Indonesian Communism since the 1965 Coup

=== [PDF page 1] === Indonesian Communism since the 1965 Coup van der Kroef, Justus M Pacific Affairs; Spring 1970; 43, 1; ProQuest pg. 34 Indonesian Communism since the 1965 Coup Justus M. van der Kroef N SEPTEMBER 13, 1969, at the conclusion of a three day conference at Tjiawi, West Java, attended by the principal military commanders on Java, a statement was issued which pledged continuing operations to wipe out the remnants of the banned Indonesian Communist party (Partat Komunis Indonesia—PKI). The statement added that as long as an “international Communist movement” existed, Indonesia “would continue to face a Communist threat.”1 The statement came at a time of increasing reports—denied by Indonesian Foreign Minister Adam Malik—that the underground PKI had established secret contacts with members of the Algerian, Iraqi, Syrian, and South Yemeni embassy staffs in Djakarta. Meanwhile, the purge was continuing of personnel in the Army and other military services suspected of involvement with the PKI and/or the abortive coup of September 30, 1965 (usually called Gestapu by acronym-minded Indonesians, from Gerakan Tigah Puluh September or “30 September Movement”). Earlier in 1969 there had been many official warnings on the threat posed by allegedly continuing PKI activity. On March 4, for example, and again on March 11, President Suharto in messages to military commanders declared that Indonesian Communists were attempting to subvert his government and were trying a political comeback. Suharto particularly called attention to the guerrilla insurgency along the Indonesian Sarawak border and to the recent discovery of an extensive PKI underground resistance network in Central and East Java as evidence of the persistent Communist danger. On March 13, a special government investigating committee composed of Army officers formed in order to assess present PKI activity said that the Communists were busily attempting to bring the deposed President Sukarno back to power and were forming a national united front with armed peasants to that end. The committee declared that six strategic Communist cadre units had been formed to sabotage government institutions and declared that of the 300,000 party cadres only 12,000 had thus far been captured? Nor was Java the only scene of alleged PKI burrowing. In the 1 Antara Daily News Bulletin, September 16, 1969. 2 Sydney Morning Herald, March 14, 1969. 34 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 2] === Indonesian Communism since the 1965 Coup middle of January 1969 thirteen officers of the West Kalimantan (Borneo) Military Command were detained on orders of the regional Army commander, Brigadier-General Witono, on grounds that they were “believed to be former Communist cadres,” while an arms cache was seized at the home of one of the detained officers. All these developments should be considered as a culmination, at least for the moment, of the Suharto government’s increasing articulation of and apparent tactical dependence on the existence of an alleged PKI threat to the country. Plausibility to this campaign was given by the heavy involvement of top Indonesian Communists and party front organizations in the Gestapu affair, and by the evidence of Communist plotting presented since 1966 during a number of trials of prominent former officials (like former Foreign Minister Dr. Subandrio), military, and PKI leaders.* In the wake of the September 30 coup President Sukarno (widely regarded as having had foreknowledge of and as having condoned the coup) gradually began to slide from power, and amidst cabinet changes in March and July 1966, which saw General Suharto first become a deputy-premier for defense and security and then chairman of a “cabinet presidium,” the Indonesian military intensified their campaign against the scattered underground PKI remnant and its real or supposed sympathizers.> From the middle of October 1965 throughout most of the first half of 1966, moreover, a frightful anti- Communist pogrom—primarily though not exclusively in Java and Bali— was unleashed by local Army commanders, Muslim and other youth groups, and by village “volunteer guards.” Tens of thousands of real or suspected PKI cadres, members, party front supporters and, it is to be feared, innocent 83 Djakarta Times, January 16, 1969. The extent, though not the actuality, of PKI involvement in the coup is still in question. For varying views see Arthur Dommen, “The Attempted Coup in Indonesia,” China Quarterly, January-March 1966, pp. 144-67; Lucien Rey, “Dossier of the Indonesian Drama,” New Left Review, March-April 1966, pp. 26-40; Justus M. van der Kroef, ‘ ‘Gestapu' in Indonesia,” Orbis, Summer 1966, pp. 458-87; Arnold C. Brackman, The Communist Collapse