 2007). Over time too, dismemberment has held many meanings in different places and for different cultures. As Regina Janes points out in her work on beheadings in revolutionary France, ‘[w]hile severed heads always speak, they say different things in different cultures’ (1991: 24). Across the archipelago that makes up current-day Indonesia, the removal and display of body parts, including the heads of people, have held significance in a range of indigenous practices. Over time, such practices have played a role in punishment, in other violent activities, such as conflict between and === [PDF page 130] === Mutilation and sexual violence 115 within groups, and as an important part of mortuary customs and rituals, all of which involve the victim’s head and/or other body parts being given specific meaning within the context in which they are taken (see, for example, Hoskins 1996; Ellen 2002). In modern Indonesian history, however, mutilations have more commonly been perpetrated during conflict situations, such as in East Timor and Aceh (Taylor 1991; Robinson 2001). The connection between this violence and its role in conflict can be seen, for example, in the most well-known cases of mutilation and display of victims in recent history in Indonesia, that is, those perpetrated during the petrus killings (an abbreviation for ‘penembakan misterius’ or ‘mysterious shootings’) (Cribb 2000). Between 1983 and 1985, thousands of ‘criminals’ were killed in state-sponsored murders in a number of Indonesian cities (Barker 2009). Many of the victims’ bodies were left in public areas, their corpses purposefully displayed, bearing the marks of torture, bullet wounds, and with some of the victims’ remains mutilated. Estimates for the number of ‘criminals’ killed during petrus ranges from 3,000 to as many as 20,000 (Cribb 2000: 191). As scholars such as David Bourchier (1990), James Siegel (1998) and Joshua Barker (1998) have shown, the petrus killings were intimately tied to criminality in Indonesia, the Indonesian State and its attempts to display and accrue power. Public killings and mutilations also occur outside generalised conflict zones in Indonesia. Work by political scientist Bridget Welsh (2008) on keroyokan killings (roughly translated as ‘lynching’) across a number of provinces since the mid-1990s, for example, has shown how such ‘mob justice’ is both a widespread and relatively common form of vigilante violence in Indonesia. The beheadings and the other forms of mutilation that took place during the massacres in 1965–66, therefore, must be viewed within a continuum of similar forms of violence in modern Indonesian history. The significance and meanings that could be found for those who perpetrated these acts, those who experienced them, and those who witnessed the remains, once again, are always dependent upon both the acts themselves and the circumstances in which they occurred. Why mutilations as a particular form of atrocity during conflicts have the power to hold such significance and meaning for perpetrators, victims and those around them is a question that has been asked many times. Genocide historian, Jacques Semelin (2007), for example, is one who has considered Holocaust survivor and philosopher Primo Levi’s provoking question, ‘Why this useless violence?’6 Struck by Levi’s question, Semelin tries to find meaning behind these acts. To do so, he reflects on acts of ‘cruelty’ during massacre and looks for explanations for atrocities committed during conflicts that lie somewhere between the instrumentality (strategic intent) of such acts and what he calls ‘orgiastic violence’. This very conscious conflation of extreme forms of violence with sexualisation reveals Semelin’s conception of this violence, in which the excessive forms that he examines frequently involve sexual violence. He also looks for explanations in the form and meaning of acts of atrocity, in the need for perpetrators to transform their victims from humans into masses of flesh unrecognisable as such through dismemberment, and in === [PDF page 131] === 116 Mutilation and sexual violence the pleasure that perpetrators can derive from extreme cruelty (Semelin 2007: 293–307). In the end deciding that this cruelty is somewhat ‘impervious to all analytical approaches’, what is clear from Semelin’s diverse explorations to ascertain the ‘why’ behind extreme forms of violence during conflicts, however, is that violent acts and atrocities in themselves cannot be left out of our attempts to understand massacre. Rather, as he states, ‘in this terrible act lies one of the keys, if not the key to the explosive power of massacre’ (Semelin 2007: 289, emphasis in original). Nevertheless, for those who took part in, who saw and even those who heard about cases of spectacularised mutilations and other acts of extreme violence during the massacres, the experience would have been challenging and destabilising, profoundly affecting individuals and communities. Does the knowledge that degrading and desecrating victims in this way because of the effect they believe it will have on those around them drive perpetrators to commit these acts? Is this power to invoke horror, then, the power that perpetrators try to accrue by creating these spectacles? Or does this presuppose an intent or logic on the part of perpetrators that is simply not there in many cases? To explain the multiple causes for extreme acts of violence during conflict, it may be better to examine the forms of the violence itself, to explore how the forms of mutilation, and the bodies that are mutilated, have their own meanings. As Liisa H. Malkki found in her analysis of violence and mutilation in the context of Hutu–Tutsi violence in Burundi in 1972, in some cases, ‘explicit links were made between these highly elaborated techniques of killing and their perceived symbolic or political intent [or … ] the symbolic significance of the techniques was implicit in people’s reflections on the causes of killing’ (1995: 92, emphasis in original). In her study, Malkki examined the connection between how some mutilations became ‘routinised’ in their forms and their perceived symbolic potential. Some examples of this described in her research were impalement on long, bamboo poles from the anus to the head (more common for male victims) or from the vagina to the head (for women), for Malkki, a clear inversion and purposeful defilement. Other examples included women being forced to eat the flesh of their own children, once again, in Malkki’s view, a ‘complete reversal of the “progress of nature”’ in that, mothers nourish and give life to their children, not the reverse (1995: 93). As Malkki’s examples show, these mutilations are also about the purposeful reversal of social interactions; interactions which have shaped our evolutionary history and which bind us together in social groups. These social interactions or bonds, such as between mother and child, are a large part of what makes us human. Inverting and destroying these interactions is thus aimed at destroying not only the humanity of the immediate victims but that of their entire community (see also Card 2003). While I believe it is dangerous to over-determine or to seek too great a symbolic meaning in various forms of mutilation, during the massacres that followed the 1965 coup, there were cases of this violence in which the symbolic and communicative intent of mutilations was overt (see Rothenberg 2003–2004). Similarly to Malkki’s findings, some of the cases which I heard about in my === [PDF page 132] === Mutilation and sexual violence 117 research were clearly perceived to have symbolic intent on the part of perpetrators. This was particularly the case with sexualised forms of mutilations, discussed in the section below. The focus on parts of the victim’s head and throat, and on the head as a whole is probably the most obvious, however, when thinking about this convergence between the perceived symbolic intent of mutilations and focal points on the body. The removal of the head and its use as a display object, as mentioned above, was probably the most common form of mutilation and display during the killings. The significance of the head in probably all cultures across modern-day Indonesia is, in some ways, so obvious as to be naturalised as such. The head is a site of manifold importance as the locus of intellect, of connection with both the body and the soul and with the mortal and supernatural worlds. What covers or does not cover the head is also both a matter of taste and choice as well as of religious or cultural significance. It is also what makes a piece of disconnected flesh recognisable as a particular individual. My point here is not to discover, if that were possible, the imagined significance of removing and displaying the heads of victims for those involved during the killings, only that this removal and display were of great symbolic meaning to the perpetrators and to those who saw these displays. Thus in cases where the heads of victims were displayed in front of guard posts or along roads, there was clearly both symbolic and communicative intent behind these actions on the part of perpetrators. The same logic, nonetheless, can be applied to any act of mutilation and display. What these acts were intended to communicate, however, could have been a number of messages: from the display of triumph over dangerous enemies; to a desire to show defilement and humiliation of these enemies by so clearly removing and placing the head where it would never normally be; to a warning to others; to numerous other possible meanings. Other cases of mutilations during the killings were clearly enacted for their perceived symbolic and communicative value. M. R. Siregar’s extended study on the killings and the period beforehand, Tragedi Manusia dan Kemanusiaan (A Tragedy for Man and Mankind) (1993), contains numerous examples. Siregar, a former PKI functionary and exile after the coup, compiled a number of stories about mutilations, some of which show this communicative logic. In one part, he describes a series of accounts of what he calls ‘barbarism’ in Jakarta during the killings that were ‘told to him by other Indonesians’: In Jakarta, a gang of killers (sekawanan pogrom) boiled some water in a drum. Once the water was boiling, one of people who they’d ‘made safe’ (amankan), if I haven’t forgotten, from IPPI (Ikatan Pemuda Pelajar Indonesia, Indonesian Student Youth Association), in the position of his head facing downwards and his feet in the air, was immersed in the water. This horrifying and deplorable scene, which could not be seen by the eyes of normal people, only incited these cold-blooded killers. Their satisfaction was clear from their laughter and applause. When the victim was taken out of the drum, his face was unrecognisable. His skin had blistered and === [PDF page 133] === 118 Mutilation and sexual violence parts of it had peeled off, completely cooked, with both eye balls having burst. In another community, also in Jakarta, the lives of one family ended in a ‘Communist satay’ (sate komunis) [ … ] A family, husband, wife and children, were all killed. The bodies of the whole family were skewered with a length of bamboo, entering from the anus and exiting at the throat, just like a satay, and then taken about for everyone to see. (Cited in Siregar 1993: 235)7 Both of these stories about how victims were killed and mutilated demonstrate the ways in which these acts can have symbolic and communicative intent; it is not only that the victims are killed but how they died and what became of them after that is important. While it is not explicit in the passage above, Siregar implies that both acts were perpetrated in public and made into spectacles. In the first case, the man from the student organisation perceived to be associated with the PKI is killed by being boiled alive, with the group of perpetrators responsible reportedly jubilant with the results of their actions and celebrating them in public. In the second case, that of an entire family being made into ‘sate komunis’, the lengths gone to by the perpetrators to create and display such a scene also betray their symbolic and communicative objectives. The perceived symbolic power may have been part of the linking of the head from the anus, high from low, with bamboo spears, thus creating an unnatural inversion and connection of the two. It may have also been part of the cannibalistic description of the mutilation which played upon the very common food preparation technique of skewering meat onto sticks for cooking. The highly stylised nature of the violence and the transformation of a family into skewered and paraded flesh create an entirely performative event. However improvised the techniques themselves may have been at the time, there is nothing accidental about the performative nature of either case described by Siregar. Both appear to have been events staged for the benefit of the surrounding public and for the perpetrators themselves. In both cases, there are multiple perpetrators; although not explicit in the second story in the passage above, it would have taken several people to carry an entire family who had been killed and paraded in such a way. Research on cases of lynching in the southern United States reveals how such extreme acts of spectacular violence are consumed and disseminated as events. The work of Kirk W. Fuoss, for example, highlights how such public displays of torture and mutilation are always ‘performance-saturated events’ which involve events before, during and after the act itself in what he calls ‘performance chaining’ to show how each event grows out of the ones before it (1999: 26).8 In both of the cases described by Siregar, the capture of the victims, their torture and mutilation, and then the display and celebration of the corpses are all necessarily connected performances, each feeding into and producing the next. As spectacles and events, these cases of publicly displayed mutilations could also be seen as examples of Rothenberg’s ‘public presentational torture’, === [PDF page 134] === Mutilation and sexual violence 119 which he defines as ‘the open display of corpses bearing the physical marks of torture’ (2003–2004: 467). While Rothenberg’s argument is essentially aimed at eradicating torture as a tool of state policy, he emphasises what he terms the ‘communicative logic’ of torture as a tactic to terrify and subjugate. As he argues, the power of this violence ‘does not depend upon the actual infliction of pain, but rather on the communication of this experience through the display of mutilated bodies’ (2003–2004: 475). It is therefore the intent behind these violent acts which determines their nature as torture. Furthermore, as Rothenberg emphasises, ‘the value of this policy lies in the message expressed, in the impact of encountering [ … ] the physical proof of a state’s willingness to commit severe violence upon the bodies of those under its Witnessing mutilations As the works of Malkki (1995), Fuoss (1999), Rothenberg (2003–2004) and others show, acts of public torture and mutilation produce performative and perceived symbolic power (see Humphrey 2002). The effects of such acts on those who witnessed them, however, were clear during my few interviews with survivors who had seen people they had known killed in public displays of mutilation and execution. In an interview with Ibu Titiek and Ibu Lani, they recalled a number of people who had been mutilated and killed. One of them, a woman who had helped to raise Ibu Titiek when she was a child, was a victim of this violence. As Ibu Titiek described: [Mak9] was killed, who helped raise me, who taught me how to dance, was killed. Taken, tied up and dragged. And even one of the members of her family was forced into doing it, you understand? They tied her up by her right and left [hands] and dragged and dragged behind [a truck]. Dragged. Mak was killed like that.10 The dragging mutilation and murder of Mak would have been a drawnout, horrifying spectacle, both in the time it would have taken for Mak to be dragged to death, and however long the dragging continued afterwards, and in the space across which her body was dragged. It is probable, given the way that Ibu Titiek repeats and emphasises the dragging, that it went on for some time. Skin excoriations caused by being dragged along a rough road surface would have quickly developed into deep abrasions causing serious trauma to soft tissue and then organs, in addition to broken bones and head injuries. For those who witnessed this and, indeed, the family member of Mak forced to help kill her, this murder would have been a prolonged atrocity. Ibu Titiek paused for a little after describing what had happened to Mak, then added quietly that another victim, this time ‘somebody’s younger brother’, had also been killed in this way. She paused again and said that it had been horrifying (nyerikan). === [PDF page 135] === 120 Mutilation and sexual violence During this interview, Ibu Titiek did not give many details about what had happened, but her remembered horror was clear as she described the confrontation with the remnants of the victims’ bodies and, more than likely, those remnants marking the ground around her. That her close friend, Mak, was killed with her and others witnessing this atrocity implies that many of them would have known the victims, if not also the perpetrators. When considering why Mak and the unknown younger brother may have been killed in this way, the intentionally performative and communicative elements of these acts have to be remembered. The calculated, painful and drawn-out deaths of the victims must also be considered, as must the social familiarity and proximity of the victims, perpetrators and witnesses. The dragging of Mak and the younger brother transformed them and their bodies into a mass of indistinguishable remains in public, in front of those who probably knew them. For the victims, it was a terrifying and painful death. This case and others show the extent to which the techniques of cruelty were symbolically meaningful to the perpetrators and witnesses; these dragging deaths were clearly meant to have an effect on those who saw them. For Ibu Titiek, the effect had been horror and terror. Remembered and retold forty years after, Ibu Titiek’s account of Mak’s and the brother’s deaths reveals the traumatic effect these events had on her. The analysis of atrocities such as those described by Siregar, Ibu Titiek and others confronts the challenge to understand what Semelin (2007) meant when he reflected on atrocities being ‘the key’ of violence. To try to understand the violence of 1965–66, therefore, there is no escape from the fact that, although cases of mutilation and atrocity were few in comparison to the overall number of deaths, they held special significance for those who perpetrated these acts, those who experienced them, and those who saw them. During my research, memories of these atrocities had lingered with survivors and witnesses and were described almost as evidence for how frightening and terrible the killings had been. The willingness of perpetrators to maim, dismember and display victims, sometimes in highly elaborate and symbolic ways, therefore must be taken into account when examining the killings. Sexualised forms of mutilation Mutilations of victims during the killings that followed the coup took many forms. The focus of this section, however, is on sexualised forms of mutilation and, in particular, forms of this violence perpetrated against women and girls. Of the testimonies and accounts about mutilations that I came across during this research, most did not describe sexualised forms of this violence. Those that did depict sexualised forms of mutilations, however, were described in terms of their being particularly horrifying and proof of the depravity and cruelty of perpetrators. These atrocities can be seen as intentionally sexualised in nature, given the seeming preoccupation on the part of perpetrators with the physical === [PDF page 136] === Mutilation and sexual violence 121 disfigurement, removal and/or destruction of sexual organs, stomach area and, in the case of women victims, breasts. As with descriptions of other cases, heads were also made targets, but this was in combination with attacks on these other parts of the body. All cases of such physical attacks that I came across during this research ended in the death of the victim, meaning that victims were either killed in this way or died soon after as a result. That said, in some of the secondary accounts about this violence, it is unclear as to whether mutilations were perpetrated either pre- or post-mortem. Sexualised forms of mutilation were perpetrated against both men and women, evidenced in the intentional dismemberment and display of sexual organs. Amongst some of the secondary accounts, the destruction or removal of sexual organs of both men and women were one of the more clear forms of this violence. M. R. Siregar’s study on the killings (1993), for example, contains numerous examples, including those involving the removal and display of sexual organs. Siregar notes a few examples of how the penises of male victims were cut off and used as display objects. In one case, Siregar describes how men’s penises were cut off and collected by perpetrators, who would then, in turn, be ‘paid according to how many there were’ (1993: 237). In another case, he describes how women’s breasts were cut off in a part of East Java (1993: 237). In Cribb’s 1990 edited collection on the killings, there is a collection of ‘Additional Data’ (Anonymous 1990), collected and published anonymously, which also describes sexualised mutilations against male and female victims. One passage details the castration of a male victim, while in another, there is this description about such violence in Banyuwangi, East Java: ‘Male victims had their penises cut off and these too were hung up on guard posts. The heads of Pemuda Rakyat members were cut off and placed on bamboo stakes along the roadside or hung from trees’ (Anonymous 1990: 172 and 175). In these accounts and others, the removal or destruction of sexual organs and breasts has a similar and overt symbolic and communicative intent to those cases discussed in the previous section. To unmake bodies in this way and to objectify, or even fetishise, sexual organs to this extent is clearly an act of expression on the part of the perpetrators. The purposefully sexualised, deeply dehumanising and elaborate violence reveals the level of purpose and extent to which perpetrators were willing to go in order to achieve this expression. Another short description from the anonymously collected information about the killings in Banyuwangi is also a clear example of the elaborate nature of some cases of sexualised mutilations. As the descriptions reads, ‘[i]n many cases, women were killed by being stabbed through the vagina with long knives until their stomachs were pierced. Their heads and breasts were then cut off and hung on display in guard huts along the road’ (Anonymous 1990: 175). In this account, women’s sexual organs, breasts and heads were all focal points for the violence perpetrated against them. The women victims are depersonalised so that they are not people but are compartmentalised into body parts; parts which differentiated them as female. First, their sexual and reproductive organs were lancinated with long knives, from the vagina