The Spectre of Communist Women: Sexual Violence and Citizenship in Indonesia (Pohlman, 2016)

=== [PDF page 1] === Special Issue Article Sexualities 2017, Vol. 20(1–2) 196–211 The spectre of! The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: Communist women, sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1363460716645789 citizenship in Indonesia Annie Pohlman University of Queensland, Saint Lucia, Australia Abstract In this article, the author examines sexual violence against women during a period of mass social conflict and reflects on how this violence continues to affect sexual and political citizenship in modern Indonesia. The demonization and destruction of a particular group of Communist women, known as ‘Gerwani’, during the mass killings of 1965–1966 created an on-going, pathological discourse about politically active women as gendered and sexual ‘others’ in Indonesia. The reconfiguration of bodies through sexual violence during that period continues to shape gender ideology and sexual politics in Indonesia, particularly through the prescription of more traditional, heteronormative roles for women’s political participation. This negative association with sexuality and sexual violence affects the possibilities for women’s active citizenship in post-New Order Indonesia, and renders it difficult for women to claim sexual autonomy or sexual citizenship. Keywords Indonesia, political prisoners, propaganda, sexual politics, women’s movements The mass violence of 1965–1966 changed Indonesian society and citizenship in complex and profound ways. This series of massacres were carried out in the aftermath of a coup on 1 October 1965, when the Indonesian military embarked upon a genocidal campaign against its mass-supported political rival, the Indonesian Communist Party (known as the ‘PKI’, Partai Komunis Indonesia). In the months that followed, it has been estimated that half a million ‘Communist sympathizers’ were killed and over one million more were arrested Corresponding author: Annie Pohlman, School of Languages and Cultures, University of Queensland, Saint Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia. Email: a.pohlman@uq.edu.au === [PDF page 2] === Pohlman 197 and detained as political prisoners under the new authoritarian regime: General Suharto’s ‘New Order’ which lasted for more than 30 years (Kammen and McGregor, 2012). One of the most harmful effects of that period of mass social violence on the Indonesian polity has been the demonization of women’s political activism. This is a direct result of the demonization and destruction of the Communist women’s mass movement, known as Gerwani (literally ‘The Indonesian Women’s Movement’ or Gerakan Wanita Indonesia). In this article, I examine primarily the violence perpetrated against women accused of being members of Gerwani during the massacres of 1965–1966 and reflect briefly on how the legacy of this violence affects sexual and political identity in Indonesia today. First, I discuss my use of the concept of ‘sexual citizenship’ and how the term is constructive when examining the eradication of politicized female identity in Indonesia following 1965. Drawing on Saskia Wieringa’s (2002, 2003, 2011) work on the demonization of Communist women following the 1965 coup, I offer further evidence of how the eradication of Gerwani was a gendered process manifest in widespread and horrific forms of sexualized violence against women. I also examine how the destruction of this mass-supported women’s movement created an on-going, pathological discourse about politically active women as gendered and sexual ‘others’ in Indonesia. Last, I discuss briefly how the spectre of the Communist women eradicated during the 1965–1966 massacres continues to affect women’s political participation in Indonesia. Sexual citizenship and the exclusion of political women in Indonesia In this article, I use the concept of sexual citizenship (Bell and Binnie, 2000; Richardson, 1998) to frame the creation and perpetuation of a discourse in modern Indonesia which denigrates women who are politically engaged. Much research into sexual citizenship has examined the institutionalized heterosexuality of citizenship and citizen rights (Richardson, 1998, 2000), and has critiqued how those citizens and their rights are grounded in the citizen being imagined as a white, heterosexual man (Plummer, 2003). For the purposes of this research into the harmful discourse which posits politically-engaged women in Indonesia as unnatural and even dangerous others, the concept of sexual citizenship is useful because it helps us to see how those who are not considered citizens are negatively constructed within, and therefore marginalized from, social membership or belonging within the polity (Richardson, 1998). The pathologized discourse around political women in modern Indonesia evolved from the vilification of Communist women (Gerwani women in particular) during the Indonesian military’s propaganda campaign against the PKI following the 1965 coup which developed into ‘the foundation myth of the New Order effectively demonis[ing] the political role of women’ (Sen, 2000: 112). I examine how the misogynous propaganda against Gerwani women legitimized sexual violence === [PDF page 3] === 198 Sexualities 20(1–2) against women with perceived Communist ties during the mass violence of 1965–1966. Further, I build upon Wieringa’s work (2002, 2003, 2011) regarding the association of women’s political activism with perversion and provide further evidence of how the legacy of this violence profoundly affected gender ideology after the killings. The New Order regime which followed the killings promoted a specific (hetero)normative form of womanhood as mother-and-wife (Ibu) which was normatively gendered and essentially depoliticized (Blackburn, 2004; Robinson, 2009; Suryakusuma, 1996). Women who stepped outside this role were castigated as both gendered and politicized others within modern Indonesian society. This discourse became an enduring framework for women’s political participation in