in Indonesia (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969); John Hughes, Indonesian Upheaval (New York: David McKay, 1967), esp. pp. 3-115; and B, Gunawan, Kudeta; Staatsgreep in Djakarta (Meppel: J. A. Boom en Zoon, 1968). Among the Indonesian analyses are Boerhan and Soebekti, Fakta dan Latarbelakang G30S (Djakarta: Lembaga Pendidikan Ilmu Pengethahuan dan Kebudajaan Kasgoro, 1966); Angkatan Darat, Pusat Sedjarah Militer, Fakta Fakta Persoalan Sekitar, Gerakan 30 September” (Djakarta: P. N. Balai Pustaka, 1966); Staf Pertahanan-Keamanan Lembaga Sedjarah, 4o Hari Kegagalan G-30-S. (Staf Pertahanan-Keamanan, s.l., 1966, second edition). See also the following trial records: G-30-S Gerakan 30 September dihadapan Mahmillub 3 di Dijakarta (Perkara Dr, Subandrio) (Djakarta;: P, T’, Pembimbing Masa, 1967); G-30-S Dihadapan Mahmillub (Perkara Njono) (Djakarta: P. ‘T. Pembimbing Masa, 1966); Mahkamah Militer Luar Biasa Staf Oditur, Berkas Perkara terdakwara; Wirjomartono alias Sujono alias Sumarsono alias Umar (s.a.e.1., mimeo); Mahkamah Militer Luar Biasa, Berkas No. PTSo21/MMLB-IV/UR/1967; Perkara Utomo Ramelan (s.a.c.l., mimeo); and Mahkamah Militer Luar Biasa, Berkas No. PTS-19/MLB-Il/SPD/1967: Perkara M.S. Supardjo, Ex-Brigdjen T.N.I. (s.a.e.1., mimeo). I am grateful to Mr, Oejeng Suwargana for making the record of the last three named trial proceedings and of others cited below (note 15) available to me. 5 Justus M. van der Kroef, “Sukarno’s Fall,” Oris, Summer 1967, pp. 491-531. 35 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 3] === Pacific Affairs victims of mere hearsay were killed. Particularly in June and July 1966, when the supporters of the beleaguered Sukarno were rallying around him, Army commanders as well as General A. H. Nasution, former defense minister and perhaps the nation’s top soldier, warned against the machinations of the “PKI/Gestapx” underground and their efforts to initiate a gerpol (from politik gerilja or political guerrilla war). “Increased vigilance” was demanded by Suharto in the face of “political guerrilla” activities launched by “elements” of the Gestapu which “even until now” were said to be “trying to play us off against each other and to upset the country.” From this time forward endless reports and rumors of allegedly new PKI plots, Communist subversion in various political organizations, notably the Partai Nasional Indonesia (PNI) with which Sukarno had long maintained an informal leadership connection, and in the Indonesian Chinese community, as well as eventually extensive purges within the various branches of the armed forces themselves, seemed to become fixtures of the Indonesian political atmosphere. Stress was placed particularly in early Army reports about clandestine Communist activity on the new, covert, organizational structure of the PKI remnant. Underground terrorist groups were said to be operating under such code names as PKI Malam (Night PKI) and Kutjing Hitam (Black Cat); in the Rembang area of North Central Java the terrorist organizations were said to be specialized, with “Black Cat” units concentrating on arson, Kojok Hitam (Black Dog) elements dealing in kidnapping and murder, and still others “specializing” in surprise attacks, poisoning, and the burial and disposal of victims.” In the middle of January 1967, the Djakarta Army commander, Major- General Amir Mahmud, gave an extensive report on supposed PKI underground operations in the preceding year. The report indicated that the party, after the Gestapu debacle, had been able to reorganize a New Central Committee, headed by Sudisman, a Central Committee member before the abortive coup.® Sudisman was arrested in Djakarta in December 1966, but apparently not before he had been able to bring a measure of order to the shattered party remnant in West Java, establishing some, if limited, contact also with a “rival” Central Committee headed by Rewang, operating in Central and East Java provinces. Considering their source it is difficult to evaluate the Army and other government disclosures of continuing PKI burrowing at this time, for a self-serving aura seems only too often apparent in official reports. At the same time it is well to remember certain facts about the Indo- 6 Armed Forces Daily Mail (Djakarta), June 3, July 20 and 23, 1966. See also Sinar Harapan (Djakarta), June 7, 1966. 7 Diakarta Times, December 1, 1966. See also Justus M. van der Kroef, “How Dead is the Indonesian Communist Party?” Communist Affairs, January-February 1967, p. 4, where I have given details of PKI activity in 1966. 8 Antara Daily News Bulletin, September 24, 1966 has a synopsis of Mahmud’s report. 