and through the internal === [PDF page 137] === 122 Mutilation and sexual violence reproductive organs. Then their heads and breasts – both of which would have distinguished the victims as female – were removed and made into display objects. Dissociated from the individuals from which these body parts were removed, these heads and breasts were ‘hung on display’ in the public place of the guard huts on the road. The guard huts were described in testimonies as places where perpetrators congregated, coordinated the arrests and killings, and where they kept and sometimes interrogated detainees. For these body parts to be hung on display at the guard huts, therefore, the collection of dismembered parts were most likely trophies for the perpetrators. In this way, the predatory interaction of perpetrators with victims and the collection of body parts mimics that of hunters and their prey.11 That the body parts hung up on display were women’s breasts and heads shows not only how this violent practice of trophy-taking created ‘possessable’ items from the body but also the sexualisation of those body parts. This manifest sexualisation of particular body parts shows how practices of violence are marked by sexual difference. Ibu Titiek and Ibu Lani’s descriptions of sexualised mutilation used as part of murdering women victims also reflect how individuals were depersonalised and transformed into body parts. In one description, Ibu Titiek explained that a number of women victims in their neighbouring district in West Sumatra had been killed by being impaled through their genitals on bamboo spears. The killings, they were just terrible. [Women] were speared with bamboo spears, speared in here (she indicates her genitals), that’s how they were killed. Aduh! They could have just shot them, they didn’t have to do that. But they did it that way, stabbed them through from below! That’s what I’m telling you now. [They were] stabbed, the bamboo [spears] put into their ‘women’s parts’ (nonanya), stabbed through (ditusuk) there. (Interview with Ibu Titiek, Ibu Lani along with Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005) As Ibu Titiek described, the women’s deaths were caused by being impaled on sharpened lengths of bamboo. As she made clear later in the interview, Ibu Titiek was not a direct witness to these crimes, but says that a woman she knew in the neighbouring district, an ‘Ibu N–’, saw it happen and told her about it. She also wondered why these women were killed this way, when ‘they could have just shot them,’ echoing Levi’s question about useless violence. Impaling women through the vagina was a common theme in accounts of sexualised mutilation against female victims. Some secondary accounts, for example, record various types of instruments being used to impale women, including knives, iron rods and, as with the cases described by Ibu Titiek, long bamboo spears (Anonymous 1990: 172; Simons 2000: 177; Wieringa 2002: 300–35). Similar in some ways to other accounts of sexual violence against women during the killings and in detention, the insertion of objects into victims’ vaginas was sometimes accompanied by other types of rape. Impalement through the vagina for women in these cases was both a way to kill as well as === [PDF page 138] === Mutilation and sexual violence 123 another form of rape. The material and symbolic forms of sexualised violence are conflated so that sexual violation is also a form of torture and murder. Some rare cases of mutilation against women also displayed a similar logic of both symbolic desecration and violation and the techniques of sexualised violence. Some cases, for example, were clearly directed at reproductive organs and, when a woman victim was pregnant, against the foetus. In one case, the dismemberment of reproductive organs as part of mutilating and murdering a woman victim is clear: Japik, a leading figure in the local branch of Gerwani and a member of the PGRI Non Vaksentral was killed along with her husband Djumadi, also a member of the PGRI Non Vaksentral. They has [sic] been married only thirty-five days. She was raped many times and her body was then slit open from her breasts to her vulva. This was done by an Ansor gang. (Cited in Anonymous 1990: 172)12 While there are no details as to how her husband was killed, the female victim in this description, Japik, is gang-raped by the Ansor gang and then killed by being cut open ‘from her breasts to her vulva’. The violent sexual assault against her is followed by an intentional vivisection that opens up her body from her breasts, through her stomach and internal reproductive organs, ending at her genitals, and which results in her death. The specific forms of brutality are not accidental; once again, there is perceived symbolic meaning in the taking apart of a sexed, enemy body. As with all forms of sexualised mutilation, the victim’s body is the material site upon which symbolic and material intimacy play out. As anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (1998) has shown, this preoccupation on the part of perpetrators with particular body parts, with penetration and consumption, is a desire for this intimacy with the enemy whom they go to such extreme lengths to take apart. In this case, sexual penetration of Japik’s body and the destruction of her sexual and reproductive organs are therefore ways to achieve this intimacy, while conversely, the specific targeting of these body parts is both a reification and a rejection of those parts which make Japik the female enemy she is perceived to be. The specificity of these forms of bodily violation as intimate, semantic procedures was also apparent in the disembowelling of pregnant women with the obvious intent of killing not only them but also their children. In two examples of this violence, this intent is clear: Ny. Djajus, a woman who was lurah of the village of Tawangsari in Garum and a member of Gerwani, was pregnant at the time of the coup. Her body was cut open before she was killed. Pak Djajus, her husband, was sliced in the face with a dagger until he died [ … ] Suranto, headmaster of the Sekolah Menengah (High School) in Pare and one of the leaders of the Pare branch of Partindo and a member of the DPRD Kabupaten Kediri, lived in the village of Pulorego, Pare. On === [PDF page 139] === 124 Mutilation and sexual violence 8 October 1965 at about 5.00 p.m. he went by bicycle to meet his wife, nine months pregnant, who had been at an arisan. On the way home, they were stopped and taken prisoner by an Ansor gang. They were beaten until they fell unconscious and were then killed. The man’s head was cut off and his wife’s stomach was cut open, the baby taken out and cut to pieces. The two bodies were thrown down a ravine to the east of the market in Pare. For a week afterwards, their five children who were all small (the oldest was eleven) had no-one to help them because the neighbours were warned by Ansor members that anyone helping them would be at risk. In both cases, the pregnant women have their stomachs cut open. In the case of Suranto’s wife, after her stomach was cut open, the Ansor gang who murdered them went further and removed the baby in order to dismember it as well. The male victims’ heads and faces were the focal point for mutilation against them, but for the two pregnant women, it was their stomachs, reproductive organs and the babies inside them. This focus on the connection between the mother and the unborn child, in both cases, was enacted in these elaborate and highly symbolic forms of dismemberment. Looking back at the Indonesian military’s anti-Communist propaganda which incited the killings, the aggressive destruction of maternal bodies in these examples is somewhat unsurprising. The dehumanising propaganda that advocated the elimination of Communist supporters was founded on deeply misogynous themes which depicted Gerwani women in particular as sexually voracious, dangerous and even supernaturally predatory women. As researchers Saskia Wieringa (1998; 2002) and Steven Drakeley (2007) have found, the propaganda created opposing tropes of monstrous Communist women on the one hand and virtuous, ‘proper’ Indonesian women on the other. Within this imagery, the proper Indonesian woman figure was strongly based on the depoliticised and naturalised wife-and-mother. Communist women, however, were a danger to all around them, particularly in the sense that they had seemingly inverted their natural roles as nurturing mothers to become, as one line in the propaganda campaign put it, ‘Gerwani mothers of evil’ (Angkatan Bersenjata, cited in Drakeley 2007: 15). Suharto himself once said, the ‘sadistic practices perpetrated by members of the Gerwani … had destroyed the identity of Indonesian women’ (Antara, cited in Drakeley 2007: 25). As Drakeley (2007) highlights, this misogynous propaganda equated Communism and Communist women with sexual perversion, unrestrained and monstrous female sexuality, sadism, animalistic barbarism and evil ideologies that would destroy Indonesia and, therefore, that this dangerous threat had to be eradicated in order to save the nation. Although the full effects of the anti-Communist propaganda may never be known, this misogynous and eliminationist discourse created a ‘climate of harm’ which helped to incite the killings. The campaign played upon the already charged situation of political and social polarisation of the mid-1960s, creating a fictitious evil that had to be destroyed. === [PDF page 140] === Mutilation and sexual violence 125 While the propaganda as a causal factor for the incitement of the killings is relatively clear, how this propaganda may have had any influence on the violence itself that followed the coup is less certain. In the cases of mutilation against the two pregnant women, however, there may be at least partial evidence that the content of the propaganda affected the violence of the massacres. Many of the women I interviewed highlighted the pervasive nature of the propaganda as well as the particularly strong message to eradicate the PKI ‘down to its roots’, ‘down through seven generations’, and often that ‘even the children’ had to suffer. Although children were not commonly murdered during the violence, there were cases of whole families, including children, being killed. In the case of Ny. Djajus and Suranto’s wife, their unborn children were killed along with them. The connection between these themes in the propaganda and the way in which these women and their babies were murdered is probably more apparent, however, in the perceived symbolic value of this violence. Cutting open the women’s stomachs was a way to destroy them and the lives inside them. Having been depicted as depraved and dangerous women, their offspring could only have been equally monstrous, thus requiring the perpetrators to go to extra lengths to ensure their destruction as well. The Communist women, as ‘mothers of evil’, posed a significant threat, so these acts of mutilation would have been at least partly symbolically meaningful for the perpetrators as a way to eradicate the world of this evil and their spawn. In addition to whatever influence the propaganda may have had upon the violence of this case is the fact that all of the victims had relatively high status within their communities. Ny. Djajus was the lurah (‘head’ or ‘leader’) of her village, while Suranto was both the local school headmaster – a traditionally well-respected position – as well as held leadership positions within a local political party structure and in the regional parliament (DPRD Kabupaten – Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Daerah Kabupaten, the regional house of representatives). Suranto’s wife and Ny. Djajus’ husband, through their marital relation to their respective spouses, also would have derived relatively high status amongst their communities. As discussed in Chapter 2, identified leaders of the PKI and its associated organisations were often the first singled out for violent persecution during the killings. While none of the four victims is identified as a PKI leader, their leadership positions and any perceived affiliation with or support for the Communist Party would have been sufficient cause for the perpetrators to attack them. As leaders, it is probable that they were seen as the most obvious target for violence. It is also probable that, as leaders and therefore most clearly identifiable with the PKI, the violence against them needed to be the most horrific. Mutilation and torture This last section deals briefly with mutilation as a part of torture for some detainees following the coup. As was shown in a few of the cases discussed in === [PDF page 141] === 126 Mutilation and sexual violence the previous chapter, torture sometimes involved the extreme and permanent physical harm and impairment, disfigurement, and even removal of body parts. These included burns from either fire or electrical current, beatings that broke bones or damaged eyes, ears, teeth and other parts of the face, sharp or blunt incision and pressure injuries that broke bones and punctured through flesh, and many more types of injuries which caused temporary or permanent physical damage. During my fieldwork, the evidence of this harm became apparent. I met some former detainees, for example, who were in some way physically disabled permanently or who showed me scars from injuries sustained during torture. In the previous chapter, I briefly mentioned one of these ex-prisoners, a man I met in Sumatra and who needed a cane to walk because of the serious damage done to one of his feet during torture. Another man, Pak Karto, who helped me find and interview women in and around Yogyakarta, showed me a large, puckered scar that covered most of the back of one shoulder. He said that he had been tortured and that the scar was the result, but he did not go into detail about what had been done to him. Pak Karto also explained that the injury had never healed properly, so that he still needed to go for ‘treatment’ to help with the ulceration. Ex-tapol women also showed me scars during interviews, sometimes lifting part of a blouse or a dress to show me a mark on the arm, leg or torso. Some showed me fingers that were not straight or that did not bend properly because they had been broken during torture. Some women also talked about aches in parts of their bodies that had been there since they were detained, but which had become worse as they grew older.13 All of these physical scars and impairments were shown to me as evidence of what they had endured as prisoners in the detention camps, prisons and interrogation centres. Of those who showed their scars, they gestured repeatedly to them, emphasising the physical torture perpetrated against them. Some scars had faded over the years, particularly smaller burn marks from cigarette butts or electrocution, but they would point to where they had been and insist that they had been there.14 Mutilation during torture is in some ways similar to, and in other ways very different from, this type of violence perpetrated outside interrogation settings during the massacres themselves. Their similarities lie first and foremost in the obvious intent by perpetrators to inflict grievous harm on their victims. The physical and mental pain inflicted on victims during torture and on victims during public mutilations are both severe. There are also similarities in terms of how these acts are goal oriented. As Daniel Rothenberg (2003–2004) highlights in his study connecting public mutilation with torture, both involve the infliction of severe pain and suffering and both are committed with an objective, whether it be to harm, intimidate, terrify, punish, obtain information or any other goal. While both types of acts are committed with an objective, the objectives themselves were different. The objectives of mutilation during torture were markedly different from those of cases of presentational or spectacularised mutilations that were performed in public areas. While the purpose of torture may be seen to be more directly focused on the victim of torture, the objective of === [PDF page 142] === Mutilation and sexual violence 127 public presentational mutilations ‘lies in the message expressed, in the impact of encountering – directly for those who actually see these corpses or indirectly for those who hear of the experience – the physical proof of a state’s willingness to commit severe violence upon the bodies’ (Rothenberg 2003–2004: 475). There are other similarities between the two types of crimes, such as the intent to inflict permanent injuries or death on victims. For those who have studied other cases of mutilations during conflicts, amputations and other forms of dismemberment which physically disable or disfigure the victim but which do not always result in death may be the obvious point for comparison. During the civil war in Sierra Leone (1991–2002), for example, amputations were used to transform people into ‘figurative messengers’ in which the disfigured survivors would serve to terrify and frighten those around them (Park 2007). These acts were clearly committed as symbolic violence, one researcher stating that there was ‘a direct link between their violent injuries and the political aims of the conflict’ (Berghs 2007: 80). While there is no evidence that victims who were mutilated were used as ‘messengers’ during 1965–66, for the victims who survived mutilations during torture in Indonesia, their physical disfigurements were, in a sense, reminders of the political aims with which they were injured. The man who I met in Sumatra who walked with the cane said that, when he was tortured by the chair leg being jumped on while his foot was beneath it, he knew that his foot would never be the same again. Without medical help or any kind of therapy, the injury permanently affected his foot, his ability to walk and therefore his ability to work. As he said, his leg was ‘always painful’ and it was always ‘evidence of what they did’ to him. Conclusion The mutilations that were perpetrated during the 1965–66 killings in Indonesia were infrequent yet widespread occurrences. Perpetrators mutilated some of their victims as part of killings, used mutilated bodies and body parts as public spectacles, and sometimes as part of torture. Although rare when compared with other types of violence during the killings, cases of mutilation tended to remain in the memories of survivors, particularly when these were cases of display. They also remained as physical scars and reminders on the bodies and in the memories of survivors of this violence. In this chapter, I have examined some of the forms of mutilation and attempted to find meaning in their structures and displays. First, I highlighted that despite the comparative rarity of mutilations during the 1965–66 killings, this violence was significant in that it was often remembered by witnesses and survivors. Mutilations as part of killings may have been more prevalent, yet eyewitness accounts of such killings are rare as, aside from the perpetrators, few victims survived to tell their stories. The meanings for those who witnessed mutilations, particularly those carried out in public areas with large audiences, such as the dragging deaths of Bu Mak described by Ibu Titiek above, were perpetrated in order to horrify and terrify. In the second part of this === [PDF page 143] === 128 Mutilation and sexual violence chapter, I have analysed sexualised forms of mutilation perpetrated against women victims in order to emphasise the gendered nature of this violence during the killings. In such cases, I argue that the clear preoccupation with and targeting of sexual organs, breasts and other parts of the body which identify women as women (and, for cases with male victims of sexualised mutilations, men as men) are evidence that acts of mutilation of fundamentally gendered acts of violence. Examining these gendered aspects of mutilation not only enhances our knowledge of these atrocities but also highlights how bodies become the locus of violent contestation during conflict. Notes 1 For information about the involvement of teachers in the PKI as well as the impact of the killings on this profession, see Orr (1990) and Thomas (1981). Please note, however, the anti-PKI bias of the Thomas article. Also, for one published account of an ex-tapol who was a teacher, see Ibu Surati’s story in Junge (2005). 2 The transcript of Pak Buwono’s story was emailed around on the Wahana-news email list in September 2008 with the subject line ‘Mengenang Tragedi 65’. The email says that it is a summary of ‘the transcript of an interview with [Pak Buwono] on 4 March 2001 in Jakarta’. While the names in the transcript had already been changed in this email, I have further de-identified the information contained by assigning new pseudonyms and removing the names of places in the text. It is likely, however, that some, particularly those in the 1965 survivor community, will know who Pak Buwono truly is. 3 ‘Budiman’ is also a pseudonym, though the similarity between ‘Buwono’ and ‘Budiman’ is comparable to the similarity between his real name and the name to which he was forced to confess. 4 Interview with Ibu Titiek, Ibu Lani and Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005. This incident seems to have been related to Ibu Titiek by the wife of the victim, though this is not entirely clear in her testimony. 5 These practices have been occurring since at least the Pleistocene epoch. The earliest known case is the 600,000-year-old Bodo cranium, exhumed in Ethiopia, which shows signs of scalping, see Conroy et al. (2000). 6 Levi is asking a larger question about the murderous tactics and suffering inflicted by the Nazis in the concentration camps (Levi 1988), cited in Semelin (2007: 291). 7 In his footnotes, Siregar does not go into detail about who told him this information. Please note that the translation of the title is mine. Siregar also notes another case of mutilation in Bali in which the victim was made in babi guling (translated here roughly as ‘suckling pig’), in which he was impaled ‘from anus to mouth and burned while turning [on a spit]’ (1993: 240). 8 Please note, however, that Fuoss is also talking about the ways in which lynching events set the stage for continuing violence, see also Harold and DeLuca (2005) and Wood (2009). 9 Mak can mean ‘mother’, ‘aunty’, and so on; usually a polite term of address for an older woman or a woman of one’s mother’s generation. 10 Interview with Ibu Lani, Ibu Titiek along with Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005. Please note that it is not clear in Ibu Titiek’s testimony what sort of vehicle was used to drag Mak, only that it was a vehicle of some sort. 11 Compare with Harrison (2006). As a characteristic of trophy collecting, this would also imply an aspect of competition between perpetrators. === [PDF page 144] === Mutilation and sexual violence 129 12 The organisation referred to here was the Persatuan Guru Republik Indonesia Non-Vaksentral, a Teachers’ Union in Indonesia during the Sukarno period. 13 From studies done into the long-term effects of torture in other contexts, persistent pain is a commonly reported complaint. See, for example, Williams et al. (2010). 