Indonesia, a discourse that produces the symbolic and material exclusion of women’s political organizing and restricts full participation in the nation and in their communities. To show how this discourse evolved, I examine the misogynous propaganda which constructed Gerwani women as threatening sexual others, and then highlight how this vilification resulted in widespread sexual violence against these women during the killings of 1965–1966. Lastly, I discuss how this demonization of Gerwani women evolved into an enduring discourse which pathologizes women’s political organizing, effectively excluding and denigrating women who choose to dissent from the prescribed roles of wife and mother. The eradication of the Left in Indonesia: Propaganda and incitement to massacre The attempted coup on the night of 30 September 1965 put into motion a series of violent events which affected the lives of tens of millions of Indonesians and forever changed the political and social landscape of that nation. The events of this coup some 50 years ago have remained the topic of much intrigue and conspiracy as well as academic argument. What is known is that on that night, six top-ranking generals and one general’s aide were kidnapped and murdered by a group of middleranking Army officers proclaiming themselves ‘the 30 September Movement’. Numerous conspiracy theories have flourished over the years as to who carried out the coup, for what purpose and who was ultimately responsible (Anderson and McVey, 1971; Roosa, 2006). Whoever may have been ultimately responsible for the coup, the Indonesian Army leadership seized the opportunity presented by the upheaval to wipe out its long-standing political rivals, the PKI. Within days of putting down the 30 September Movement, parts of the remaining military leadership had blamed the coup on the PKI and claimed that members of Communist organizations, including Gerwani, had been instrumental in the kidnapping and murder of the generals. The military then embarked upon a propaganda campaign which was designed to incite anti- Communist hatred throughout the Indonesian population. To achieve this goal, the military took over most of the media outlets in Indonesia, effectively ensuring control over the content and release of news. The propaganda exploited existing === [PDF page 4] === Pohlman 199 social tensions within Indonesia and was the catalyst for the slaughter of Communist ‘sympathizers’ across Indonesia. These massacres were carried out predominantly in the later part of 1965 and the early months of 1966 by the military with the active participation of various youth militia groups drawn mostly from the ranks of religious and nationalist organizations. While the massacre of half a million men, women and children for their association with the PKI was being carried out, the military – by then under the command of General Suharto – carried out successive waves of arrests against an estimated million more who were rounded up and put into political detention. The majority of those arrested, known as tapols (an abbreviation of tahanan politik – political prisoner), were detained without trial and imprisoned. Many were subjected to interrogation, torture, starvation and forced labor in overcrowded and substandard prisons and labor camps (Southwood and Flanagan, 1983). 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. It was the stories made up about the coup itself, however, which featured most prominently in the propaganda and which provoked the strongest reactions. Shortly after the coup, allegations began to appear that the generals had been brutally mutilated and sexually 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 other Communist party organizations trained became stories of how their members had savagely attacked the generals. The sexual licentiousness and sadistic violence of the alleged events at the site of the killings (the place itself referred to as the infamous ‘Lubang Buaya’ or ‘Crocodile Hole’) 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: 11–35). What were perhaps the most pervasive and insidious aspects of the campaign, however, were the blatant misogynist themes. In particular, the depiction of Gerwani members as key players in the alleged sexual violence at Lubang Buaya was one of the strongest aspects of the propaganda. As Steven Drakeley has argued, 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 if seen to be the acts of women; by making Gerwani women into vicious predators with obscene sexual desires, the propaganda was much more effective in demonizing the PKI (p. 11). As Saskia Wieringa (1998: 143–145) has shown, this propaganda campaign effectively discredited Communist ideology and cultivated the association of Communism with sexual perversion, immorality and betrayal. === [PDF page 5] === 200 Sexualities 20(1–2) Misogynous propaganda and legitimizing sexual violence against women The fiction of a bloody Communist coup involving the mutilation of generals and reports of sexual orgies with Gerwani women were key elements in the military’s strategy to create a popular fear and loathing of the PKI. This misogynous propaganda had a direct impact on the demonization of and violence against Gerwani members and women accused of being Communist sympathizers during the massacres and in political detention. In the stories that women who survived this violence tell about the killings and political detention, it is clear that this propaganda had a direct impact on gendered forms of violence. In particular, their stories illustrate that sexualized forms of violence against women and girls were partly a response to perceived sexual excess on the part of the PKI, as depicted in the military’s propaganda. This perceived sexual excess of the PKI as legitimation for sexual violence during the killings and in political detention was a theme that was raised many times during my interviews with women survivors over the past 10 years across various regions of Sumatra and Java (Pohlman, 2015). In some interviews, women talked about how perpetrators