36 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 4] === Indonesian Communism since the 1965 Coup nesian Communist movement. First, the PKI, shortly before the September 1965 coup, had reached the zenith of its power, claiming some 2.5 million members and candidate members, as well as additional tens of thousands in labor, women’s, youth, and other fronts. Though the coup was to highlight the PKI’s grave organizational weaknesses and tactical errors, there is little doubt that in September 1965 no Indonesian political party could rival its influence in all spheres of public life.® A report attributed to reliable Army sources a few weeks after the Gestapu affair suggested that the Indonesian Army itself had become so heavily infiltrated by the PKI that field commanders were hesitating to commit their units to round up Communist insurgent bands in Central Java for fear their troops would desert. Army commanders, described as “frankly horrified” at the extent of Communist influence in their forces, were said to be uncertain of the loyalty of several batallions, and in order to meet the problem had agreed to move battalions “around the archipelago.”?° Secondly, while the bloody anti-Communist pogrom between the end of October 1965 and the middle of April 1966 properly has attracted much attention, the eruption of post-coup Communist terrorism, which aggravated the pogrom reaction particularly in Central Java, has received comparatively little notice. By early November 1965, however, there was continuing and extensive Communist guerrilla and terrorist action, reportedly including kidnapping, arson, and murder in the Bojolali and Klaten areas of Central Java, in and around Tasikmalaja, West Java (where several mosques were reportedly desecrated by the roaming bands), and at Dukuh Karanganjar in East Java where Communist Pemuda Rakjat (People’s Youth) were fighting security forces.*? Moreover, during these early post-coup weeks much, though not all, of the local PKI leadership, counting on Sukarno’s protection, remained politically highly visible, having made few if any preparations to go underground and hoping “to ride out the storm as innocent victims of calumny” as they had done in earlier crises.” In the midst of the rising anti-Communist pogrom and student agitation, when it became abundantly clear that Sukarno would be unable to protect the party, Communist underground action rapidly got underway, and the PKI Malam and other covert party organizations soon were nominally to coalesce, as had occurred in West Java, in an over-arching self-styled Tentara Pembebasan Rakjat Indonesia (TPRI) or “Indonesian People’s ® C£, Justus M. van der Kroef, The Communist Party of Indonesia: Its History, Program and Tactics (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Publications Center, 1965), and “Indonesian Communism’s ‘Revolutionary Gymunastics,’”’ dsian Survey, May 1965, pp. 217-32. 10 Straits Times, November 4, 1965. 11 Antara Daily News Bulletin, November 3, 1965, and New York Times, November 3, 1965, 12 Donald Hindley, “Dilemmas of Concensus and Division: Indonesia’s Search for a Political Format,”’ Government and Opposition, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1969), p. 79. 37 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 5] === Pacific Affairs Liberation Army,” whose posters and leaflets began to appear by the middle of 1966. By this time the anti-Communist and anti-Sukarno student action group KAMI was urgently appealing for help from the military, claiming a Communist terror campaign in Central Java where, KAMI said, allegedly pro-Communist students in military uniforms were kidnapping and murdering anti-Communist students in Djokjakarta. Mosques in Central and West Java also continued to be attacked.¥ In the months after the Gestape incident there is no question that the PKI and its ancillaries did strike back at its persecutors; indeed, it was able to wreak considerable havoc of its own as its underground resistance became better organized. Not least, Sukarno, while publicly stressing that Indonesia’s remained “a leftist revolution,” sought to protect and even praised the PKI for its services to Indonesian independence.