14 One of the women in a group interview that I did in West Sumatra was particularly insistent about showing me the inside of her forearms where she said she had been burned with cigarettes. === [PDF page 145] === Humiliation and the strip-searching of women and girls In this chapter, I look more closely at the theme of sexualised forms of humiliation. In previous chapters, I have discussed humiliation and its role in demoralising and dehumanising those who were arrested or killed following the 1965 coup. Here, however, I consider particular forms of sexualised violence perpetrated predominantly against women and older teenage girls in terms of their uses to harm and humiliate victims. First, I explore the various forms and techniques used to humiliate and degrade women, including sexualised humiliation; second, I investigate a specific form of humiliation, that is, the strip-searching of female detainees for alleged PKI ‘marks’ (cap or stempel). The rationale for singling out and grouping together these manifestations of humiliation as sexualised violence lies in the ubiquity of stories about these experiences in my research. Strip-searching and other methods of humiliation were regularly brought up in women’s testimonies and in various primary and secondary sources about the violence following the coup. For the women I interviewed, being strip-searched was an often recounted experience, as were other types of sexualised humiliation. This ubiquity is the basis for my main argument in this chapter; that is, given how widespread these sexualised forms of humiliation were, they must be seen as fundamental to the strategies used to harm victims and, more precisely, to harm female victims. Testimonies of humiliation and shame Words of humiliation and shame about degrading, cruel and inhumane treatment were common in the testimonies of both the women and men who took part in this project. For those who were imprisoned, humiliation and shame came in many forms. These included: being treated as an animal; being forced to live in unclean, overcrowded conditions; unable to bathe or go to the toilet without either being watched by guards or fellow prisoners; being kept hungry enough to coerce desperate prisoners into ‘shameful’ acts or to eat inedible food that would, in turn, make them sick. These shameful acts included, for example, some women’s testimonies of being coerced into sexual relationships with guards or soldiers out of hunger (which some described as ‘shameful’) as well as some testimonies that described prisoners being willing === [PDF page 146] === Humiliation and strip-searching 131 to do ‘anything at all’ (apa saja) to get food, including sometimes stealing from others. During interrogations, the aggressive, persistent and often inventive abuses by perpetrators regularly involved deliberate strategies to humiliate and shame detainees. The more common of these strategies included: forced nakedness (both men and women) and strip-searches (mostly women, discussed in the following section); abusive and derogatory accusations; various sexualised forms of torture; being injured or frightened to the extent that a prisoner could not control his or her bodily functions; being forced to act like, and being treated like, an animal; and numerous other acts of degradation. Overall, many described their time in detention in terms of humiliation. Many spoke about being dominated and being made to feel powerless or unable to control what happened to them, including control over their bodies, and, once again, frequent descriptions of being treated like an animal. Detention and humiliation Humiliation took many forms for detainees. Some testimonies from ex-political prisoners describe how guards or others in charge at the detention centres were inventive in their ways of humiliating detainees. This treatment was rationalised as part of cruel and unusual ‘punishments’ or, in some descriptions, seems to have stemmed from perverse enjoyment at watching suffering. However the treatment was described, it is clear that these actions were frequently and purposefully intended to humiliate and harm detainees. Of these descriptions, the most common were actions that made prisoners endure some kind of physical pain or exertion, as well as mental suffering. There were many examples of these kinds of punishments given in a group interview in West Sumatra with Ibu Rabitta, Ibu Progo and Ibu Jusufa (September 2005), all of whom had spent time as political detainees. In this interview, they spoke about how punishment and humiliation were commonly combined, at least in the sense that humiliation was rationalised as punishment, however specious that logic. One story they related involved Ibu Rabitta’s husband, who had also been detained at another detention centre and who later told his wife what had happened to him and the other men where he was detained. As Ibu Rabitta recounted, one form of punishment was to bury detainees up to their necks in the detention centre’s toilets. IBU RABITTA: My husband was detained at [another place]. He was imprisoned with many others, and they suffered a great deal. Many of them suffered. They would even be put into the toilets. One day they put him in a toilet. IBU PROGO: Buried him in a toilet (she lifts her hands to under her chin and mimes being buried up to the neck). IBU RABITTA: Yes, they buried him in a toilet. ANNIE: Why? === [PDF page 147] === 132 Humiliation and strip-searching IBU PROGO: Because they could bury him in a toilet. They buried him in a toilet for a whole day. IBU RABITTA: [ … because] they could, that’s the kind of thing they would order the men to do. With those kinds of punishments, it’s better to be dead. I would rather tell them to shoot me in the middle of a field, that’s what I’d say, rather than suffer like that. I couldn’t endure it. Being forced to stand in faeces all day would not only have been traumatic and degrading but also physically dangerous for the detainee. The risk of infection, bacterial and viral illnesses, protozoa and toxin-based illnesses would have been high. Additionally, given the lack of food supplied to prisoners, this would have significantly increased the likelihood of the prisoner suffering from potentially life-threatening illnesses such as gastroenteritis, dysentery and other faecal-borne infections. Being buried up to the neck in faeces, as Ibu Rabitta and Ibu Progo explained, however, was a punishment that the guards meted out on prisoners ‘because they could’. Forcing prisoners to stand in a toilet all day, as with other deeply degrading ‘punishments’ described to me during the course of this project, was a part of the humiliation and debasement of people detained in the camps and centres. In his famous work, The Survivor (1976), which depicts the Nazi death camps during the Second World War, Terrence Des Pres examines these types of punishments, describing them as part of the ‘excremental assault’ of the camp system. For Des Pres, in the extreme conditions of the camps, forcing inmates to live in their own filth was a deliberate policy to destroy them physically, mentally and spiritually; to seek the ‘death of the soul’. As he asks, ‘How much self-esteem can one maintain, how readily can one respond with respect to the needs of others, if both stink, if both are caked with mud and faeces?’ (1976: 60) Here, Des Pres is not only describing the physically dangerous environment of being forced to survive in excrement and vomit, with the accompanying diarrhoea, starvation and typhus bringing painful death without dignity or comfort. Rather, Des Pres’ ‘excremental assault’ speaks more to the powerlessness of living in these conditions and the inability to gain control over what happens to oneself; to the point where even the semblance of trying to stay clean becomes intimately tied to retaining dignity and a sense of self in the face of this debasement and humiliation. During the course of this project, there were many stories by former detainees who explained how they had been forced to live in cramped, unsanitary and substandard conditions, described by some as ‘sardine cans’.1 Being clean, even being able to go to the toilet in these conditions, were sometimes depicted as important achievements. Particularly when women were describing the early years of their detention, when hundreds of thousands of people were incarcerated across the country, the conditions for many seem to have been extremely damaging and dangerous for inmates, both physically and mentally. When I asked women about the places where they had been detained, their accounts often focused on the physical environments of these places as well as === [PDF page 148] === Humiliation and strip-searching 133 their bodies and how they had been changed by these environments. By this I mean that women would often emphasise the size of the cell(s) they had been kept in, list how many people had been in the cell, how clean it was, if the building were brick or timber, if the floor were cement or wood or dirt, whether it had been hot or cold, if they had had any supplies or bedding, if there were somewhere to go to the toilet, what there was to eat, and other physical aspects of these environments. They would also describe the experiences of living within these environments. These would often focus on the techniques and strategies they had to come up with to deal with having, usually, so many people confined in small spaces, or how they stayed cool or warm, or how they tried to stay clean. In some extreme cases, this involved having to sleep pressed up against one another, sometimes even sitting up against one another, because there was simply not enough room for everyone to lie down, or all of them having to use a bucket in one corner of the room as the toilet. Changes in their bodies were also emphasised, particularly the process of becoming thinner, weaker and sicker from hunger. These physical conditions of the places they were detained and the physical experiences of being detained were often described in individualised parts. Women and men described these different aspects of their time in detention, some using short, even truncated sentences which relayed partial details in ellipses. The testimony of Pak Gunadi is one example of this. Pak Gunadi trained as a teacher in the 1950s and was even selected to take part in teaching training overseas. In the 1960s, while working at a technical college in East Java, he joined one of the teachers’ unions. Once people began to be taken from their homes during the night in October 1965, Pak Gunadi left his wife and family and fled to Jakarta. He was eventually captured, however, and after spending some time at a military command post, was taken to the Kalisosok prison in Surabaya, East Java. He described Kalisosok as ‘horrible’ (nyeri), saying, Many people died. At that time there was no medical care. Minimal food. In the end, lots were skinny. Dried-out, and in the end, died [ … ] The food, maybe three to five spoons of rice. Maybe some cabbage, the old cabbage that was thrown out at the market [ … ] The rooms were filled beyond capacity. If they were meant to hold thirty or forty people, there would be ninety or a hundred. So we would all have to sleep on top of one another. [ … ] Pushed up against each other (mepet). [ … ] If someone had scabies, we’d all have scabies. If one person had something, we would all get it. We [would all] suffer.2 A year later, Pak Gunadi was moved to Nusakambangan, another prison located on a small island to the south of Central Java, formerly used as a prison island by the Dutch. He spent six years at Nusakambangan before being moved to Buru Island for a further two years, eventually being released in 1979. Pak Gunadi’s descriptions of the places where he was incarcerated, particularly of the conditions at Kalisosok, were broken up in this way. The sentences that he === [PDF page 149] === 134 Humiliation and strip-searching made were short and relayed details of individual aspects: people died, there was little food, people were skinny, the food was bad, the rooms were cramped, it was uncomfortable, diseases spread. In many women’s testimonies also, this kind of fragmented speech describing separate parts of the experience of being imprisoned in these conditions, as with the changes in their bodies as a result, seemed to reflect memories of the fragmented and increasingly sicker parts of their bodies. The difficult and filthy conditions of imprisonment that many of the women described were reinforced and made worse by the punishments and degradation meted out by guards and officials. A number of women, such as Ibu Progo and Ibu Jusufa, but many others including Ibu Lia, spoke at length about how the assault on bodies and minds from living in overcrowded conditions with little food was difficult, but additional torments were a major part of their suffering. Above all, the delight that some guards seemed to derive from watching prisoners suffer in humiliating ways was remembered with disgust. Ibu Tati was one who described some of the numerous ways in which humiliation was both part of alleged punishments for detainees as well as a form of entertainment for guards. When she was first detained along with her new baby, she remembered there being numerous punishments and techniques that her jailors used to humiliate and degrade her and her fellow detainees. Being left locked in a cell with many other detainees with no access to a toilet for long periods of time was one example that Ibu Tati gave. The task of going to the toilet in front of everyone and of being unable to stay clean was described as something difficult that simply had to be done. Ibu Tati also, however, related how sometimes detainees were forced to perform humiliating and physically difficult acts if they wanted to bathe or go to the toilet. We were tortured by being beaten often [and] if I wanted to wash in the morning, I [had to] squat and walk like a duck, and was beaten. [We were] ordered to walk like a monkey, to take pieces of soap into our mouths, like this, to walk like this (she mimed being forced to crouch down with her upper body).3 Ibu Tati’s description of these events shows that there was no rationale for this violence other than it appears to have been amusing for the guards. Being forced to perform these acts was for the ‘reward’ of being able to go to the toilet outside and thus not be forced to do so in the cell full of other detainees. This false rationalisation betrays the level of sadism4 and pathological empowerment that guards derived from this treatment of prisoners. This particular form of humiliation described by Ibu Tati, being made to ‘walk like a duck’, was a form of punishment or humiliation that I heard described several times during the course of this research. When I first heard this expression during an interview early in my fieldwork, I was not sure what ‘walk like a duck’ meant. When I heard it again in a small group interview in Sumatra, I asked what it meant, and the action was described for me. Essentially, the victims were made to squat down, sometime with their hands behind their === [PDF page 150] === Humiliation and strip-searching 135 Figure 7.1 Punishment of prisoners heads, and forced to ‘walk’ forward while remaining squatting.5 The activity is difficult, both in terms of the physical strain on joints and muscles and with trying to retain balance. The author and artist, A. Gumelar Demokrasno, who was imprisoned between 1968–79, has depicted this form of punishment in his graphic narrative of his time in detention, Dari Kalong sampai Pulau Buru (From Kalong to Buru Island) (2005). As portrayed in numerous testimonies, the more detainees suffered from being forced to walk like a duck and other humiliating ‘punishments’, the greater the enjoyment some of the guards seemed to take from watching them. In another interview with Ibu Tati, this time together with Ibu Susi, they described how detainees were ordered to perform several physically demanding and humiliating tasks as punishments that provided amusement for the men in charge of the detention camp. If the task were particularly demanding for a prisoner, then she would be ordered to continue doing it. As the testimony of Ibu Tati and Ibu Susi shows, one of the clearest examples of this was forcing sometimes heavily pregnant women to walk like ducks for the amusement of the guards. IBU TATI: And then, some of the women were pregnant, and were ordered to walk like ducks. IBU SUSI: Had to walk like ducks. === [PDF page 151] === 136 Humiliation and strip-searching IBU TATI: Their big stomachs! Like Ibu M– from [a nearby town], with her big belly. IBU SUSI: She was pregnant. They ordered her to walk like a duck and of course she couldn’t, but they kept ordering her to do it. IBU TATI: She was pregnant at the time. IBU SUSI: Pregnant and ordered to walk like a duck. To walk like that, with a belly like that, how could she? [ … ] IBU TATI: There was lots of that, [prisoners] being ordered to walk around like ducks. There was another girl who had to as well, a girl who was ordered to strip and open her bra [while doing it … ] Then they’d pull on her nipples, pull them.6 The difficulty of being forced to walk like a duck for these women was made more arduous by their pregnancies, the movement of dragging their bent up knees forward obstructed by their distended stomachs. As Ibu Tati and Ibu Susi explained, however, it was this difficulty which made it all the more entertaining for their guards. As they said, even though it was impossible for one of the pregnant women, Ibu M –, to carry out the walking, ‘they kept ordering her to do it’. The connection between punishment and humiliation, and entertainment for the guards, was plain; the ‘punishment’ of being made to walk this way meant that, when the victim could not perform the task, she would in turn be further punished. This testimony given by Ibu Tati and Ibu Susi also betrays the often sexualised nature of humiliation and punishments used against women detainees. One of the girls ordered to walk like a duck was made to do so naked. The intentional humiliation of this girl by forcing her to do this is evident; not only was she degraded and dehumanised to perform this display, she was further demeaned by having to do so without covering, her body exposed for the entertainment of the guards watching. Sexualised forms of humiliation Sexualised forms of humiliation, as in the example described by Ibu Tati and Ibu Susi, were often perpetrated against both male and female detainees, though they appear to have been more commonly used against women. In interviews with ex-tapol women, these forms of humiliation regularly involved forced nakedness, forced and coerced sexual acts, and, as described in previous chapters, sexualised forms of torture. Once again, sometimes such acts seem to have been rationalised by guards and others in charge in detention centres as punishment, while at other times, they were evidently carried out in order to demean detainees and to provide entertainment or sexual service for those in charge. Ibu Astuti was one of the women who described various forms of sexualised humiliation and degradation of women detainees. In her testimony, she detailed an incident of intentional humiliation involving twelve teenage girls who were === [PDF page 152] === Humiliation and strip-searching 137 members of the Communist Party’s youth association, Pemuda Rakyat, one of whom was her younger sister. The girls had been rounded up by members of the militia and police and taken to a house that was being used as an ad hoc detention centre. There the girls were interrogated, raped and their heads shaved. Yes, [they were] interrogated, they did whatever they wanted, shaved off their hair, all of those [girls … ]. My younger sister had her hair shaved off, oh God, only God knows why these girls were shaved. Just imagine it, those young, pretty girls, 14, 15, 16 years old, all of their hair cut off, thrown into one room all of them in that house, unable to cover their heads. And they had their heads shaved so they were ashamed. And ashamed to go out, they weren’t allowed to. All of them kept in that room. [ … ] And yes, they were stripped naked, stripped naked [ … ] and raped [ … ] they were all [raped], one by one, by all of them [ … ] After they shaved their heads, yes, they did whatever they wanted to them. Completely shaved, yes, supposedly shaved to show how bad they were is what they meant by it, then they were raped. All put in the one room, shut up in this room and raped.7 At that point, my colleague Narny Yenny asked if she knew who raped the girls. Ibu Astuti replied that, yes, she knew them, ‘everyone knew’ who the perpetrators were because they were members of their community, but that these men had died some years ago. As she explained, ‘It wasn’t outsiders who raped them, they were from the same area. They knew the men who raped them.’ Ibu Astuti then said that the girls were taken to the soldiers’ post where they were stripped naked and raped again by the soldiers there. ‘[The soldiers] forced them, forced, forced them to take off their clothes [ … and the soldiers] raped them again at the post.’ When Narny asked what had happened to the girls, Ibu Astuti said that they had eventually been released. Her younger sister, who had been engaged to another man, ran away to another town after that. My sister ran off and married [a different man] in –. [She was] ashamed that her husband might know she wasn’t a virgin any longer, afraid of her family, so she ran. She was looking forward to getting married, to the wedding, but after what happened [ … ] she couldn’t do anything, so when she was released, she ran away, ashamed. As in many parts of the world, sociocultural values governing, in particular, young and unmarried women’s sexuality in Indonesia are closely tied to maintaining chastity and virginity before marriage. Women’s accepted social and sexual desires revolve around marriage and around obtaining and maintaining status within the community through marriage (see Jennaway 2002). This is, in turn, closely tied to women’s labour and livelihood within the mostly patriarchal and patrilineal systems of accumulating and passing on wealth === [PDF page 153] === 138 Humiliation and strip-searching and inheritance across Indonesia. In mid-1960s Indonesia, sexual activity outside marriage meant loss of sexual reputation, and therefore seriously compromised a woman’s marriage prospects, leaving her potential livelihood and status within the community insecure and vulnerable. For Ibu Astuti’s younger sister, the loss of sexual reputation may also have resulted in negative repercussions from her family, despite the fact that she did not consent to the sexual violence perpetrated against her. As Ibu Astuti explained, for her younger sister, her only solution was to run away, rather than face the ongoing stigma and shame of having been raped. A few years later when I interviewed Ibu Astuti again about these events (September 2005), we talked about what had happened to her sister. Once again, Ibu Astuti explained what had happened to her sister and her young friends, describing their interrogation and repeated rape by the soldiers. She told me that, after moving to a new area, her sister later married another man. The shame of being raped, however, meant that she would never return to her family’s village. As she finished talking about what had happened to her sister, Ibu Astuti once again stressed that the girls had been raped in order to shame them, repeating also that the girls’ hair had been shaved off in order to ‘show that they were bad’. Hair-shaving can mean many things in Indonesia with these meanings changing over time and place. For babies, the first head shaving has special significance. Across various parts of Southeast Asia, hair-cuttings have traditionally held somewhat sacred meanings, particularly if it were the hair of a powerful ruler (Reid 1988). Moreover, the significance of hair-shaving, while gendered, is frequently tied to forms of control and/or humiliation when done to either a man or woman (or girl or boy). To cite only a few examples of the relation between exerting control/causing humiliation and head shaving in recent Indonesian history, in studies of prisoners’ experiences in Japanese internment camps in Indonesia during the Second World War, for example, there are numerous references to the shaving of women prisoners’ heads, described mostly as punishments and as a method of humiliation (Emery 2010). Also during the Japanese Occupation, there are accounts of (male only?) school children, university students and officers having their heads shaved and the offence that this caused (Legge 1988; Mrázek 2000). More contemporarily, male street children have their heads shaved/hair cut off when they are caught by police, once again, as a sign of humiliation and control (Berman 2000; Beazley 2003). In Aceh, there have been reports of women having their heads shaved as punishment for having been supposedly ‘caught’ not obeying religious Numerous informants from different parts of Sumatra and Java related stories of head-shaving or of hair being cut very short, particularly against women and teenage girls. In Chapter 5, Ibu Mamik’s experience of having her long hair cut off after she was forced to perform oral sex on her torturers was described as an intentionally degrading procedure to show her that she ‘deserved to be treated [that] way’ (cited in Susanti 2006: 30). Pak Agus and Pak Pramano, === [PDF page 154] === Humiliation and strip-searching 139 two male ex-tapol I interviewed in Sumatra (September 2005), related seeing women political prisoners often being paraded in public areas with their heads shaved. After describing these events, Pak Agus concluded, ‘The women had their heads shaved, shaved and marched all together to crowded areas. That was true suffering for them … The lady here too had her head shaved [he was referring to a woman in the room with us].’ The woman to whom he was referring was the wife of one of the group of men I was interviewing. It was obvious at the time that she was upset by the topic of conversation and did not wish to talk about it, so I did not press for more information. In these and other stories about women’s hair being removed, the comments made by victims of this violence, or by those who recounted these events, describe these acts as intentionally shaming or degrading. The use of hairshaving of the women, combined with stories of how these women were then made to go out in public areas, seems to imply an intent not only for the violation of the victim’s physical (and mental) integrity to be witnessed but also for the gender and sexuality of the victim to be fetishised. The relationship between constructions of sexuality and the many physical behaviours and dress which signify these constructions is, at all times, a product of complex and competing cultural norms, religious codifications surrounding behaviour and numerous other local interpretations. What covers the female head is, in many ways, different from what covers the male head in Indonesia. The hair itself is most important: style, length, colour and, critically for women, how much can be seen in public all hold varying meanings which are interpreted in varying ways at different times and places. The killings were perpetrated some twenty years prior to the Islamic resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s when there was a marked increase in the number of Muslim women choosing to wear jilbab (the Indonesian term for hijab which completely covers the hair, often secured with pins and which also covers the neck and ears) (Smith-Hefner 2007). Nevertheless, at least some Muslim women at the time would have worn kerudung or kudung, a light piece of fabric that is draped over the hair but which often leaves part of the hair and neck visible. Whatever may or may not have covered the hair of women during this period, however, it is the hair itself and its deliberate removal which speak most directly to how this practice of shaving or in other ways removing women’s hair was an act of sexualised humiliation. In determining how and why women’s heads were shaved as a method of humiliation and subjugation, the age of these women is also crucial. These stories invariably depict the experiences of younger women. As can be observed with other forms of sexualised violence perpetrated against female victims following the 1965 coup, hair removal seems to have been most frequently used against younger women and older teenage girls. This further underlines how hair removal as an act of shaming must be seen as both gendered (it is an act used predominantly against younger women) and sexualised (the act of humiliation is one which plays upon constructions of younger female sexuality). Thus existing sociocultural dynamics governing what female bodies should === [PDF page 155] === 140 Humiliation and strip-searching be, their appearance and form, were deliberately manipulated by changing that appearance, creating an effective weapon which played upon concepts of shame, honour and sexuality that are attached to female bodies. The sexualisation of humiliation during the violence which followed the 1965 coup took many other forms. Ibu G’s testimony, recounted in the Komnas Perempuan report (2007), offers further examples of how suspected PKI supporters were attacked and humiliated by the militias during the killings. In her account, Ibu G begins by describing the terrifying day that a mob attacked her home in Bali and the murder of her husband and in-laws. My family’s tragedy happened in 1965 … in October. One morning a group of people came to our house and asked my in-laws and husband to come out. All of us were in the house at the time. I held my baby tightly in my arms, who had just turned one year old. The people were yelling out, ‘Burn it! Just burn it if they don’t want to come out!’ My husband … picked up the baby and we all went out by the back gate. In the blink of an eye, he pushed me down on the ground, in between where the clumps of bamboo grew. He then went straight back into the house to help his parents, but the house was already on fire. I saw my husband come out. But his body, as with his parents’ bodies, was already burnt. And the people outside were waiting for them. They beat and cut my husband’s and in-laws’ bodies. They were helpless. Their bodies were left sprawled on the dirt behind our house. I was shaking in fear. My baby, who usually cried a lot, was very quiet. We were deathly afraid. (Cited in Komnas Perempuan 2007: 68) Ibu G hid in the bamboo with her baby while she watched her husband and parents-in-law murdered. When the mob discovered her, instead of killing her, they publically ridiculed and humiliated her. The people were still gathered outside the house. They were looking for me. Suddenly they saw my baby and me in amongst the bamboo. They dragged me out, then stripped me naked in front of the bodies of my husband and in-laws. I told them, ‘Please don’t kill my baby. If you want to kill me, just kill me.’ But they didn’t kill me, but they marched me naked everywhere around the [village]. Then they hung a sign around my neck while shouting, ‘Setan [devil]! Whore! Communist! Killer of the generals!’ After being taken all around the village, I was tied up in front of the village hall, still completely naked. Then they left. A number of men approached me and groped my body in a horrible way. I didn’t know where on earth my baby was. But I couldn’t really ask them. I was tied up naked in front of the village hall for nearly twenty-four hours without being given anything to eat or drink. (Cited in Komnas Perempuan 2007: 68–69) Paraded around her village naked with curses and epithets shouted at her, Ibu G’s attackers deliberately engaged in callous and calculated methods to === [PDF page 156] === Humiliation and strip-searching 141 humiliate and degrade her. Reminiscent of the violence and humiliation used against other women, such as Ibu D whose experiences were related in Chapter 5, enforced public nakedness was used as a method to terrify and degrade victims in distinctly sexualised ways. One of the central characteristics of torture is its use to humiliate and degrade the victim. As Elaine Scarry has argued, however, torture is also about the ‘ritual’ of violence as repeated acts of display (1985: 28). After a day and a night of being tied up on display, naked, the mob returned and took Ibu G to some soldiers. These soldiers interrogated her and, while she did not remain in detention for long, she was ordered to ‘report’ to them periodically. Such acts of display, torture and degradation are reminiscent of those described by Orlando Patterson as ‘sacrificial lynching’ in the American south (1998).8 As Harvey Young (2005) highlights, however, these performative aspects of display and torture in lynching objectify and fetishise the body. As with the case of the treatment of Ibu G, her forced nakedness and display created an objectified artefact of female flesh, an object to be pointed to, ogled, groped and abused. When Ibu G returned the next day to where her house had stood, the bodies of her parents-in-law and husband had disappeared, but she was thankful to discover that a neighbour had rescued her baby. During her mandatory reporting to the local military station, she was forced to have sex with the soldiers. As she added, ‘Sometimes they would come during the night to sleep with me. They wouldn’t let me move to another house. Because if I moved away, they could accuse me of trying to run away’ (cited in Komnas Perempuan 2007: 69). Forced into a situation of sexual slavery, experiences which are discussed further in the following chapter, there is little mention in the report of what happened to her afterwards. The testimonies by women such as Ibu G, Ibu Astuti and many others reveal both how victims of the purges were humiliated and degraded as well as how the forms of this humiliation and degradation were persistently gendered and sexualised. The shaving of women’s heads, the parading of women victims with their hair and/or their clothing removed, and numerous other forms humiliation were deliberate strategies to degrade and shame victims in ways which played upon sociocultural and gendered constructions surrounding women’s behaviour and appearance. This discussion of experiences of humiliation and shame reflects only fragments of a much larger and complex story of victims’ experiences of these types of violence following the 1965 coup. In the second part of this chapter, I examine a particular form of sexualised humiliation which numerous women survivors of this violence recounted, that is the strip-searching of women and girls for PKI ‘marks’. Cap PKI: the strip-searching of women and girls for PKI ‘marks’ One of the more common themes that arose in women’s testimonies about their experiences of persecution following the 1965 coup was being strip-searched. === [PDF page 157] === 142 Humiliation and strip-searching In many of these stories, the reason given repetitively for these searches was that women members and sympathisers of the PKI (and its associated organisations, particularly Gerwani) had been marked in some way with a Communist symbol, usually around the genital region. Sometimes this alleged symbol was described as the hammer and sickle (palu arit), but mostly it was referred to only as a ‘mark’, ‘brand’ or ‘tattoo’ (cap/stempel) which somehow denoted the PKI. The vast majority of the victims of these searches were older teenage girls and younger women, though some men may have also been searched. These searches were occasionally carried out within victims’ homes, but most often the searches were performed against women and teenage girls who had been brought into detention, whether that be within a prison, a police station, a military command post or any of the many ad-hoc detention facilities set up hastily in the months following October 1965 as hundreds of thousands were rounded up in the mass arrests. Soldiers and policemen carried out the searches, though there were many stories that also described strip-searches by members of the civilian militia groups. In terms of the general pattern of occurrences, women described being strip-searched for PKI marks regularly as part of the initial period of detention, however, a few women described strip-searches also being carried out arbitrarily well into the duration of imprisonment. These strip-searches were, in all cases, sexual assaults. In every incident described in women’s testimonies, these searches were physical assaults of a highly sexualised nature without the consent of the victim. I underline this point in order to highlight the fact that these searches were deliberate violations of the victims’ personal and sexual integrity and, conversely, that no woman’s testimony reported any of the justifications given in modern prison systems for strip and body cavity searches (such as to prevent the smuggling of weapons or other contraband). This is unsurprising given that the overwhelming majority of victims were captured, imprisoned and killed without any form of due process. Thus the only justification given, if any, was that female Communists were marked as such and so the strip-searches were (at least in some cases) a process of verification of identity through sexual assault. The strip-searches were also frequently the prelude to, or part of, other attacks on victims. Some women described being beaten and verbally harassed while they were being searched, including a great deal of abuse ranging from sexual innuendo to accusations of promiscuity, immorality, and other epithets commonly made against women who were perceived as Communist supporters. The use of strip-searches, combined with these other forms of harassment and abuse, made these practices a particular form of sexualised humiliation. The strip-searches also often led to rape and other forms of sexual assault. Experiences of being strip-searched Stories by women who were strip-searched often followed a common pattern. Usually shortly after being detained, whether that be at a prison, a guard post === [PDF page 158] === Humiliation and strip-searching 143 or some other ad-hoc detention facility, women were ‘checked’ (diperiksa). This ‘checking’ would regularly be part of the initial stages of interrogation. Either individually or in small groups, women were told to take off or lift up various articles of clothing, or to remove all of their clothes. If they refused, the interrogator would force them to comply, either by ripping the women’s clothing off himself, or coercing compliance through threats of violence. The interrogator/s would then ‘check’ the women for the PKI mark/symbol on the genital region (inner thigh, pubic and perineal regions and buttocks) and on or below the breasts. The descriptions given by the women who chose to speak with me about these searches varied considerably but all emphasised that being stripped and searched was a violent and invasive experience and that they had felt humiliated and abused. What they also emphasised was that these searches often led to other forms of violence, particularly sexual violence. Two women who spoke in more detail about these strip-searching practices were Ibu Susi and Ibu Tati. Both women were arrested and detained in West Sumatra towards the end of 1965 and both had been strip-searched as part of their interrogations. Together they explained to me how the soldiers who ran the detention centre where they were being held (a local military command post) had been responsible for many of the interrogations and ‘checks’, but that various local policemen had also been involved. They explained numerous forms of sexual violence against women detainees before moving on to discuss strip-searches, which I cite at length here: IBU TATI: [They looked for them] but there were never any Gerwani marks! [It was] just to torture us. When they were looking for marks, it was part of interrogations. It was really only to shame us, it happened to all of our friends. At that time … IBU SUSI: They would bring in a woman and, well, we weren’t at all like that, we were not like that. It was meant to show us that we didn’t have any morals. IBU TATI: How do you think we felt? It happened while we were being interrogated at [the local command post]. The [interrogator], Pak S, Pak S would say, ‘Where’s the mark?’ ‘What mark, Pak? There is no mark!’ The naked woman would reply. But we were all stripped. Almost completely naked, many only left wearing our underpants, no shirts or anything else. ‘What are you looking for, Pak? There’s no stamp, Pak, what stamp would there be? Other than the hole your thing goes into, there’s nothing.’ I said things like that. While this was going on, I was being beaten with a long piece of rubber. Smack! Here and here (she says, while touching different parts of her body). And with my baby, I was holding my baby close to me, saying ‘Oh God, oh God!’ IBU SUSI: They would search us all over. IBU TATI: We would be fondled. IBU SUSI: Yes, groped. ‘Don’t, Pak!’ I said, this was in front of one of the policemen, ‘Pak, I’m ashamed, stop, Pak.’ In front of the policeman, naked like === [PDF page 159] === 144 Humiliation and strip-searching that. ‘Don’t do this, Minang [West Sumatran] people don’t behave like this, please, I’m so ashamed. In the name of God, please don’t.’ IBU TATI: But he would get angry and tell you to shut your mouth [ … ] Even when we begged to God [for them to stop]. IBU SUSI: When being searched, a woman would be fondled from behind, from behind her, pushed forward or bent [over]. She would be fondled from behind and then be punched in the head by the soldier behind her. But then we would be too ashamed to talk about what happened. At this point in the interview, Ibu Tati and Ibu Susi moved on to talk about other forms of sexual violence against themselves and other women in the detention centre. When we returned to the topic of interrogations, however, they began recounting the strip-searches again: IBU SUSI: During the questioning, they would ask question, after question, after question, after question … IBU TATI: But that’s not all they would do. [They would keep on] asking questions, but all they were really after was to get between our legs [ … ] It was just so they could, you know, do ‘that’ to us. IBU SUSI: And we were ashamed because of [what they did] to us. [ … ] The thing that made it the worst was when [they] lifted and groped our chests, as if [they were] looking for [the PKI] marks.9 In their testimony, Ibu Tati and Ibu Susi made it plain that the strip-searches were a method used by their interrogators to humiliate them and as a prelude to other forms of sexual assault. As Ibu Susi described how women were searched, she mimed being pushed forward, and at another point, she re-enacted the behaviour of her interrogator, in which she performed various actions: pushing someone forward in a forceful way, ripping motions to demonstrate removing the victim’s clothing, and grabbing her own thigh and pushing against it. Ibu Tati did not use physical demonstrations of these actions to describe how the strip-searches had been perpetrated, except when she spoke about holding her baby to her chest in order to protect him while she was being beaten during the ‘checking’ process. For both women, it seemed that the violent, physical nature of these strip-searches needed to be performed in order to convey how forceful and invasive these experiences had been. Both also emphasised that being stripped naked and searched in these ways was used to humiliate and shame them. They also made it clear that they saw the whole process of being searched as a rather elaborate contrivance used to commit other forms of sexual violence against them. Such comments were common in the testimonies of other women who described experiences of being searched for PKI marks. Ibu Eny was another woman who spoke at length about these experiences. In her testimony, she outlined the various forms of sexual abuse that she had experienced and witnessed while in detention, === [PDF page 160] === Humiliation and strip-searching 145 drawing particular attention to how the process of interrogation often involved strip-searching and sexual violence. IBY ENY: When we were interrogated or questioned, [we] had to take off all [our] clothes [ … ] Everything was taken off. Yes, me and the other women [with me] all had our clothes taken off [ … ] Yes, taken off. They said because they wanted to check for marks [stempel], if [you were in] Gerwani, a Gerwani mark, if [you were in] Pemuda Rakyat, then they would look for a Pemuda Rakyat mark. Everything was taken off. Naked. That’s what it was like for all of us. [ … ] The same thing happened again at the military station, and then again at the police station [where they] did the interrogations. There were three who faced us. ANNIE: Where they men? IBU ENY: Yes, men. At that time [when we had to] take off our clothes, [we] didn’t want to be beaten. Yes, we were ordered to stand up, all of our clothes were taken down, only our underpants were left. Ha, it was like that that we were inspected. Our breasts, ni, diginikan (she clutches at her own breasts, pulling them up forcefully), up to the top, they said there was a mark there. Ha, there’s a mark here (she lifts her sarong with one hand, the other grabbed the front of her underpants), they said there’s a mark here. In reality, I think, it wasn’t a mark but our privates that [they] were looking at, doing things like that. Each person would be checked and of course there would never be any [marks]. There weren’t any, but we were all digitukan [treated in this manner].10 As with Ibu Susi and Ibu Tati, in this interview with Ibu Eny, gestures and bodily actions were used to convey the experience of being stripped and searched for PKI marks. Further, Ibu Eny employed ambiguous verbs in place of verbs which describe specific actions, such as ‘diginikan’ and ‘digitukan’, meaning roughly ‘treated in that way’.11 Avoiding naming particular forms of violence, specifically when talking about sexualised forms of violence, was common during my interviews with women survivors of the detention camps (see Pohlman 2008). The words themselves may have been euphemistic, yet when combined with the gestures, these women showed very clearly how their clothes were ripped off and how they were groped, and physically and sexually assaulted. Strip-searches as identification Ibu Eny’s description of being strip-searched for PKI marks calls attention to another aspect of this particular form of violence, namely that strip-searches appear to have served as a way to identify suspected PKI (female) followers. The work of anthropologists Arjun Appardurai (1998), Liisa Malkki (1995) and Allen Feldman (1991), all of whom examine identity-formation during mass violence, is instructive when analysing how victims’ identities as ‘PKI’ through these searches was a form of verification. In essence, in mass