explicitly named the alleged sexual torture of the generals by Gerwani women as their justification for perpetrating sexual assault. In some testimonies, women recounted being taunted and ridiculed thus by guards and interrogators who sexually assaulted and abused them. These taunts included that they, as Communist women, were sexually promiscuous and that they were used to sexual torture. It was alleged that 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 – but the PKI had also allegedly indoctrinated the 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 testimony of Ibu Susiani (a pseudonym), a woman I interviewed in Jakarta in late 2005, reveals some of these accusations of sexual promiscuity. Ibu Susiani was taken into custody because the military was looking for her husband – a member of the PKI who had disappeared months before. She was arrested over a year after the coup and interrogated many times regarding 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 sexualized, 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.] === [PDF page 6] === Pohlman 201 ‘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, uncleanliness 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 on that occasion but that her husband’s younger brother, also detained to find out 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, 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 numerous 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 was 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. What is clear from these sections of Ibu Susiani’s testimony, 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 legitimize and rationalize sexualized forms of violence against accused Communist sympathizers was also a central === [PDF page 7] === 202 Sexualities 20(1–2) theme in testimonies that recounted forms of violence outside the detention centres. Women survivors of sexual violence during this period made clear that allegations of sexual excess, orgies and sexual torture at Lubang Buaya portrayed PKI members as the very worst kind of people who deserved what they got. Thus, horrific forms of violence, including the many and varied forms of deeply dehumanizing and sexualized violence, were used against them. Sexual violence against women and girls during the violence of 1965 From my own research and studies carried out by a handful of non-government organizations and human rights advocacy groups over the last decade with women survivors, an increasingly clear picture is emerging regarding the patterns of sexual violence perpetrated against women and girls during this period (see Kolimon and Wetangterah, 2012; Komnas Perempuan, 2007; Pohlman, 2015). From this research, it has become evident that rape and sexual assaults were perpetrated frequently against women who were suspected Communists or Leftist supporters, including against women who were killed during the massacres, against women detainees, and against the women relatives and associates of men who were detained or killed. For many women, rape and sexual assault were inescapable realities. For women and teenage girls who were held in detention, night-time was 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 of the militia groups. 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 15 and 35 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. 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. Sexual violence against women and teenage girls began shortly after the 1 October coup. In many of my interviews 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 === [PDF page 8] === Pohlman 203 found women whom they perceived to be PKI sympathizers and therefore ‘legitimate’ targets for assault. The testimony of Ibu ‘D’ is an example of how women caught by anti-PKI militias in attacks experienced sexual violence. Recounted in a report compiled by the Indonesian National Commission for Women’s Rights, Komnas Perempuan, Ibu D, while not a member of a communist-aligned organization 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. (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 above, 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 sexualized humiliation. Also common was the verbal abuse that equated Ibu D, as a female Communist sympathizer, with savagery and accusations that she was a murderer, therefore making her into a 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) === [PDF page 9] === 204 Sexualities 20(1–2) The gang rape was instigated by the call of one of the perpetrators to ‘Rape [her]!’ which was then 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.1 Although she had been seriously injured by her rapists, that morning they then forced Ibu D to walk naked for 5 kilometres in public to the police station. Their humiliation and degradation of Ibu D were essentially performative, that is, their actions were not simply directed at Ibu D; they had effects on the surrounding community. 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 sympathizer, but the display of this violence. The violence perpetrated is also highly gendered in its forms and performativity. As Ibu D makes clear in another part of her testimony, cited here at length, 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 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. (cited in Komnas Ham, 2007: 55) === [PDF page 10] === Pohlman 205 Ibu D’s testimony shows how sexualized forms of violence were incorporated into torture during interrogation sessions and constituted a continual threat and 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 fetishized 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 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 D was instrumentalized by her torturers in order to abuse her husband. There are no further details in the report about what happened to Ibu D. Her experiences of violence, including the many degrading forms of sexualized violence, are those of one woman out of tens of thousands – if not hundreds of thousands – of women adversely affected by the violence of 1965. Women