** The fear of a resurgent PKI, of an organization which in view of its size and influence (even in the armed forces themselves) could be considered as being far from shattered, seemed to have a good foundation among suspicious Army commanders and their Orba (from Orde Baru, or “New Order,” i.c., the postcoup, anti-Sukarno, and anti-PKI political complex) allies. By the middle of 1966 two significant attempts to reestablish central direction to the PKI underground had been uncovered. The first was led by former Politburo member Sudisman in Djakarta with ancillary organizations in the southern mountain areas of West Java. Sudisman was subsequently arrested in early December 1966, tried, and executed on October 29, 1968, along with another prominent Politburo figure, the party’s labor specialist Njono, who had been tried the previous February. A second underground party “Central Committee” operated in Central Java, first in the Klaten-Bojolali region and later in the northeastern part of the province around Rembang and Purwodadi. This committee was led by Rewang (alias Karto), occasional contributor to the Prague-based World Marxist Review and the party’s Central Java chairman. Associated with Rewang, and to a degree rivalling him, was Ruslan Widjajasastra, PKI East Java chairman, while a leader of the former Pemuda Rakjat (the party’s youth front) Robby Sumolong, led a rudimentary “agitprop” department, disseminating posters and a leaflet calléd Mimbar Rakjat (“People’s Forum”). The appearance of, Mimbar Rakjat aroused the public concern of authorities in Semarang as early as September 1966. The degree of cooperation between the Sudisman and Rewang groups is now not known, and Sudisman’s subsequent arrest probably precluded significant common action. But it would appear that some TPRI elements 13 Sabah Times (Kota Kinabalu), July 3 and 20, 1966. 14 Antara Daily News Bulletin, November 2 and December 15, 1965. At a rally in Djakarta on February 14, 1966, Sukarno declared; “I think the PKI is the only political party in Indonesia which rendered considerable contribution and sacrifice for the independence of the country.” Sarawak Tribune (Kuching), February 15, 1966. 38 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 6] === Indonesian Communism since the 1965 Coup in West Java were recruited by the Rewang faction in order to preserve some of the party’s influence in the armed forces. In preparation for the Gestapz affair PKI leaders had established a biro chusus, or “special bureau,” in which the shadowy figure of Sjam, alias Kamarusaman, played perhaps the major role for the purpose of recruiting and developing closer liaison with “progressive” Army sympathizers.’® After the September 30 coup, covert PKI recruiting efforts in the armed forces continued, and to this end Sjam reportedly kept the direction of the hiro chusus, working to some degree in tandem with the Rewang-Widjajasastra group. The influence of the diro even after Sjam’s subsequent arrest and trial should not be underestimated: in February 1968 alone, for example, some 330 Army, Navy, Airforce, and Police personnel in East Java, most of them from the Malang area, deserted to the regional PKI underground and took their weapons with them. This was but one of a series of similar desertions. In the meantime PKI influence also continued strong in the Marine Corps (Korps Komando Operasi—KKO) and despite severe post-coup purges in some units of the Army’s Diponegoro Division in Central Java. Two of Sjam’s PKI associates, Muljono alias Walujo, who went on trial in October 1968, and Pono, whose capture was announced in March 1969, appear to have “specialized” in infiltration in the Diponegoro Division. Although the Rewang-Widjajasastra group was continuously decimated by arrests (Rewang himself was erroneously reported killed in the middle of 1967), it and the remnant of Sudisman’s apparatus in and around Djakarta apparently achieved a measure of consolidation and coordination during 1967; it also incorporated participants of the TPRI, as well as Kutjing Hitam elements in Central Java, and such small and scattered terrorist groups as the “Surabaya People’s Guerrilla Movement” (Persatuan Gerilja Rakjat Surabaja) in East Java. Communist underground activity was also reported to be spreading to islands beyond Java. Early in 1967 the Rewang-Widjajasastra group sent out Martinus Girot to South Sulawesi (Celebes) to rebuild the party. By August authorities disclosed the arrest of a new forty-member band, “making up a new-style version” of the PKI in South Sulawesi.’® In November 1967, North Sumatran military authorities declared that an attempt to establish a “Night PKI” with the aid of local Chinese businessmen had been foiled, and that some 550 “suspected Communists” had been arrested, Despite earlier arrests in October 1967 in and around Medan, North 15 Nugroho Notosusanto and Ismail Saleh, The Coup Attempt of the “September 30 Movement” in Indonesia (Djakarta: P. T. Pembimbing Masa, 1968), pp. 10-13. On the Biro chusus see also the record of the trial of Sjam before a special military tribunal in February and March 1968, Mahkamah Militer Luar Biasa, Putusan, Nomor PTS-027/MLB-1/K/1968. Perkara Kamarusaman bin Ahmad Mubaidah (s.a.e.1., mimeo), esp. p. I, 17-19 and passim. This trial record identifies Sjam as the head of the central Jiro chusus of the PKI, though party chairman Aidit was its formal leader. 