violence there is === [PDF page 161] === 146 Humiliation and strip-searching great social uncertainty about identity, particularly the identity of internal enemies, in this case, the PKI in Indonesia following the 1965 coup. The perceived infecting and contaminating quality of Communism at that time in Indonesia (discussed in Chapter 2) meant that ‘verificationist’ forms of violence helped perpetrators to determine who their victims were, thus enabling their The time following the 1965 coup was a period of great social upheaval and uncertainty in Indonesia. As a result of the Indonesian military’s propaganda, together with other social and political divisions which polarised the public, the PKI and its supporters were very quickly demonised and made pariahs within their own communities. The speed with which this demonisation was achieved, combined with the virulence of the anti-PKI campaign by the armed forces and their co-opted militia allies, meant that Communist supporters were suddenly seen as a dangerous internal enemy which needed to be sought out and destroyed. At the local level, people who had some form of affiliation with the PKI had to be uncovered and the full extent of the Communist Party’s dangerous and treacherous influence discovered so that it could be eradicated. Perpetrators during the massacres of 1965–66 committed some forms of violence against their victims to remove uncertainty over who the PKI and their sympathisers were. As I have argued elsewhere in relation to acts of mutilation during the massacres, by taking their victims apart, perpetrators attempted to uncover or expose their victims’ ‘real’ identities (Pohlman 2012). As with some other forms of violence during this period of mass violence, I argue here that the strip-searching of predominantly female alleged Communists was also a kind of identification through violence. The argument of violence-as-identification when seeking out and destroying internal enemies is built upon the combined theoretical insights offered by the works of Feldman (1991), Malkki (1995) and Appadurai (1998). These anthropologists’ theoretical developments offer insights into the connection between violence and verification of identity, and between how uncertain or unstable bodies and the material practices of violence on these bodies play a fundamental role in the production and commodification of particular forms of violence. In terms of how these strip-searches performed this ‘verificationist’ function, they transformed their victims into artefacts for the PKI (commodifying them as such), and, by doing so, invested these women’s bodies with a phantasmal search for and identification of what those bodies were. As Feldman (1991), for example, has argued, violence disconnects the body from the self and transforms it into a political commodity which can then be consumed by different sides of the conflict. The strip-searching of Ibu Eny or any of the thousands of other women accused of having Communist connections was an act that transformed an individual’s body into ‘a political construct and the self as apolitical residue, an excess left over from the process that transforms the body into a political form’ (Feldman 1991: 64). Feldman further argues, however, that this violence is also deterministic, identifying what that body is through violence. The fact that Iby Eny has been strip-searched for PKI ‘marks’ removes === [PDF page 162] === Humiliation and strip-searching 147 uncertainty over who she is or how she came to be there. She was/must be a member of the PKI, because her strip-search makes/proves it so.12 The violence perpetrated in these cases, strip-searches, is therefore self-rationalising. The idea itself, however, that women who were suspected Communist sympathisers would be searched for some kind of identifying mark is not without precedent in Indonesian history. Across Indonesia’s many cultures, there are wellestablished traditions which link permutations of the physical body with some form of heightened ability, be it spiritual power, ilmu, sexual prowess, increased or even supernatural strength, invulnerability or cunning. A survey of the many marks, tattoos, implants or even hairstyles used to achieve these various heightened abilities is not possible within the confines of this discussion.13 Some of these practices involving implants and marks, however, include susuk (implantations with metals and gems for increasing business, sexual or sporting prowess) and associated practices involving pusaka (heirlooms, relics and other sacred items said to be invested with special powers) (see Anderson 1972; Ricklefs 1974; Headley 2004). Modern Indonesian history also provides numerous examples whereby marks on the body are intimately connected to identity during violence. Probably the most well-known and well-analysed case is the ‘Mysterious Killings/Shootings’ (Petrus). These killings in the early 1980s in which thousands of suspected ‘criminals’ were murdered, their corpses often mutilated and then left out in public places, emphasised the connection between bodily marks and the perceived identities of victims (see Siegel 1998; Barker 1998; Cribb 2000). As David Bourchier describes, the victims were ‘frequently tattooed and almost always young and male’ and their bodies would be left out in public. ‘Victims frequently had their hands bound, and often bore marks of torture. The following day there would be a short report about the finding of a “mayat bertato” (tattooed corpse) in the local paper, usually accompanied by grisly pictures’ (Bourchier 1990: 184). Joshua Barker’s analysis of the Petrus killings further uncovers the connections between local state security apparatus and criminality, the making of local death lists and, in particular, how the killings were a method of identification. As Barker argues, ‘targets for the killings were identified … by the very visible markings on their bodies: tattoos’ (1998: 21). In this way, the identification of ‘criminals’ for elimination was about ‘the power of recognition’, Barker stating that ‘the situation was not so different from that during the killings of “communists” in 1965 and 1966 when people were forced to ask, “Am I PKI or non-PKI?”; only now they were forced to ask themselves about their “criminality”’ (1998: 20).14 To give another example of how marks on the body are tied to suspected identity and identification from modern Indonesian history, in his memoirs about his time fighting in the Revolution (1945–49), Soekamto Sajidiman, who would go on to be Indonesia’s ambassador to New Zealand, recalls an incident whereby enemies could be discovered by uncovering a secret mark. As Soekamto describes: It was widely rumoured by the enemy [Dutch forces] that they had delivered quite a few spies in [sic] the organisation of the Indonesian === [PDF page 163] === 148 Humiliation and strip-searching Army as well as among the public, so that an intensive search was instructed by the local commander. People said these spies were given special mark [sic] in the form of a cock or other strange signs. (1972: 21)15 Soekamto then explains how all the passengers on a train that he was on at the time were searched and that ‘some of them who were suspected had to enter a special room naked and bare footed who would soon be questioned and search [sic] carefully from top to bottom to make sure that they did not have these “cock” signs’ (1972: 21). Soekamto was, unfortunately, one of the passengers who was considered suspicious (because of his long nose16), and so was searched. A fight broke out between Soekamto and the young soldier who was searching him when a circular mark was found on his arm. As Soekamto tried to explain, the mark had been made when he was leaning against the door, where the head of a nail had protruded and made the mark. Fortunately, Soekamto was saved from being hauled away for being a Dutch spy by the intervention of the army commander, who knew Soekamto and released him (1972: 22). Soekamto’s description of the perceived ‘marks’ on the bodies of internal enemies hidden amongst the soldiers and general public during the Revolution bears striking resemblance to the strip-searching of mainly women accused of Communist allegiances in 1965. Soekamto described the alleged marking of spies used to infiltrate the Army and general population was a ‘psychological warfare’ tactic used by the Dutch (1972: 22). The strip-searching of people considered ‘suspicious’ in any way, therefore, even if for having a slight phenotypic difference in nose-size, became a way to uncover internal enemies. With great uncertainty over who the enemy was and how far their influence had spread within the community, physical proof of betrayal could supposedly be found on enemy bodies. As Appadurai, for example, has argued, uncertainty over who the enemies amongst us are brings about the need to search out and destroy these uncertain others; ‘we are back again with the problem of identification and uncertainty, the transformation of neighbours and friends into monsters, and the idea that social appearances are literally masks … beneath which truer, deeper, more horrible forms of identity may subsist’ (1998: 237–38). As in the case of strip-searching of alleged Communists in 1965–66, violence against the bodies of suspected traitors is done in order to search out and uncover proof of that betrayal, the alleged marks on the body providing the evidence needed to confirm their identity. Strip-searches within the detention system The last point I make here about the strip-searching of women and girls for PKI ‘marks’ relates strongly to the larger context in which they occurred. In story after story by women who experienced this type of violence, it became clear that the strip-searches can never be separated from the places and spaces in which these searches were perpetrated. By that I mean that === [PDF page 164] === Humiliation and strip-searching 149 strip-searches were crimes meant to hurt and humiliate, but they also were part of a larger system of control and terror. This was true in a number of ways. First, while it is correct that the searches were often performed during the initial period of detention, they were also performed at random times, for example, at night as part of rape. The arbitrary nature of when and where the searches might happen added to the fear and uncertainty of prisoners and was a deliberate strategy (among others) to keep those detained in fear, unable to familiarise themselves with their new environment in a place where they had already been violently removed and estranged from their everyday lives. These searches also usually happened as part of interrogations. Interrogations mostly happened in some form of separate space, such as a room designated for that task either on the grounds of the detention centre or nearby. Strip-searches, however, also sometimes were perpetrated in the women’s cells. The lack of any kind of secure space within the confines of the detention camp was further violated by the fear and uncertainty when everyday events and items took on potentially more frightening meanings; the disruption of routine might mean further violence; the door opening during the night might mean someone would be taken away and searched, or sexually assaulted, or killed. The defamiliarisation of space, compounded by the arbitrariness of violence within the detention centres, including clearly sexualised strip-searching techniques, contributed greatly to the women’s feelings of insecurity and terror. The searches also dramatically added to what Foucault (1979) calls the ‘hierarchical observation’ practices within detention which are, in essence, the technologies that make somatic domination so important in keeping prisoners under control (see also Feldman 1991). The captive under observation, forced to strip and assaulted, is manipulated by her own body’s visibility. This, in turn, feeds in to the wider technologies of control that use prisoners’ bodies to regulate and dehumanise them; through starvation, overcrowding and the non-access to adequate bathing and toileting facilities in the detention centres, discussed at length in Chapter 3. These technologies of control were also profoundly gendered in their practice. The forcible exposure of the female body, in the case of the strip-searches of political detainees following the coup, was in some ways a systematic and intimate examination through sexual violence. From my research, it seems that these strip-searches were commonly perpetrated predominantly against women and girls in detention and, as such, they were a significant experience of their political detention; their gender configured this political detention and so these forms of intimidation and punishment were targeted in gendered ways. In her research on women during the violence in Northern Ireland, Begoño Aretxaga (1997) examines the ‘dirty protests’ by women political prisoners at Armagh jail, in which they refused to wash or leave their tiny prison cells for over a year, surrounded by their own urine, excreta and menstrual blood. In her analysis, she emphasises how the women’s sexuality was crucial when looking at the instrumentality of bodily techniques of control during the strip-searching === [PDF page 165] === 150 Humiliation and strip-searching of female political prisoners at Armagh jail and during their dirty protests. In another piece, Aretxaga examines a case of mass strip-searches against IRA women prisoners in 1992 at the Maghaberry prison in Northern Ireland (2001). Building on Foucault’s emphasis on the construction of docile subjects as the rationale for disciplinary and punishment techniques, Aretxaga argues that sexual difference structures these techniques. As was the case for women who experienced this type of violence in the prison camps of Indonesia, the techniques for creation of docile (terrified) detainees was based both on sexual difference as well as sexual violence (2001: 8). As discussed, the strip-searches were frequently either a precursor or part of other forms of sexual violence against the women detainees. Further, it is the excessive and arbitrary nature of this violence, Aretxaga calling it a ‘dantesque excess’, which shows how the violence is an essential part of the prison system of control (2001: 2–6). Women and older teenage girls experienced strip-searches in their varying facets across Indonesia: as methods to terrify and harm them; as sexualised techniques of control and punishment; and as a means to identify them as the treacherous, Communist women that they were. The strip-searches in Indonesia against suspected Communist women were illustrative of what Veena Das and Ashis Nandi (1985) emphasised when they argued that it is not simply violence which causes harm, but also the form that violence takes that matters. As a particular form of sexualised violence and humiliation, these strip-searches were deployed against thousands, if not tens of thousands of women and girls within the vast network of prisons, camps and other ad-hoc detention facilities across Indonesia. Conclusion In this chapter, I have argued that sexualised forms of humiliation, particularly against women and girls, were both pervasive and a fundamental part of harm against victims during the mass violence that followed the 1965 coup. During interviews with both men and women survivors, sexualised forms of humiliation were recounted on a frequent basis in which individuals told stories about experiences of forced nakedness and of dehumanisation techniques which relied heavily of sexualised acts of harm. These techniques of harm and humiliation often involved the conflation of punishment and entertainment for the guards, soldiers and policemen who were their temporary or long-term torturers, interrogators and jailors. There were many stories of detainees being forced to perform degrading and humiliating acts as punishments for real or perceived infringements or simply because the victim was ordered to do so. These acts then provided entertainment for those in charge of the detainees; reinforcing feelings of disempowerment, humiliation and worthlessness. These forms of humiliation, in Holocaust survivor Terrence Des Pres’ terms (1976), were part of the ‘excremental assault’ of the detention camp system in which detainees were harmed, dehumanised and made wretched by their conditions. === [PDF page 166] === Humiliation and strip-searching 151 I have also argued in this chapter that one of the most pervasive forms of sexualised humiliation perpetrated against women and girls was strip-searching for cap PKI, or Communist markings. These strip-searches were all sexual assaults and were often followed by other forms of sexual violence against victims. They also performed a type of identify verification function; by strip-searching women who were alleged Communist members or sympathisers, perpetrators were able to uncover both the bodies and the identities of their victims. Furthermore, the strip-searches were a way to disempower and terrify women and girl detainees in intimate and sexualised ways. By examining how the strip-searches and other forms of sexualised violence were perpetrated against women and girls during the violence of 1965, I highlight the fundamental role of these types of violence in harming and humiliating victims. In the following chapter, I explore other forms of sexualised violence; enslavement and enforced prostitution. Notes 1 For example, former Gerwani leader, Sudjinah, described where she was detained as a ‘sardine can’, both in her autobiography and in my interviews with her in Jakarta in 2002 and 2005, see Sudjinah (2003: 30). 2 Testimony by Pak Gunadi, Jakarta, 2001. Transcript obtained from the Lontar Foundation. 3 Interview with Ibu Tati and Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005. 4 As noted briefly in Chapter 3, sadism (or ‘sexual sadism’) is an often misunderstood and misattributed diagnosis for those who harm others in ‘deviant’ or ‘degrading’ ways, most often in conjunction with sexual assaults. My use of the term ‘sadistic’ here is not meant to imply that these guards could be diagnosed as sadists, only that the level of enjoyment that they derived from treating prisoners in this way, as Ibu Tati describes it, can be viewed in relation with how the guards seem to have taken the pain of their victims as proof of their power and control over their victims. For one discussion paper on the difficulty of diagnosing sexual sadism, see McLawsen et al. (2008). 5 Being forced to walk like a duck is a form of punishment and humiliation in other settings in Indonesia. See, for example, an article by Laine Berman (2000: 169) in which she describes street children who were caught by the police during the 1990s and who had their heads shaved and were forced to walk like ducks as punishment. 6 Interview with Ibu Tati, Ibu Susi and Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005. 7 Interview with Ibu Astuti by Narny Yenny, Sumatra, October 2002, transcript from Lontar Foundation. 8 Patterson builds his analysis of numerous forms of lynching that were committed with impunity by whites against blacks on René Girard’s theories relating to how violence (with a focus on violence as sacrifice) functions to draw a community together, particularly when the community is facing a perceived enemy (1977). 9 Interview with Ibu Tati and Ibu Susi, together with Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005. 10 Interview with Ibu Eny, together with Narny Yenny, Sumatra, September 2005. 11 These words follow the passive construction ‘di-base verb-kan’; the gini and gitu in these cases roughly meaning ‘like this’ and ‘like that’, in turn creating passive verbs meaning something approximating ‘an action that was done by someone else to someone’. 12 This is very similar to what Elaine Scarry (1985: 28–29) describes as the ‘false motive syndrome’ for torture. The violence (in this case, strip-searches), is self-rationalising. === [PDF page 167] === 152 Humiliation and strip-searching 13 I would like to thank Laurie Margot Ross, Traci Smith, Ian Wilson, Vannessa Hearman, Emerald King, Nicholas Herriman, Jeremy Kingsley, Petra Mahy and Monika Swasti Winarnita for their personal communications with me regarding bodily marks and personal power in Indonesia, February 2013. 14 Here, Barker is quoting the title of an infamous article by Rochijat (1985). 15 I wish to thank Robert Cribb for passing on this source to me and for pointing out the similarities between this case and the strip-searches in 1965. 