and teenage girls accused of being Communist sympathizers experienced numerous forms of sexualized violence across the many regions of Indonesia. This abuse was used to harm, humiliate, coerce and subjugate victims. The testimonies of women survivors, which recount these many and horrific forms of violence, however, also reveal the ways in which women made choices, coped, resisted, acquiesced, negotiated, survived, and did not survive, during the mass violence of 1965–1966. The legacy of the propaganda and the spectre of Communist women The killings, arrests and ongoing stigmatization of all those connected with the Left created the foundation for Suharto’s long-lasting, authoritarian New Order. As Ariel Heryanto and others have 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 threatened Communist resurgence (Goodfellow, 1995; Heryanto, 2006). When the New Order finally came to an end in May 1998, however, the spectre of anti-Communism did not die with the regime, but rather remained a powerful (if increasingly ludicrous) tool to discredit political opponents and evoke fear. This focus on gender and sex when examining the violence of 1965 is essential to understand 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 sexualized and gendered reveal certain aspects of the events following the 1965 coup that would otherwise remain unclear. Testimonies by survivors of this mass violence recount how civilian participation in the killings was incited by the elaborate propaganda campaign designed by the military leadership to inculcate fear and hatred of PKI supporters. Central to this propaganda were allegations that Communist Party women had carried out sexually licentious === [PDF page 11] === 206 Sexualities 20(1–2) and sadistic violence. As the testimonies by women survivors in particular reveal, one of the direct impacts of this propaganda was the widespread sexual violence perpetrated against women and teenage girls suspected of being PKI supporters. Women identified as Gerwani members, or those accused of affiliation with this organization, were singled out within the mass violence. 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 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 which 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 (Chatterjee, 1993; Mayer, 2000). These ideals are also exclusively heteronormative in their construction and thus marginalize 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 conflicts, as was the case during the massive social upheaval of the 1965–1966 massacres. The profound depersonalization and destruction of perceived enemies, Communist sympathizers in this case, is also a markedly sexualized and gendered process. This violence was fundamental in the re-ordering of sexual citizenship following the killings. As seen in the testimonies of survivors from this period, Communist women bore the brunt of this violent process. Gerwani women and women accused of being Communist sympathizers (who were usually branded as Gerwani members) were transformed into the sexually dangerous and evil women they were rumoured to be through brutal and sexualized violence (cf. Appadurai, 1998: 225–247; Pohlman, 2012). Extreme forms of violence against these women whereby their sexual organs and other parts of their body which identified them as female were cut out, cut off or otherwise destroyed, or whereby particular forms of gendered humiliation were used in attacks against women, were all techniques to achieve this transformation. The reconfiguration of bodies in the violence of 1965 was differentiated clearly by this sexualized violence on gendered bodies. More than this, however, were the effects that this violence of the killings had upon gender ideology and sexual politics in Indonesia. As Saskia Wieringa (2002) has shown, the upheaval that displaced Sukarno’s regime with 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 militarized, authoritarian and patriarchal regime, was dependent upon controlling women’s sexuality and political involvement. As Wieringa (2003: 73) states: === [PDF page 12] === Pohlman 207 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 being responsible for the perverse, inhuman, primitive behaviour of their women. Women’s organizing was depoliticized and women’s organizations 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). Sexual citizenship during the New Order and beyond The banning of Gerwani and the creation of a discourse of sexual citizenship in Indonesia which posited politically-active women as ‘unnatural’ and even monstrous was a core component of the New Order’s gender ideology. Over the 30 years of the regime’s ‘gender order’, to use Kathryn Robinson’s (2009) term, discursive and regulatory control over women’s bodies and participation in the state’s familial model became progressively more entrenched. As Robinson states: women [became] subordinate to men within the family and the state, with their primary civic duties performed in their roles as wives and mothers. Repressive and restrictive representations of women and circumscribed female roles in public life underpinned the political system. (p. 68) These restrictions on women’s social and political citizenship within the New Order polity as confined to those roles which could be performed as wives and mothers have been the topic of much research. Djajadiningrat-Nieuwenhuis (1987: 43–51), for example, has explored the appropriation of ‘Ibuism’ in 20th-century Indonesia to describe the shaping of women’s citizenship roles, particularly those of elite women. Others, such as Suryakusuma (1996: 92–119), Wieringa (1993: 17–30) and Blackburn (2004), have detailed how this restriction of women’s roles was further confined under the New Order through the development and mass expansion of official women’s organizations. Two such organizations which were paradigmatic in their structure of the state’s roles for women were: Dharma Wanita (literally ‘Women’s Duties’), the official organization for the wives of the vast number of Indonesia’s civil servants; and