160. G. Roeder, “Resurgent PKI?” Far Eastern Economic Review, August 31, 1967, p. 404. 39 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 7] === Pacific Affairs Sumatra, it was disclosed that the Communists were continuing their campaign, which had included attempted attacks on local military posts and attempts to steal firearms.’ The spreading insurgency along the Sarawak-Indonesian border of the “Sarawak People’s Guerrilla Organization” (Pasokan Gerilja Rakjat Sarawak—PGRS) was also officially linked to Communist supporters in Java. In the capital, meanwhile, the alleged existence of the PKI’s persisting long-term power drive had become a matter of officially accepted policy, and in early March 1967 Suharto, citing “confiscated documents,” warned again that dichard PKI “remnants” were plotting another attempt to seize power. The warning came almost simultaneously with the much publicized announcement of the death of Mbah Suro, a soothsayer and mystic of the Central Javanese hamlet of Nginggil, whose cult had been taken over by the PKI underground. Mbah Suro was killed, while loudly proclaiming his invulnerability, in a nine-hour battle with airborne commandoes who had come to arrest him.18 The incident underscored the tactical skill with which the PKI seemed to continue to-be able to integrate itself with and exploit the traditional structure of Javanese society. Subsequent reports that the PKI underground was trying to assassinate Army leaders further heightened apprehension of the seemingly expanding scope of Communist power. The relative coordination achieved under the Rewang-Widjajasastra group was also evidenced during most of 1967 in the increasing identification of scattered and fugitive, but previously prominent, second echelon leaders of the PKI with the group. Thus Oloan Hutapea, former editor of the PKI’s chief theoretical organ, Bintang Merah (Red Star), Mohammad Munir, secretary-general of the PKI’s chief labor front, SOBSI, Sukatno alias Teguh, one-time leader of the earlier named Pemuda Rakjat, and Tjugito, a former Central Committee member, all gravitated toward the loose Rewang-Widjajasastra organizational complex being developed in Central and East Java. Hutapea, in fact, well before the end of 1967 appears to have become the principal leader of this new party organization, eventually heading a “Central Committee” of his own in the South Blitar region of East Java. The infusion of additional veteran party leaders and 17 Djakarta Times, October 2, 19673 Sarawak Tribune, December 8, 1967; and Sunday Tribune, November 19, 1967. I8Qn Mbah Suro see; Ramelan, Mbah Suro Neginggil: Kisah Hanturnja Petualangan Dukun Klenik Mbah Suro (Dijakarta: “Mantoa,” 1967); Willard Hanna, “The Rise and Fall of Mbah Suro,” Part HI of the “Magical-Mystical Syndrome in the Indonesian Mentality,” American Universities Field Staff Reports, Southeast Asia Series, vol. 15, no. 7 (Indonesia), 1967, and Antara Daily News Bulletin, March 11, 1967. On earlier PKI exploitation of nativistic religious expectations in rural Java see, eg., Ruth T. McVey, The Rise of Indonesian Communism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1965), pp. 176-7, 180. In late October the High Attorney in West Java, K. H, Sumarno, ordered an investigation of new “spiritual movements” in his province, pointing out that after the Gestapu affair many new movements had arisen and “mostly” the Communists had “sought refuge” in them. Antara Daily News Bulletin, October 31, 1969. 40 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 8] === Indonesian Communism since the 1965 Coup the relative success in coordinating terrorism and covert recruiting in the armed forces soon were to show in new dimensions of Communist activity, despite occasional reports of the arrest of “shadow” and “emergency” local party committee members."® By the end of 1967 in well chosen parts of Central and East Java, networks of covert encampments, meeting places, shelters, and even bunkers connected by underground tunnels in the Viet Cong manner had been constructed. In 1964 the PKI had sent a team of fourteen cadres to North Vietnam to study guerrilla tactics.2°° Most had returned before the Gestapu affair, and although the team leader, Satir, was killed before the party’s reorganization under Rewang and later under Hutapea had got underway, the expertise of the remaining North Vietnam returnees may have been apparent in subsequent PKI tactics, especially in the Blitar area. Some of the knowledge gained in Vietnam may also have been disseminated at an underground “People’s Liberation Army School” (Sekolah Tentara Pembebasan Rakjat—STPR) near Klaten which had “branches” in the Southern Blitar region. These new, strongly Maoist flavored, tactics involved the division of the Central and East Java countryside in