16 Long noses are traditionally associated with Dutch or, more generally, Western/ Caucasian people. === [PDF page 168] === Sexual slavery and istri diambil (wife-taking) This chapter considers forms of sexual enslavement, forced marriage and forced prostitution of women following the 1965 coup. In this analysis, I draw on wider research on sexual enslavement and related forms of violence during mass conflict and war in order to examine individual women’s experiences of these forms of sexualised violence in the Indonesian case. As with other forms of sexual violence discussed in previous chapters, in this chapter I argue that sexual enslavement and ‘wife-taking’ were common forms of violence against women at this time in Indonesia. As such, these various forms of sexual enslavement must be seen as a central aspect of the violence of 1965. When I first began this research over a decade ago, I very soon heard about the wives of men who were either detained or killed who were diambil (‘taken’) by other men. As time went on and I interviewed more and more men and women ex-tapol and wives of former prisoners, I learned how this ‘taking’ of women involved a wide range of sexual enslavement conditions, including forced marriages, women being kept as ‘secret’ or unofficial wives (sometimes called istri gelap), and women being forced into various forms of prostitution. The victims of these types of violence appear to have mainly been the wives and other female relatives of men killed or detained as well as women detainees. The conditions under which women entered into these relationships varied widely. For many women, there was no choice and their experiences can only be described as repeated rapes and sexual enslavement. As some of the testimonies discussed below show, some women saw entering into either a marriage or some other form of sexual relationship as a way to provide safety for themselves and often their children, though many of these decisions were made under various levels of coercion. As discussed in Chapter 4, some women pursued love-matches or actively sought out new relationships during detention or after the loss of partners during the killings. The focus of this discussion, however, is on the experiences of women who did not enter into new sexual relationships of their own free will or volition during the violence that followed the 1965 coup. Rather, the experiences of these women, revealed in the fragments of testimonies examined in this final chapter on sexual violence, involved high levels of coercion, force and violence, as well as the threat of violence and intimidation against the women themselves === [PDF page 169] === 154 Sexual slavery and istri diambil and against their loved ones. As such, the experiences should and must be understood as crimes against these women; as crimes of rape, sexual assault, sexual enslavement, enforced prostitution and forced marriage. Further, these sexually based offences must be understood within the context in which they were perpetrated. That is, these acts were committed as part of widespread attacks on a civilian population, in this case, against those perceived to have links with the Indonesian Communist Party, as a method to eradicate, humiliate and, in many other ways, harm victims. As such, these crimes of rape, sexual assault, sexual enslavement and enforced prostitution must be seen as constituting crimes against humanity per se.1 Sexual violence as international crimes: specific and distinct forms of harm This final chapter examines various forms of violence which were perpetrated in conditions of sexual slavery; that is, crimes against predominantly adult women which involved both ongoing abuse of a sexualised nature as well as some element of deprivation of liberty (discussed below).2 Sexual enslavement is a crime under international law and has been prosecuted as a means to commit genocide and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and for the former Yugoslavia (ICTR and ICTY).3 Prosecutors for the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) have also charged sexual slavery in a number of cases.4 While in this discussion I do not seek to argue a specific legal case for sexual enslavement as a crime against humanity during the violence of 1965–66, I do argue that, from my interviews with women survivors as well as numerous other primary and secondary sources, such a case could be made (for example, see Komnas Perempuan 2007: 52–54). Sexual enslavement, rape, enforced prostitution and forced marriages were all serious crimes committed against women following the 1965 coup. Sexual crimes committed as crimes against humanity or war crimes must be differentiated and better understood, rather than all such crimes being grouped together under a singular and undifferentiated indictment of rape. Rape is and should be considered a grievous crime; however, it is one crime within a spectrum of many sexual offences committed during and after the 1965 killings. Grouping all these offences under the blanket categorisation of rape fundamentally fails to not only comprehend the vast range of these acts, but it also fails the victims of these numerous crimes. In this chapter, therefore, I take up sexual enslavement as the scope for my analysis of individual women’s stories and experiences in specific terms. By this, I mean that I differentiate the processes of sexual enslavement over months and years from individual cases of sexual assault. Once again, rape and sexual enslavement are both crimes and both cause severe harm to victims. The experiences examined in this chapter in many ways echo those discussed in previous chapters, particularly Chapter 5, wherein sexual assault as part of killing, torture and intimidation of detainees was addressed. The cases of sexual enslavement === [PDF page 170] === Sexual slavery and istri diambil 155 and wife-taking discussed in this chapter are similar in many ways, including strong comparisons with: the threats and forms of intimidation; the places of detention; and the individual forms of sexual assault. To argue that rape and other forms of sexual violence, such as sexual enslavement, should be treated as related but separate crimes neither denies the serious harm caused by both nor hierarchises one over the other. Just as sexual crimes as part of mass atrocities should not be considered sub-tenants of other broader categories of international crimes, all sexual crimes should not be considered sub-tenants of ‘rape’. There are elements to the crime of sexual enslavement which require separate and special attention if we are to understand the many forms of sexualised violence perpetrated during mass atrocities. It is crucial that we find ways to understand and articulate the particular and different forms of harm, including the different yet related forms of sexualised harm. I would therefore argue that the separation of various forms of sexual violence into individual chapters and discrete discussions in this book speaks to the importance of fully comprehending and naming these many forms of sexual violence against women’s bodies and identities in the hope that we create mechanisms for accountability for these crimes. While sexual enslavement, enforced prostitution, forced marriage and many other sexual crimes have been perpetrated across the world with impunity, it is only in recent years that they have been recognised as crimes in international law. In 1998, sexual slavery was explicitly laid down as a crime against humanity and a war crime in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (see Oosterveld 2003–2004). In the two decades since, international law has come a long way in the development of international gender jurisprudence, but much more remains to be done (see de Brouwer 2005). It was not until 2009, for example, that the first ever convictions for sexual slavery and forced marriage (as an inhumane act) as crimes against humanity were brought, both in the trial judgements at the Special Court for Sierra Leone.5 These and other developments are part of a growing recognition and will to act to investigate, indict and convict those responsible for grievous forms of gendered violence, and to seek justice for the victims of this violence. To outline the scope of the analysis, I take up the crime of sexual enslavement, as a crime against humanity per se, to examine the testimonies and accounts presented in this chapter. These accounts, however, cover more than sexual enslavement. These accounts reveal information about sexual enslavement, enforced prostitution and forced marriage, all of which involve some form of coercion against the victim and tend to happen over an extended period of time as continuing offences (see de Brouwer 2005: 137–42 and 198–200; Oosterveld 2003–2004: 616–22). Some of the women kept for prolonged periods in the prisons, camps and other ad-hoc detention centres that spread across Indonesia after 1965 experienced these types of sustained and repeated sexual violence. Other women, particularly those whose husbands disappeared during the massacres, were forced or coerced into new sexual relationships, including forced marriages and sexual enslavement. === [PDF page 171] === 156 Sexual slavery and istri diambil Some of the key elements of sexual enslavement as a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute that are beneficial for this analysis are that the sexual violence be committed in conditions whereby there is also deprivation of liberty and control by the perpetrator over the victim. The ICC’s Elements of Crime document (2000) includes a footnote to the definition regarding ‘deprivation of liberty’ which includes ‘exacting forced labour or otherwise reducing a person to a servile status’ (cited in Oosterveld 2011: 62, fn. 81). In addition, the Rome Statute’s definition of sexual slavery (and the ICC’s Elements of Crime document) pays strong attention to the actions of the perpetrator who, as Valerie Oosterveld explains, ‘exercises powers attaching to the right of ownership over another person and forces that person to engage in sexual acts’ (2003–2004: 608). While in many ways a product of earlier prohibitions on slavery, this definition of sexual slavery retained in its wording of the ‘powers attaching to the right of ownership’ the meaning that the perpetrator/s exercise ‘some kind of power over the victim, and this power removes the victim’s autonomy and agency’ (Oosterveld 2003–2004: 650). Both the elements of deprivation of liberty and power over the victim which removes her autonomy and agency are crucial. They are essential to understanding the harm caused by sexual enslavement because these elements reflect the often ongoing nature of this crime and the conditions of coercion and violence that victims endure. Further, while sexual enslavement places the element of sexual abuse at the heart of the crime, the definition also acknowledges that other abuses may be fundamental aspects for victims of these crimes. These include a range of other ‘tasks’ that women held in conditions of sexual slavery, enforced prostitution and, in particular, forced marriages, are likely to be forced to perform, such as domestic chores (cleaning, washing and cooking for perpetrators), as well as giving birth to and raising children (see Park 2006). As shown in some of the testimonies explored in this chapter, these additional ‘tasks’ were often concurrent to ongoing sexual abuse experienced by the women who were forced into circumstances of sexual slavery following the 1965 killings. The sexual enslavement and forced marriage practices during the Indonesian occupation of Timor Leste (1975–99) are comparable cases to the accounts discussed in this chapter. In Section 7.7.3 of Chega!, the report by the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR 2005), the Commission outlined evidence that it had received which it characterised as sexual enslavement, including: sexual enslavement of women in detention; and the colloquially termed practice of taking ‘TNI wives’, whereby ‘a member of [the] security forces establishing ownership of a woman in a domestic setting [ … ] the perpetrator would often threaten the woman or her family with death if she did not make herself available to him for sex on demand, and often also to perform other domestic work’ (2005: para. 167). The complex and inter-related forms of harm to victims of sexual enslavement, enforced prostitution and forced marriage are crucial to understanding the experiences of women during the mass atrocities that followed the 1965 === [PDF page 172] === Sexual slavery and istri diambil 157 coup in Indonesia. These crimes were committed against women over days, months and years; the harm perpetrated through sexual abuse compounded with other forms of on-going violence and coercion. While some have argued that the definition of sexual slavery in international criminal law provides adequate coverage for the crimes of enforced prostitution and forced marriage, there is much scope for better delineation and articulation of how the three crimes should be seen as separate, though related, offences (see Fan 2002; Argibay 2003; Oosterveld 2003–2004). For the purposes of this discussion, however, sexual enslavement is the most clearly defined and useful instrument for analysis of the testimonies and accounts about these experiences during the 1965 killings. Sexual enslavement, enforced prostitution and forced marriage in Indonesia: an urgent area of research For women kept in political detention following the 1965 coup, sexual violence was a common experience. For some of these women political prisoners, as for some of the wives and female relatives of PKI members in the community who were subject to sexual assaults, these acts of sexual violence were prolonged and repeated, becoming conditions of sexual enslavement. In spite of the need to treat sexual crimes as distinct and separate, I do not differentiate sexual enslavement specifically from enforced prostitution or forced marriage for the purposes of this discussion, partly because there is considerable overlap between the scopes of all three crimes, as discussed above. This conflation of the three in this chapter is also brought about by necessity rather than analytical or evidentiary clarity. During my research over the past decade into the experiences of women during the Indonesian killings, finding survivors of these crimes who are able to provide first-hand accounts has proven exceptionally difficult. In the approximately 200 interviews that I have conducted with survivors across Indonesia, and in the many interview transcripts and other materials collected by both Indonesian and foreign researchers and advocates that I have been able to access, first-hand accounts of sexual enslavement, wife-taking and forced marriage are exceptionally rare. As a result, the majority of the information that I have been able to amass on these crimes comprises secondary accounts from those who witnessed or heard about such cases. The information is partial and variable, the stories incomplete. Despite this, these secondary accounts are valuable for the information that they do provide which is, in turn, used to highlight this aspect of sexual violence following the 1965 coup. There are many reasons for this lack of first-hand accounts by survivors of sexual enslavement, wife-taking and forced marriages. The main reason appears to be that, for most of the women who were ‘taken’ or who became wives through coercive means, they are disconnected from the growing networks of former tapol and advocates that have been gradually expanding over the past decade and a half since the end of the New Order. They have, therefore, rarely been part of these growing communities of survivors and === [PDF page 173] === 158 Sexual slavery and istri diambil advocates who have taken part in the various truth-speaking and testimonygathering activities carried out by NGOs and researchers during this period. Through lack of opportunity, perhaps, rather than lack of willingness, these women’s accounts are rarely given. They are disconnected from these networks for many reasons. Those who were diambil, as it has been explained to me by some former political prisoners and their family members, were forced to integrate with their ‘new’ families. The stories related to me by Pak Karto (whose own wife was diambil and who later returned to him, related in the final section of this chapter) are in some ways illustrative of this. As Pak Karto explained to me, after I found out that his wife had been taken, most of the women had little choice but to ‘make do’ or ‘going along with’ (ikut aja) their new husbands and new families, particularly if they were bringing children with them to be raised as part of the new family. As time went on and they had more children with second husbands, their lives and economic security for themselves and these children depended upon their new families. Pak Karto explained this to me in a quite straightforward way, saying simply that leaving these families would be near impossible for most women. Even participating in the various NGO-supported truth-telling and survivor-support meetings would be extremely difficult. Given how highly contentious it remains in Indonesia to speak about the events of 1965–66, these women would be very unlikely to receive the support of their families to speak about their experiences. These constraints have had an impact on both my ability to contact and to find first-hand accounts by women who were forced into conditions of sexual slavery or who were ‘taken’ in forced marriages; I consider this a serious flaw in my research and it is an area that needs far greater work. Telling stories of sexual enslavement Ibu Tati, parts of whose testimony were discussed in previous chapters, was one of only a handful of women I interviewed who spoke directly about cases of sexual enslavement. In an interview with Narny Yenny and myself, she gave some examples of how women who were being kept in the same detention centre (a local police quarters in West Sumatra) experienced sexual slavery and enforced prostitution. She explained that women prisoners were often ‘lent out’ to visiting police and military officers. The women were separated from the male prisoners and kept together in a cell on the ground floor. As discussed in Chapter 5, the policemen frequently came to the cell and took women away to rape them, particularly at night. Ibu Tati also revealed, however, that after a while, the women in the cell were also ‘lent out’ to visiting officers whenever they were in the area. If a policeman came from, what’s it called? The [police headquarters]? [ … ] A girl would be taken for him. ‘I’ve a friend from [the headquarters],’ [the guard] would say, and he’d take her away in the car. If there was a guest === [PDF page 174] === Sexual slavery and istri diambil 159 from the [headquarters], then [a girl was] taken by car. He’d stay in the mess for a while, so [she’d] be taken there. [ … ] Every time someone from the [headquarters] came, someone would disappear, one of the girls would definitely be taken. None of the girls were virgins anymore. And then later … Really, I’m not willing to talk about it, if it’s going to be recorded … anyway, then she’d be returned. Pausing for a while, Narny Yenny, Ibu Tati and I then moved on to talking of other events. Later in the interview, however, Ibu Tati returned to telling us about how girls were taken and given to visiting officers for sex. For the women, if [the police] wanted to, they’d just take them. From the prison, they’d be ‘borrowed’, lent out at night. First they’d be taken. Then the next day, they’d be returned. And then maybe about a week later or fifteen days later, they’d be borrowed again. If there was a guest from the police headquarters [ … ] girls would be borrowed. He’d need a number of them, whichever ones he liked, he’d take. [The women] were taken, crying, and those sorts of things, that’s what went on. Then they’d be returned the next morning if possible. If [they] spent one week there [away], then one week they’d be locked up. But if it was only for one night, [they’d be taken] for one night also, and then returned the next day. That’s how it happened. Ibu Tati’s description of this practice of ‘lending out’ women political prisoners from the police quarters was similar to other cases of sexual enslavement discussed by other women survivors during my research, examined further below. As with other accounts in which women recounted some form of sexual relationship between women prisoners and guards, the conditions under which women entered into these relationships varied considerably, though all with at least some degree of coercion and many under threat of violence. From Ibu Tati’s description of the conditions of imprisonment at this police quarters, where sexual assault was frequently perpetrated against women detainees, she made it clear to that the women ‘lent out’ to visitors did not go voluntarily. Towards the end of that interview, in which she explained further the threat of and actual violence against these women, Ibu Tati recounted another story about what had happened to one of the women who was frequently ‘borrowed’ from the police quarters. Although it is unclear as to what happened to the woman after she was taken away, it was Ibu Tati’s belief that she disappeared because she had become pregnant from being raped. Whether the woman was killed or not was unknown. One [of the women] got pregnant, but it was early in her pregnancy. Even so, she was taken and never returned, and then finally we heard that her mat had been taken as well, her clothes, her pillow. Mat, pillow and === [PDF page 175] === 160 Sexual slavery and istri diambil clothes, and that was the last [that we heard of her]. She never returned. Because she was pregnant. Because she’d been raped, of course. Essentially, if you were old or young, it didn’t matter, [they] would have sex with them [ … ] Did she get killed? [We] never found out. [She] was never seen again. In a second interview with Ibu Tati, this time conducted with Ibu Susi present, this incident came up again, also within the context of discussions about sexual violence at the police quarters where both women had been held. As Ibu Susi explained: When someone came from the headquarters, one of the women would be chosen straight away. ‘Take her from the jail,’ they’d say. So three women would be taken, or four would be taken. Sometimes they could come back [the next morning], sometimes they couldn’t. One night, two nights, many nights. One woman, Ibu L–, she spent many nights there, didn’t she? [ … ] But the last time they took her, she wasn’t having her periods anymore. [ … ] One night, the commandant came and took her in his car. But, it wasn’t the commandant who took her, but it was his car that she was taken away in, I don’t know who was driving. ‘Take your pillow with you,’ he said, ‘Take you sleeping mat, bring your clothes.’ After that, she never came back. What was his name? The man, the driver? What was it? Oh, yes, R–, that was his name, yes, R–. [ … ] We never found out what happened to her when they took her away.6 The stories told by Ibu Susi and Ibu Tati about sexual enslavement of women held at the police quarters, as well as by other women during the course of my research, echoed some of the accounts reported by researchers at the time. A 1972 article on the prison camps, for example, discusses ‘sexual advantage’ being taken of women prisoners and the wives of male prisoners (Anonymous 1972). A 1969 article by Barbro Karabuda explains how, in Semarang, Central Java, members of the armed forces had ‘exploited’ the wives and daughters of male political prisoners, including by forcing them into brothels and threatening them until they became prostitutes, the profits going to the soldiers.7 Before undertaking my fieldwork, I had read these reports and wondered, naïvely, if they were simply hyperbolic, journalistic accounts. Ten years and many stories of enslavement later, I know now how much more there is to uncover about these experiences. Intimidation and coercion In some interviews, people talked about women being threatened by men in order to coerce them into sexual relationships, including marriage, ‘secret’ (gelap) marriage, sexual slavery and various prostitutional relationships. These intimidation strategies were usually directed against the husband and involved === [PDF page 176] === Sexual slavery and istri diambil 161 threats that he would be named a PKI supporter (whether he was a member of the PKI or one of its associated organisations or not) and thus be arrested and perhaps killed. The experience of Ibu Ati from Central Java is an example of this kind of threat used against women and their families. Ibu Ati’s husband, a teacher at the local primary school, was originally detained in late 1965, but released three months later. In 1968, during the secondary rounds of ‘clean-up’ operations, he was arrested again. Ibu Ati, however, explains why he was re-arrested. ‘What happened in ‘68, when [my husband] was taken, this is what happened. You see, there was a man who wanted me to make him happy, Pak Basuki, but I didn’t want to.’8 Pak Basuki, a local army commandant, then came to threaten her when she refused to engage in a sexual relationship with him, to which she responded: ‘You give me Rp. 500,000, then I’ll come with you.’ In 1968, Rp. 500,000 would have been an unheard of amount for everyday people, making her offer intentionally unattainable. As she explained, ‘I really laughed hard. No-one had money like that in those days, it wasn’t possible.’ Pak Basuki’s threats, however, continued. ‘He kept threatening me, saying that if I didn’t do it, my husband would be taken [ … This happened] in ‘68, when things were heating up again in ‘68. [ … T]he commandant kept asking the same thing. [He would] come to my house [ … ] and come to threaten me. [He would say,] ‘If you won’t do it, I’ll throw your husband in jail,’ things like that. Ibu Ati then went on to explain that what had happened to her was not uncommon in her area: People around here were like that, you see, if there was some pretty [woman], and [a man] wanted her, he would just do it. He’d make her his secret wife (istri gelap). The man who wanted [me] was harsh, and I didn’t want to [be with him]. It was hard to think with threats like that. And I had three children to take care of, thank you very much. So I didn’t want to be doing things like that. [ … but Pak Basuki] kept chasing after me. Shortly after Pak Basuki came to threaten her the last time, Ibu Ati’s husband was re-arrested. During the month that he was imprisoned for the second time, Ibu Ati went to visit him and to bring food. The last time that she saw him, he told her that he had been interrogated a number of times. The following day, he was dead. Ibu Ati found out later on from a man who had been imprisoned with her husband that he had been killed that night as a result of being tortured and being electrocuted to death. In the rest of the interview transcript with Ibu Ati, it is not clear what happened between her and Pak Basuki afterwards. The testimony of Ibu ‘C’, recounted in the Komnas Perempuan report (2007) on gender-based violence in 1965, reveals another aspect of sexual slavery experienced by women detainees. In this case, Ibu C, who was fourteen years old when she was originally arrested in 1965, described what happened to her === [PDF page 177] === 162 Sexual slavery and istri diambil when she was released twelve years later. Essentially, Ibu C outlines how she had no place to go after her release. Without any apparent support mechanisms, she describes how she had little choice other than to accept the offer of one of the prison guards. I was afraid and confused because I’d heard that I was going to be released. While I was still so confused, one of the guards, Pak H, offered to let me stay at his house. I accepted his offer because I had no other choice. The rented house [that I went to] was very simple. He didn’t live there, he lived at his wife’s house. One day while I was staying there, Pak H raped me. Then he took me to his wife’s house and made me their housemaid, but I didn’t stay there. So each morning at 4am, I would go to Pak H’s wife’s house and work as their housemaid. After I’d done the housework, I would return to Pak H’s rented house and be his sex slave. I couldn’t refuse because I had no other choice. After one month as Pak H’s sex slave, two soldier friends of Pak H came to the house. I had to serve them. I didn’t only have to serve Pak’s friends, but also all the other men who came and wanted to sleep with me. Sometimes it was three or four men a night. Later on I found out that Pak H was receiving money from these people I’d had to serve. I feel like Pak H made me into a whore. For a year I didn’t receive a salary as a housewife, or as a woman who’s been traded in exchange for money. (Cited in Komnas Perempuan 2007: 64) Without means to support herself after release, Ibu C was coerced into accepting Pak H’s offer. It is probable that part of Ibu C’s reluctance to accept his offer to ‘stay at his house’ is an indication that she understood that she would have to enter into a sexual relationship with him in order to secure this protection. In these clearly coercive conditions, Ibu C made the choice to accept Pak H’s offer with the understanding that she would not receive this housing without some kind of payment. As she states, she worked cleaning house for his wife and was his ‘sex slave’ because she ‘had no other choice’. Whatever Ibu C may have understood to be Pak H’s intentions before accepting his offer, however, it is clear that she did not expect to be ‘made into a whore’. As she explained, Pak H began bringing his friends to the house where Ibu C was staying very soon after she was released. Pak H then prostituted Ibu C for material gain while keeping her in sexual servitude. The case of Ibu C’s treatment by Pak H is a clear example of sexual enslavement and enforced prostitution. Ibu Kuntari, a primary school teacher in southern Sumatra who joined the PKI’s youth organisation, Pemuda Rakyat, in the early 1960s, also gave testimony which highlights how women were forced into prostitutional relationships. In her interview, Ibu Kuntari discussed her arrest more than a year after the coup during one of the ‘clean up’ operations and her imprisonment and interrogation. She then went on to talk about what happened to her afterwards: === [PDF page 178] === Sexual slavery and istri diambil 163 From that time on, and I know this very well myself, detainees, especially women, girls, it’s clear that we were an object of ridicule. The way that the soldiers saw us, they viewed us as cheap. We weren’t really like that, it was our way of fending off their brutality, it was a way for us to reduce their brutality. So, well, I really suffered then, people used to talk about me, people who had no idea [how difficult it was]. It wasn’t only the soldiers who considered me a cheap woman, even the people in the village said that I was cheap, but really, I wasn’t. Every now and then when I’d finished [work], those who were in charge, they would treat me like I was cheap. So I would be invited to some sort of party … (she speaks quietly and is crying). I would do it. ‘Come on, come to the party, I’m going to be providing security!’ [the guard/soldier would say]. I would go along with what they wanted … Why? So that I wasn’t completely isolated. I went along. But I had a plan, I had to have some security. ‘If that’s the case then, Sir, you’re one of the leaders around here, and I don’t think this would look good to others,’ I said. If they give something to me, I would say thank you, as if I were one of their employees, I was like an employee who received a bonus from her manager. I would never give him the opportunity to portray me as cheap to others. ‘So when we’re there you have to take care of me,’ I would say something like that, ‘because I’m your employee, you’re my manager.’ [ … ] The boss, sometimes managers from out of town would come, they thought of us as just cheap girls, and sometimes we’d be called to the mess.9 At this point, the interviewer asked Ibu Kuntari what she was ordered to do when she was called to the mess, and whether she was there to work as a prostitute, to which she replied simply, ‘Yes.’ Up until that point in the interview, Ibu Kuntari had avoided naming the sexual violence against her. The interviewer’s blunt question and the use of the term ‘prostitute’, however, seemed to pull away the frames that she had been using to describe her own experience, ones in which she did not use sexual terms or name acts. She hesitated before answering, confirming both the term and that she had been forced into having sex with men at the mess. Ibu Kuntari’s testimony presents in stark terms some of the challenges and choices faced by women ex-detainees. As she explains, people in the community as well as those in the armed forces saw her, and other ex-tapol women, as ‘cheap’ or ‘cheap women’ (‘wanita murahan’). It is clear from this discussion and in the remainder of the interview that she meant women forced or coerced in some way into sexual acts or relationships. Stigmatised and marginalised within their communities, ex-tapol women were, perversely in some cases, left without support networks other than those dependent in some way on their abusers. Similar to Ibu C’s experience, discussed above, some women were left few options other than to enter into these coercive prostitiutional settings. As Ibu Kuntari said, ‘I would go along with what they wanted … Why? So that I wasn’t completely isolated. I went along.’ === [PDF page 179] === 164 Sexual slavery and istri diambil The threat of violence as coercive force which influenced Ibu Kuntari’s and the other women’s choices to undertake these acts is shown in her statement: ‘We weren’t really like that, it was our way of fending off their brutality, it was a way for us to reduce their brutality.’ Here, as in other parts of her testimony, Ibu Kuntari referred to the consequences of not complying with her abusers’ demands. Thus the choice to perform sexual acts was also conditioned by the fact that she sought protection from other men from the man in charge, whom she refers to as ‘the boss’. Though she did not go into further detail, other than in the passage recounted above, it is clear that she thought there would be greater safety in performing sexual acts for this man, or at his request for other men, rather than risk further violence from others at the mess. As Ibu Kuntari said, it was her way ‘to have some security’. Ibu Kuntari continued to serve at the mess for ‘a long time’ as she put it, before her family arranged a marriage for her. The man she married was, in fact, one of the militia which had arrested her in the first place; one of the men who followed ‘the boss’. While she did not go into detail about how this marriage was organised, Ibu Kuntari did say that it was not a love-match but that she had had a good life with him, a number of children, and now half a dozen grandchildren. Wife-taking: istri diambil When men returned home after many years of imprisonment, they often returned to find their wives and families gone. Some women were ‘taken’ by other men and forced or coerced into second marriages or sexual slavery. Many women remarried after a while. Reasons for these remarriages differed, some because they thought their husbands were dead (as they had not heard from their husbands in such a long time and had no idea what had happened to them), some because they were often left in difficult circumstances and so welcomed a second marriage that would bring with it some security and stability for themselves and often children. The circumstances that wives of political prisoners found themselves in meant that they were, in many ways, economically disadvantaged as well as socially stigmatised because of their association with the PKI. They were also frequently the target of sexually predatory behaviours by men in the armed forces and militia groups as well as from men in the general community. The story of Pak Kusumo’s wife, as told by him, reveals some of these experiences. Pak Kusumo, a teacher who lived in a northern district of Central Java, was married with a daughter and expecting another child at the time of the coup. In November 1965, he was detained and spent many years in a number of detention facilities, not being released until 1978 when he returned home from Buru Island (where many of the long-term male prisoners were kept until the late 1970s). When he returned to his home in Central Java, it was to find that his daughter had been kidnapped by a man (she had already had a child with him) and his wife had remarried. He also met his second child, his son, for the first time. === [PDF page 180] === Sexual slavery and istri diambil 165 As Pak Kusumo recounted, when he had first disappeared, his wife had sold everything they owned in order to buy food for their children. Shortly after Pak Kusumo had been imprisoned, his wife was raped a number of times by a lieutenant at the local command post. Later, Pak Kusumo found out that she had been coerced by the lieutenant who had threatened to kill her daughter and baby if she had not agreed to sleep with him. His wife became pregnant as a result and raised the baby. Later, after their daughter had been taken/kidnapped by her then husband, his wife remarried another man.10 It is not clear in his testimony under exactly what conditions his daughter was ‘taken’ or ‘kidnapped’ (the text is ambiguous on this point) by another man, but he seemed to imply that she was also coerced into marriage at quite a young age. Pak Kusumo’s discussion of what happened to his wife and children during his imprisonment is not extensive, but it does highlight some of the realities for wives whose husbands were killed or detained following the coup. During my interviews with women survivors of these events, one of the most common stories told was of women who sold everything or who worked long hours everyday in food stalls or rice fields to provide food and shelter for their children. Many also discussed how the social stigmatisation made them easy prey for harassment, including sexual harassment, from men in the community. Whether or not their husbands were dead, they became janda in the eyes of their community; that is, women who have either been divorced or widows and therefore sexually available (see Wieringa 2012). The circumstances of his daughter, his ex-wife or the children she bore after he disappeared are given little mention in Pak Kusumo’s testimony. A few years after he was released, Pak Kusumo also remarried. The story of Pak Hardi’s wife which is recounted by Rinto Tri Hasworo in the collection, The Year that Never Ended (2004), also reveals how women whose husbands disappeared during the 1965 violence were subject to sexual violence from other men. Pak Hardi was a farmer in a small village and a member of the BTI. He was arrested, detained, and later sent to Buru island for ten years. When he finally returned from Buru, he found out from one of his siblings how his family had suffered after his imprisonment, including that his wife had died from her ‘great suffering’ after his disappearance (Hasworo 2004: 52). His wife had, in fact, been raped by numerous men in the community after his arrest. [H]is wife had been forced to ‘serve’ many men over and over. One night she would be forced to sleep with one Ketua RT [the man in charge of the local neighbourhood], the next night with another Ketua RT, the next night she’d be called by the lurah [village head]. When she got home, then the next night, a soldier would come and sleep at [her] house. Without number, teachers, members of the youth organisations, from nationalist and religious groups would all come to be served by Hardi’s wife. The most frightening of all had been when one of the Ansor youth militia === [PDF page 181] === 166 Sexual slavery and istri diambil came and slept with Hardi’s wife. He came with a shirt and pedang [a type of sword] covered in blood because he had just killed some people accused of being Communists in Purwodadi. The man from Ansor appears to have forced her into a position of sexual slavery, whereby he not only repeatedly raped Pak Hardi’s wife, but also forced her to perform domestic labour for him, such as cleaning and preparing food for him (Hasworo 2004: 53). Other accounts of wives of men who were killed or detained that I have come across during my research have been mostly told to me by male ex-tapol. On the three occasions that I have had the opportunity to meet women who were diambil, none have been willing to discuss their experiences with me in an interview. In fact, on all three occasions, their current husbands were the ones who told me that they had been diambil and when the topic was brought up with the wives in the room, it clearly distressed them. I remember one incident in particular, whereby Pak Karto, an ex-tapol who had kindly been helping me locate and interview women ex-tapol around Yoygakarta and the south Central Java area, told me about what had happened to his wife. We were alone in the room at his home, talking about an interview that we had done together that morning, when he mentioned briefly that his wife had been married to another man when he returned from imprisonment in the mid1970s. He had not mentioned this at all in the month since we had begun interviewing women in the area, and I was a little shocked. I carefully asked him what had happened to her after his arrest. Pak Karto told me that, after his disappearance, a man had forced her to marry him (he used the term ‘diambil’), but that after he was released from prison, she found out and so left her second husband and returned to Pak Karto. There were many striking parts to this story about how Pak Karto’s wife had been forced into another marriage, and indeed, that she had had the courage to return to Pak Karto when she found out that he had returned. The kitchen in Pak Karto’s house adjoined the guest room where Pak Karto and I were sitting. As was Ibu Karto’s usual behaviour, she had greeted me and brought out some tea for us before leaving us. On that day that Pak Karto told me about what had happened to her after he disappeared, Ibu Karto was clearly upset that he had told me about this story. On our next meeting, Pak Karto began our conversation by saying that his wife would never be comfortable talking about it with me, and that she did not like to talk about her second marriage at all. I said that I would never ask her to talk about something she did not want to talk about, but my relationship with Ibu Karto was somewhat strained after that day. Conclusion Sexual enslavement, enforced prostitution and forced marriage were crimes perpetrated against women, particularly women tapol and women whose === [PDF page 182] === Sexual slavery and istri diambil 167 husbands had been killed or detained, following the 1965 coup in Indonesia. These crimes were committed with impunity over months and even years and are some of the clearest examples of the gendered effects of mass atrocities on women. I began this chapter by arguing that there be a clear differentiation between the many forms of sexual violence committed in Indonesia; that not all sexual violence be understood as rape. Rather, sexual violence during mass atrocities should be understood as a spectrum; rape is one of numerous crimes perpetrated predominantly against women and girls. While there are many overlaps and commonalities between the different sexual crimes, such as between rape and sexual enslavement, or between sexual enslavement and enforced prostitution, each of these crimes should be better understood and better redressed. More importantly, the victims of these crimes deserve that these abuses be better understood and better redressed. By clarifying our understandings of these grievous abuses, we have a better chance of devising effective mechanisms for redress and, crucially, for prevention. The experiences recounted in this chapter of sexual slavery, forced prostitution and forced marriage, including the stories of women who were diambil by men during the violence of 1965–66, though partial and incomplete, provide evidence of the harm done to women over extended periods and in conditions of coercion and often deprivation of liberty. Though fragmentary and often only second-hand accounts, they recall experiences of sexual enslavement and enforced prostitution as part of long-term detention, as part of the conditions faced by some women tapol after their release from imprisonment, and for women who were preyed upon and sexually abused by men in the security forces, militias and their own communities. They also offer accounts of women who, after their husbands were killed or detained during the massacres of 1965–66, were forced into new sexual relationships through violence and coercion. For most, this involved new ‘marriages’ that lasted the rest of their lives. It is not enough that these crimes against thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of women be left aside or forgotten. These crimes, as with the many other related forms of sexual abuse discussed at length throughout this book, demand recognition and redress. Notes 1 A taxonomy of these various sexually based crimes as part of international crimes accounting for differences not in the physical elements of these acts but also other forms of specific harm is not possible within the confines of this text. These crimes committed not as part of international crimes (e.g. crimes against humanity), but during peacetime, are subject to national laws. For a discussion of the substantive characteristics of these different crimes, see, for example, McDougall (1998: paras 27–33) for discussion of the theoretical development of sexual slavery as a specific form of enslavement and the acts which it encompasses. See also Oosterveld (2003– 2004: 606–7) for an empirical summary of sexual slavery practices in armed conflicts throughout the world since World War II. 2 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, arts. 7(l)(g), 8(2)(b)(xxii), 8(2)(e)(vi), 37 I.L.M. 999, 1004, 1008, 1009, hereafter ‘Rome Statute’ (cited in Oosterveld === [PDF page 183] === 168 Sexual slavery and istri diambil 2003–2004: 607, fn. 13). Specific elements of the crime were further clarified in the ICC’s Elements of Crimes document in 2000: Report of the Preparatory Commission for the International Criminal Court, Finalised Draft Text of the Elements of Crimes, addendum part II, U.N. Doc. PCNICC/2000/1/Add.2 (2000). In the Elements of Crime document, sexual slavery is defined strongly in terms of deprivation of liberty. 3 See, for example, as part of genocide, The Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu, Judgement, Case No. ICTR-96-4-T, 2 September 1998 (‘Akayesu Judgement’); The Prosecutor v. Sylvestre Gacumbitsi, Judgement, Case No. ICTR-2001-64-T, 17 June 2004 (‘Gacumbitsi Judgement’); and as part of ‘enslavement’, see The Prosecutor v. Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovac and Zoran Vukovic, Judgement, Case No. IT-96-23-A and IT-96-23/1-A, 12 June 2002 (‘Kunarac, Kovac and Vukovic Appeal Judgement’), in particular, para.110, where it is stated that the enslavement was in order to use the women victims for sexual acts. 4 Such as The Prosecutor v. Brima, Kamara and Kanu (The ARFC case) as well as The Prosecutor v. Sesay, Kallon and Gbao (the RUF case). In examining the Indonesian case, I have used the judgements arising from the RUF case for instruction on how sexual enslavement has been prosecuted. Prosecutor v. Sesay, Kallon and Gbao, Case No. SCSL-04-15-T, Judgement (Special Court for Sierra Leone, Trial Chamber 1, 2 March 2009) and the SCSL appeals judgement, Prosecutor v. Sesay, Kallon and Gbao, Case No. SCSL-04-15-A, Judgement (Special Court for Sierra Leone, Appeals Chamber, 26 October 2009). 5 Both in the RUF case, see note 4. For a comprehensive discussion of these judgements, see Oosterveld (2011). 6 Interview with Ibu Tati and Ibu Susi, together with Narny Yenny and myself, Sumatra, September 2005. 7 The article by Barbro Karabuda is cited in Anonymous (1972: 115). The title of the article is not given, but it was published in Eastern Horizon, a Hong Kong magazine (8, no. 5, 1969). 8 Testimony by Ibu Ati (a pseudonym, as is Pak Basuki), Central Java, from interview transcript obtained from ISSI. 9 Interview with Ibu Kuntari (a pseudonym) was obtained from the Indonesian Institute of Social History, Jakarta, in late 2005. The interview took place in Lampung in 2003. 