the PKK (Pembinaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga or ‘Family Welfare Guidance’), the organization set up by the New Order regime for wives at all levels of the government’s apparatus. These organizations, and others like them, became key instruments of the state bureaucratization and sequestering of women’s organizing. Membership within such organizations was required (and socially if not officially policed); the structure of leadership was a reflection of the positions held by their members’ husbands; and their activities and programs were created and directed by the central government === [PDF page 13] === 208 Sexualities 20(1–2) and then passed onto these respective organizations for implementation (Blackburn, 2004: 152–153; Wieringa, 1992: 103–104). An essential part of the smallest ‘unit’ in society, the place of women within the New Order polity was as the wife and mother of the family, supporting husbands and nurturing the next generation for the state’s developmental goals. Such organizations were deemed the appropriate model for women’s participation in society under the New Order. Bringing women back to their ‘natural behaviour’ or ‘true duties’ as wives and mothers (kodrat) within the regime’s grand vision for development was consciously and insidiously juxtaposed with the allegedly aberrant, sexually devious and treacherous behaviour of Gerwani women (Blackburn, 2004: 152; Oey-Gardiner, 2002: 102). The legitimation for the destruction of the dangerous Gerwani women during the 1965 violence remained a key part of this re-domestication of women’s groups. Even by the third decade of the New Order, when new organizations were being founded and dissatisfaction and dissent against the regime became increasingly apparent, attempts by women’s groups to step outside these prescribed roles earned them occasional harassment and abuse (Blackburn, 2004: 104). As Wieringa (2002: 2) notes, towards the end of the New Order, when the more progressive women’s organizations founded in the mid-1980s tried to carry out pro-women’s rights activities, they were accused of trying to establish ‘a new Gerwani’. Although Suharto’s 33-year reign ended in 1998, the violence of his regime remains as a seemingly unshakable legacy. The spectre of Communism and its use as a tool for discrediting political opponents remain distinctly gendered in implementation and practice. Over the last two decades, there have been numerous, more contemporary examples whereby women’s groups have continued to be accused of being ‘new Gerwani’ members because of their allegedly radical behaviour (such as advocating women’s rights or equality before the law). In her study on New Order myths about Gerwani, Kerry Brogan (2000) found that women who became activists were often discredited as being ‘related to Gerwani’ or else linked with the PKI (pp. 85–98). As recently as 2009, women’s rights activist, member of parliament and co-founder of the Association for Women’s Justice (APIK), Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, was singled out by political opponents during her campaign in a region of East Java with accusations that she was aligned with Communist women (reported in Wieringa, 2011: 544–545; see also Katjasungkana, 1992). The accusations were clearly intended to discredit her politically and to create a public association between Katjasungkana’s activism and the perceived morally questionable and potentially dangerous activism of outspoken women. Conclusion Over the last two decades, Indonesia has made great progress in dismantling the authoritarian structures of the New Order regime. There are areas, however, where attempts at progress have failed. Dealing with the legacies of the 1965 violence is === [PDF page 14] === Pohlman 209 one of these areas. By examining this case of how mass violence against women continues to affect their full and equal participation, I have focused on how bodies and the discourses which shape them become the locus for political and gendered practices of citizenship. In Indonesia, the legacy of the military’s misogynist propaganda and the sexual violence perpetrated predominantly against women and girls during the killings of 1965–1966 continues to affect sexual citizenship in ways which constrain women’s participation in the contemporary polity. The association of any form of women’s political activism which does not adhere to prescribed roles as mothers/wives with sexual licentiousness and Communist ideology still echoes some 50 years after the killings. Despite the passage of time, the spectre of so many dead Communist women looms over political life in Indonesia. If the full and free participation of Indonesia’s women as citizens of their nation is to be won, this spectre must be addressed and, finally, put to rest. Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Note 1. 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; depersonalization and diffusion of responsibility for acts; competition for and/or maintenance of status; peer pressure and risk of expulsion from the group (or victimization 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-masculinization of perpetrators. See, for example, a review of this literature in one interesting article comparing the violence of groups of young men against gay men and gang rapes of women (Franklin, 2004: 25–40). 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Wieringa S (2011) Sexual slander and the 1965/66 mass killings in Indonesia: Political and methodological considerations. Journal of Contemporary Asia 41(4): 544–565. Yuval-Davis N (1997) Gender and Nation. London: SAGE. Annie Pohlman is Lecturer in Indonesian studies at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. She is author of Women, Sexual Violence and the Indonesian Killings of 1965–1966 (Routledge, 2015) and co-editor of Genocide and Mass Atrocities in Asia: Legacies and Prevention (Routledge, 2013). Her research covers Indonesian history and politics, comparative genocide studies, gendered experiences of violence, testimony and torture.