10 Pak Kusumo’s testimony (a pseudonym) was obtained from the Lontar Foundation, Jakarta in July 2005 – transcript from the ‘Historical Memories Study’ collection. === [PDF page 184] === Conclusions In this book, I have investigated the experiences of women and teenage girls perceived to be Communist sympathisers during the killings of 1965–66, with a particular focus on sexual forms of violence perpetrated against them. Sexual violence was the result of numerous factors and was perpetrated in many ways, covering a broad range of crimes including rape, torture, sexual assault, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced marriage, forced abortion, and many related forms of harm. Just as the ways in which women and girls experienced sexualised forms of violence varied greatly, so too were the ways in which women responded to, negotiated and otherwise dealt with these experiences. The testimonies and accounts examined in this study give only a small glimpse into this vast range of experiences and women’s responses to these events. In small and segmented ways, these testimonies reveal some of the ways in which women maintained and negotiated their personal and social realities following the 1965 coup. Narratives of these individual experiences go some way to understanding the discourses, practices and motivations which configure their individual subjectivities. Further, this selection of testimonies cannot hope to encompass the totality of experiences of those who resisted their captors, jailors and abusers while being subjected to deliberate humiliation and degradation. The stories of how individuals resisted humiliation and abuse and refused to be shamed are important to victims because they were a way of reaffirming that they were not the denigrated objects, the dirt, or the animals that their captors insisted they were. In the testimonies of the women who lived through these varied and brutal forms of violence, so many of which were meant to denigrate and humiliate them, these personal accounts of atrocities committed against so many women reveal more than the individual components of violence. These experiences reveal the extraordinary breadth of women’s abilities to cope and survive in the face of such horrific violence. Gender and sexual violence The testimonies and accounts examined in this book offer crucial new insights into how mass violence and mass atrocities are fundamentally gendered === [PDF page 185] === 170 Conclusions experiences. The broad range of sexual and other forms of violence discussed within the context of the mass violence that followed the 1965 coup in Indonesia show the myriad ways in which this violence was perpetrated, resisted and endured during conflict. This study into the cases of sexualised violence perpetrated in Indonesia makes a significant contribution, therefore, to broader understandings of these forms of violence which are perpetrated predominantly against women and girls in conflicts and wars the world over. Sexual violence against women and girls during conflict is as old as human history yet it is only in recent decades that scholars, particularly feminist scholars, have conducted the work of examining these forms of violence, their causes and effects. Studies undertaken into the mass sexual violence against women in recent conflicts and genocides, such as in the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda, in Democratic Republic of Congo and in many other cases, have offered ground-breaking insights into how such violence is perpetrated as well as its causes and innumerable effects on victims and communities (Stiglmayer 1994; Nowrojee 1996; Allen 1996; Human Rights Watch 2002). As discussed in Chapter 4, sexual violence during conflicts is both a symptom and a product of complex causes, incorporating micro- and macro-level dynamics, variances by region, and by the motivations and actions of those involved. Sexual violence in Indonesia following the coup was, at various times: a way to attack and terrify victims; an opportunistic crime committed with impunity; a weapon used by both state and co-opted civilian perpetrators as part of their strategy to eradicate the PKI; and a direct result of the Indonesian military’s inflammatory and misogynous propaganda. These overlapping and competing causes for the sexual violence in Indonesia during this period of mass social violence are similar in many ways to the causes for sexual violence in other conflicts. This sexual violence during the killings in Indonesia was also ubiquitous, emphasising the need to incorporate the analysis of this violence in studies of conflict and mass social upheaval. Cases of sexualised violence during the 1965–66 killings tell us much about the ways in which violence on the bodies of victims creates political and gendered subjectivities. In many ways, the gendered and politicised bodies of victims were both the symbolic and material locus for the deployment of power struggles and the creation of identities during the killings. While it could be argued that, within this context of anti-Communist violence, the bodies of both male and female victims were politicised as Communist bodies, these bodies were also differentiated sexually and by gender. As discussed in Chapter 6 of this book, cases of mutilation in which particular body parts were targeted and fetishised, usually sexual and reproductive organs and breasts, are some of the clearest examples of this. The ways in which bodies are constituted in conflicts are both about the fleshy reality of those bodies as well as the discursive functioning, representation and regulation of those bodies. As research by feminist scholars such as Nira Yuval-Davis (1997) has shown, women and women’s bodies are === [PDF page 186] === Conclusions 171 located at the heart of social conflicts. Constructed as biological and cultural ‘reproducers’ for social groups, women’s bodies and sexual identities become pivotal in conflict over territories, ideals, nations, movements and any other social projects. From such notions come ideas about women that tie them foremost to their biological and cultural reproductive roles, their status as signifiers for prosperity or im/purity, and as markers for boundaries of social groupings (Mayer 2000; Chatterjee 1993). These ideals are also exclusively heteronormative in their construction and marginalise non-traditional/non-heterosexual gender roles. In times of conflict, these roles and gendered identities become the site for violent contestation, often played out in widespread and horrific violence against women. These very complex intimacies between constructions of sex, gender and social projects become critical during nation-building or conflicts, as was the case during the massive social upheaval of the 1965–66 massacres. As researchers such as Arjun Appadurai (1998; 2006) have shown, violence can be a ‘creative’ act meant to establish and stabilise the identity of enemies during uncertain times. As discussed in Chapter 2, identifying and destroying the ‘enemy within’, the PKI and its supporters, was a fraught and uncertain process, turning community members, neighbours and even family members into potentially deadly enemies who had to be eradicated. The profound depersonalisation and transformation of victims into stabilised constructions or tropes – in this case, the transformation of individuals into ‘Communist sympathisers’ – was also a markedly sexualised and gendered process. As seen in the examples of violence against women discussed throughout this book, Communist women in particular bore the brunt of this violent process. Gerwani women, and women accused of being Communist sympathisers who were usually branded as Gerwani members, were transformed into the sexually dangerous and evil women they were rumoured to be through brutal and sexualised violence. Cases of horrific forms of sexual violence and mutilation against these women in which their sexual organs and other parts of their body which identified them as female were cut out, cut off or otherwise destroyed were techniques to achieve this transformation. The reconfiguration of body parts and organs was differentiated clearly by this sexualised violence on gendered bodies. More than this were the effects that the killings had upon gender ideology and sexual politics in Indonesia. As Saskia Wieringa has convincingly shown (1998; 2002), the upheaval that displaced Sukarno’s regime for Suharto’s New Order was built upon these violent changes in sexual politics and the re-inscription of more traditional gender roles. Suharto’s rule, which was a militarised, authoritarian and patriarchal regime, was dependent upon controlling women’s sexuality and political involvement. As Wieringa states, The legitimacy of the New Order state thus rested on the measure of control it exercised both over its own women, as well as over the abject Communist women and the enemy men who were portrayed as === [PDF page 187] === 172 Conclusions being responsible for the perverse, inhuman, primitive behaviour of their women. (2003: 73) Women’s organising was depoliticised and women’s organisations were brought under government control. Conservative gender values and ideals of femininity became ideological underpinnings for the New Order, with any deviation from these provoking anxiety and accusations of perversity and possible ‘Communist’ subversion (Wieringa 2003: 83). The legacies of this demonisation of Communist ideology, and its association with sexual immorality and ideas of deviant political involvement by women, continue to this day in Indonesia. Uncovering the violence of 1965 There are many aspects about the lives and deaths of the women whose experiences have been recounted here that remain unknown, just as there is much that will never be known about the lives and deaths of the hundreds of thousands of other victims of the violence that followed the 1965 coup. How the lives of individuals ended, how lives were destroyed and disrupted, and how people, their bodies and their identities were taken apart cannot stand on its own because atrocity can never be its own explanation. There is much work to be done to try to find out what happened to all the victims whose names, lives, experiences and final resting places are unknown. There is much more to be done to find out about the perpetrators and the full extent of their crimes as well. The women who took part in this project and who shared their experiences are part of the breaking of the repressive silence that, even today, shrouds the events of 1965–66. Their narratives help us to understand who perpetrated this violence, who the victims were, what was done to them, and how they responded. However there is also much that remains unsaid and unknown about the sexual violence that was perpetrated following the coup. The violence of 1965–66, the ramifications of which continue today, must continue to be examined. There must be no place for either those who wish to deny or evade knowledge or for those who would prefer to maintain a respectful silence for the dead. The efforts of thousands of survivors who have given their testimonies over the past two decades are a beginning, but there is much more to be done. An unfinished history Indonesian history is, in the testimonies of those who survived the violence of 1965, unsettled. Leigh Gilmore, in her exposition on the effect of trauma on testimony, writes about what happens when trauma transforms history into haunting (2001). As Gilmore describes, the ‘violence, massacres, losses === [PDF page 188] === Conclusions 173 and upheavals that constitute this history also render it ghostly’. The trauma of Indonesian history causes it ‘to erupt from its manageable confines’ and, during the fieldwork, it became clear that ‘the dead are no longer persons who lived in the past, but angry, bitter, and mournful ghosts’ (Gilmore 2001: 82). The half a million dead who lie in unmarked, mass graves across the islands of Indonesia from the violence of 1965–66 do not lie quietly. While they lie under the ground, physically missing from the lives of their families and communities, they are never wholly absent. Nor are they ever wholly absent from Indonesian social and political life. Instead, they haunt those who have lost them and their presence remains a never-ending spectre for those who would speak of a democratising Indonesia and the promise of reform; an unrelenting reminder of past injustices and a demand for accountability. In sociologist Avery Gordon’s terms, the dead of 1965–66 are felt as a ‘seething presence’, haunting the present in a way that ‘always registers the harm inflicted or the loss sustained [ … ] producing a something-to-be-done’ (2008: xvi). It is not only the dead who return because they were never properly buried. The survivors of the killings and the mass detentions, as well as their children, grandchildren and now great-grandchildren are millions of Indonesians who, in many ways, are not treated as true citizens of their own country. Stigmatised and discriminated against even today, the survivors of 1965 and their descendants are the living remains of a generation used for social inoculation against the threat of a ‘Communist revival’. Until there is open and honest acknowledgement of the harm done to these millions of people, and reparations made to restore their fundamental rights and human dignity, there can be no end to the violence of 1965. More than a decade and a half after the end of the New Order, hope that there would be some accountability for these past injustices is fading. Official attempts to investigate and redress serious abuses have failed. Perpetrators of gross abuses, including crimes against humanity, have been allowed to go free and politicians who promise reform and redress have shown little willingness or capacity to fulfill these promises. The silence that surrounds and guards the violent history of 1965 has left a painful inheritance which continues to affect and disrupt the lives of generations. The atrocities of 1965–66 will remain a seething presence in Indonesia until there is a generation that is willing to acknowledge and deal with these and the many other gross human rights abuses committed since 1965. Ibu Lia, the woman who helped me with so much of my research and whose words began this book, insisted that the trauma of this history will not end until it is acknowledged. As she so often told me, the past does not end for her or for the millions of others who suffered. 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(2007) The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, New York: Random House. === [PDF page 200] === Index abortion 64, 169 Aceh 71, 115, 138 Agamben, G. 55, 62n6 agency 4, 13–20, 105, 153–4, 156, 158, 162–4 Aidit, D.N. 50, 99 Amnesty International 8, 12, 60 Ansor see Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) Appadurai, A. 20, 123, 146, 171 Armed Forces of the Republic of Indonesia (ABRI, Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia) see army personnel army personnel 6, 8–12, 19, 22n3, 22n4, 30, 38, 50–1, 66, 71, 73, 95, 105, 146, 148, 156, 160, 161, 163–4, 167 Bali 10, 32, 33, 44–5, 48, 110, 114, 128n7, 140 Banser (Multipurpose Ansor Brigade, Barisan Serba Guna Ansor) see Nahlatul Ulama (NU). bersih lingkungan (clean environment) policy 12, 31 Bosnia-Herzegovina 57, 65, 72–3 Brownmiller, S. 4, 72–3 BTI (Indonesian Farmers’ Front, Barisan Tani Indonesia) 8, 24, 28, 29, 33, 35, 38, 111, 165 Budiardjo, C. 18–19, 22n10, 95 Bukit Duri women’s prison 26, 38, 82, 93, 94 Bulu prison 14, 42, 102, 107n4 Burhan 37–8, 46n9, 53, 59, 91–3, 108n10; see also perpetrators; torture burning; death from 128n7; as part of torture 56, 88, 94, 96–8, 126, 129n14; property loss from 18, 45, 73, 83, 140; see also looting Buru Island detention camps 56, 77n5, 133, 135, 164, 165 bystanders 10, 16, 87 Cebongan prison 102 children 13, 39, 93, 164; caring for 33, 36, 38, 39, 80, 83, 100, 140, 153, 164, 165; harm against 17, 26–7, 31–2, 38, 41, 48, 56, 57, 64, 116, 118, 123–5, 138, 140; giving away 13, 29, 68–9, 97, 105; giving birth to 34–5, 77n5, 93, 98, 100, 156, 158, 164; breastfeeding infants 17, 29, 34–5, 98, 105, 134; loss or death of 13, 24, 30; reconnection with 38, 61, 93, 141; separation from 13, 29, 36, 61, 140, 161; see also pregnancy colonial period in Indonesia until 1945 1, 25, 41, 77n10 Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) 156; see also East Timor. communism 7; latent Communist threat 2, 7, 12, 17, 46n4, 172, 173; see also PKI coup, 30 September/1 October 1965 1–2, 5–8, 35, 77n7; see also propaganda Cribb, R. 44, 77n6, 121, 152n15 crimes against humanity 7, 154–7, 167n1, 173 death toll, 1965–1966 massacres 1, 8 dehumanisation 8, 26, 53–5, 121, 130–6, 149–50; see also humiliation Des Pres, T. 132, 150; see also dehumanisation detention camps and centres 10–12, 15, 18, 20, 41, 48, 53, 55–7, 61–2, 66, 78n18, 79, 105, 142–4, 155, 167; === [PDF page 201] === 186 Index dehumanisation in 47–62, 82, 131–6, 148–50 dibon (borrowed), execution killing 10, 59, 62n11, 94, 98 disease, contraction of 54, 132–4; death from 47, 53, 56 Drakeley, S. 7, 67–8, 124 East Timor; Indonesian occupation of (1975–1999) 71, 115, 156 extrajudicial arrests 6–12, 24–5, 39–40, 51 Feldman, A. 145–6, 149 Feminist interpretations of violence 4, 20, 63–7, 70–6, 170; see also gendered forms of violence food, methods of obtaining 15, 66, 82, 105, 165; scarcity of 13, 30, 99, 104–5, 130–4; see also starvation forced labour 6, 64, 67, 82, 104, 105, 156, 166 forced prostitution see prostitution Front Pancasila see perpetrators G.30.S. (30 September Movement, Gerakan 30 September) see coup gendered forms of violence 3–5, 20, 63–64, 76, 106, 109, 113, 120–5, 128, Genjer-genjer song 89, 108m8 Genocidal violence 4, 7–8, 20, 55, 65, 75–6, 115–16, 154, 170; see also violence Gerwani (Indonesian Women’s Movement, Gerakan Wanita Indonesia) 6–12, 16, 18, 21n1, 25–34, 46n3, 68–9, 77n7, 89, 98, 108n12, 124, 142–5, 171 Gunung Sahari detention centre 48, 50, 91 interrogation 6, 12, 17, 19–20, 27, 37–8, 68–70, 78n17, 89–93, 95, 102, 106, 107n3, 131, 143–50; see also detention, torture interviews 1–2, 64; process of 4–5, 21n1, 26 intimidation 12, 52–3, 56, 57–60, 71, 90, 91–2, 103, 126, 149–50, 153, 155, 160–4; see also interrogation; torture istri diambil see sexual enslavement Japanese Occupation (1942–1945) 27, 77n10, 138 Kalisosok prison 48, 133 Kalong operation and interrogation centre 22n4, 36, 37, 46n8, 91, 93, 94, 95 Komnas HAM (Indonesian National Commission for Human Rights) 61 Kramat V detention centre 48 legacy of the killings 26, 63–4, 171–3 Likdam (military command headquarters in Jakarta) 94 looting 18, 22n8, 73 Lubang Buaya (Crocodile Hole) 6, 7, 27, 46n3, 46n7, 68, 70, 89, 94, 108n8; see also coup, propaganda hair, covering of 138; shaving or cutting of hair for humiliation or punishment 102, 137–9, 141; see also humiliation hostage-taking or ‘guarantees’ for fugitives 23, 35–9, 91 humiliation 47–9, 52, 54–5, 57, 60, 117, 130–5, 149, 169; sexualised forms of 64, 70–1, 72, 74, 81, 85, 88, 90, 135–45, 150–1 Malkki, L. 20, 116–7, 119, 145–6 massacres of 1965–1966 see violence mass graves 7, 10, 28, 31, 50, 60, 87, 111, 113, 173 menstruation and other uterine bleeding 85, 93, 100–1, 149; see also abortion; pregnancy; rape mental suffering 48, 54, 57, 61, 81, 103, 106, 131–3; psychological forms of torture 19, 27, 49, 51–2, 82, 88–9, 126; see also torture militia groups see perpetrators mistaken identity 8, 39–43 mutilation 109–13; communication through 87, 114, 116–21, 128n7; decapitation 30, 109–17, 121–2, 124; display of corpses and bodily remains 117–20, 128n7, 147; sexualised forms of 70, 77n12, 87, 120–5, 170–1; terror tactics of 78n16, 75; as part of torture 125–7 army; propaganda Nahdlatul Ulama (Revival of Religious Scholars, NU) 32, 44, 110, 111, 123, 124, 166; see also perpetrators === [PDF page 202] === Index nakedness 6, 86; forced nudity 60, 84, 85, 87, 89, 90, 92, 94, 95, 96, 97, 101, 102, 104, 106, 131, 136, 137, 140–1; as part of strip-searches 19, 90, 131, 143–51; see also humiliation; sexual violence; strip-searches New Order (1966–1998) 1, 5, 8; militarism of 8, 12, 26, 31, 63–4, 71, 171–2, 173; see also army; Suharto Nusakambangan detention centre 133 on the run 2, 28–30, 33–5, 36, 38, 42, 59, 83, 86, 105, 112, 133 Papua see West Papua Pemuda Rakyat (People’s Youth, PR) 6, 7, 8, 24, 29, 30, 33, 35, 37, 53, 98, 113, 121, 137, 145, 162 perpetrators 7, 10, 16–17, 39, 43, 47, 52–5, 56, 61, 65, 70, 77n11, 78n17, 87, 99–100, 109, 111, 115, 116, 120, 121, 125, 137, 146, 156, 171, 173; female 16–18; groups of males 65–6, 67, 72, 75–6, 107n6, 111, 118, 122, 128n11 Petrus (Mysterious Killings or Mysterious Shootings, Penembakan Misterius) 115, 147; see also mutilation PKI (Indonesian Communist Party, Partai Komunis Indonesia) 1, 5–12, 82, 102, 106, 128n1, 140; Central Committee 25, 37, 42; as identity marker for violence against people 30–5, 43–4, 50–1, 64, 67–74, 76, 80, 82–5, 87, 90, 110, 114, 118, 125, 141–2, 144–8, 157, 161, 164, 171; leadership within 24–30, 42–3, 46n4, 50, 60, 87, 98, 99, 105, 110, 125 Plantungan women’s detention camp 13, 14, 22n6, 41–2, 56, 82, 89, 94–5, 98, 102 PNI (Indonesian Nationalist Party, Partai Nasionalis Indonesia) 44 police 12, 15–16, 17, 18, 26, 35, 40, 45, 66–7, 78n18, 81, 84, 101, 103–4, 138, 143–4, 150, 151n5, 158–9; barracks and quarters used as detention facilities 10–12, 35, 38–9, 56, 79, 84, 85, 88, 96–7, 99–100, 102, 112, 142, 145, 158, 160; see also perpetrators political prisoner see Tapol pregnancy, humiliation techniques against pregnant women 135–6; 187 resulting from rape 159–60, 165; targeted forms of assault 95–8, 123–5; see also abortion; children; gendered forms of violence promiscuity, accusations of 6, 63–4, 68–70, 89, 124, 142, 171; see also Gerwani; propaganda; sexual deviance propaganda 5–8, 10, 16, 17, 22n3, 25–7, 32, 50, 65, 67–70, 76, 77n7, 84, 89, see also incitement prostitution 46n3, 69, 107n5; enforced prostitution 63, 153–67; see also gendered forms of violence; sexual enslavement 149, 153–5, 160, 162, 165–6, 167, 169; strategies devised to avoid 100–1; see also gendered forms of violence; sexual violence Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court 77n78, 155–8, 167n2; see also crimes against humanity Rothenberg, D. 109, 116, 118–19, 126–7; see also mutilation Sadism 7, 37, 46n9, 48, 52, 59, 89, 91, 124, 134, 151n4; see also perpetrators; torture Scarry, E. 19, 49–51, 57, 141, 152n12 sexual enslavement; forms of; istri diambil; see also gendered forms of violence; rape; sexual violence sexual violence; against girls; against men; against women; explanations for; fear or threat of; forms of; intimidation and coercion of; stigma against victims of; tool of repression; see also rape SOBSI (All-Indonesia Organisation of Labour Unions, Sentral Organisasi Buruh Seluruh Indonesia) 8, 19, 36, 95, 111 starvation 6, 47, 53–4, 62n5, 64, 102–3, 132–3, 149; see also food strip-searches for PKI ‘marks’ 21, 90, 130, 141–51; timing of strip-searches 142–5; see also nakedness; rape === [PDF page 203] === 188 Index Suharto 1, 6, 22n3, 23, 124; see also New Order Sukarno 5–6, 8, 50, 171 12, 19–20, 30, 49–50; perpetrators of 38–9, 52–4, 80, 150 Trisula operation 10 Tanjung Gusta detention centre 96 Tapol (political prisoner, tahanan 40–1, 53–4, 56, 60, 65–7, 70, 80, 82, 93–4, 126, 153, 157–8, 166; stigma against ex-tapol and their families 12, 32, 106, 158, 163 TAPOL (British Campaign for the Release of Indonesian Political Prisoners) 22n10, teachers 33, 41–2, 53–4, 83, 98, 110–11, 128n1, 129n12, 133, 161, 162, 164, 165 testimonio 5; see also interviews Timor Leste see East Timor. Toko Wong interrogation centre 48 Torture 6–7, 10, 16, 18, 26–8, 47–9, 119, 125–7, 129n13, 141, 147, 151n12; against children 17, 48, 56, 57, 118; against men 37, 46n9, 108n11, 127, 161; against women 15, 19, 38, 42, 46n3, 64, 68, 69–70, 71, 82–98, 101–2, 131, 136, 138; giving testimony about United Nationals Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment violence of 1965–66 6–10, 12, 16–17, 172–3; as a marker of identity dynamics and patterns of 2–3, 10–12, 43–5, 64; see also gendered forms of violence West Papua 71 widow (janda) 33, 68; stigma against 67, 165 Wieringa, S. E. 7, 18, 25, 27, 33, 67–8, wife-taking (istri diambil) 67, 153, 165–7; see also sexual enslavement Wirogunan prison 41–2, 102 Women, agency of 13–20; experiences of 2–4, 170–3; testimonies by 4–5, 49–50, 145