operational zones marked “red” (safe or Communist controlled), “pink” (successfully infiltrated), “white” (neutral but amenable to infiltration), and “green” (hazardous because “enemy” controlled, suggesting particularly the presence of a strong Islamic community or organization). So-called “persuasive” techniques, utilizing a variety of new front groups as well as selective terrorism and concentrating on making “white” zones “pink” and on causing disruption in the “green” zones, constituted the heart of the new tactics. A hierarchical structure of Kompros or “project committees” under “project officers” was established in the principal operational zones for supervisory purposes. Separate provincial party committees for East Java (apparently eventually transformed in a new, Blitar-based Central Committee headed by Hutapea) and Central Java held ultimate directional responsibility and authority for allocating weapons and supplies. The latter, apart from those acquired by deserting military and from raids on police posts and armories, were reportedly also being supplied by Chinese, particularly in Semarang and other Central Javanese cities.2* In August 1968 a fact-finding mission from the West Java regional legislature (DPRD), after an investigation of Communist activity in East Java, particularly Blitar, concluded that Chinese from Bandung and Surabaja had financed some of this activity.?? In assessing the PKI’s new offensive, some of its other tactics need to be 19 On these arrests see, e.g., Djakarta Times, November 15, 1967, and Armed Forces Courier (Djakarta), November 11, 1967, 20 Rosihan Anwar, “The Underground Rumbles in Indonesia,” Straits Times, July 29, 1968. 21 Cf, Djakarta Times, November 25, 1967, and May 4, 1968. 22 Kompas, August 2, 1968; Djakarta Times, August 3, 1968. Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 9] === Pacific Affairs considered briefly. There is little doubt, for example, of the well-coordinated nature of the PKI’s counter terror campaign in the Central and East Java border region in the early months of 1968, including the kidnapping and killing of village officials, kiajihs (Muslim religious leaders), prominent members of the Nahdatul Ulama (Moslem scholars) party, and of the Muslim “Indonesian University Students Association” (Himpunan Mahasiswa Indonesia—HM1). This selective terrorism, directed largely though not exclusively against Muslim rural elite groups, was evidently designed to operate in the context of prevailing social and economic “contradictions.” The anti-Communist pogrom in Central and East Java following the Gestapu affair had, of course, in no way altered the acute problems of overpopulation, land shortage, tenancy, and indebtedness that characterize much of the rural socio-economy in these provinces; if anything, the elimination of PKI influence had accentuated the power of the local Muslim landholders. Thus a substratum of popular misery, which the pre-coup PKI had already been able to exploit with telling success, remained available in these areas to the new Communist leadership.?* Also, a relatively high degree of tactical coordination—including ambushes of Army road convoys and other hit and run attacks—was apparent in the Communist guerrilla resistance in the Blitar and Madiun, East Java, regions in the first few months of 1968. Some Indonesian military sources claimed to me to see in this coordination the hand of high ranking Army defectors, including the former Brigadier-General Suharjo. Suharjo, military commander in East Kalimantan and a political radical and Sukarno sympathizer, was studying at a Soviet staff college at the time of Gestapu and, reportedly, subsequently made his way back to Indonesia in secret via Hanoi. Allegedly, Suharjo also lent his talents to the PGRS guerrilla insurgents along the Sarawak-Indonesian border in Kalimantan. Other sources, however, have claimed that military training in Blitar was chiefly directed by the Army Lieutenant-Colonel Pratomo, former military commander of Pandeglang district in West Java. Pratomo, who was captured in April 1968, appears to have been involved in the earlier Gestapu conspiracy in a manner not yet officially disclosed. His alleged later confessions were to lead to extensive arrests in the Army’s West Java Siliwangi Division and other units. In making “white” zones “pink” PKI tacticians also continued to rely on the left wing of the PNI and its student and organizational fronts, and on a growing underground press campaign, characterized by extensive distribution not only of Mimbar Rakjat but also of new “action” publications such as Front Anti-Fasis, Suara Demokrasi (“Voice of Democracy”’), and others. 24 Cf. by Jean Contenay, “Another Bloodbath?” Far Eastern Economic Review, November 23, 1967, pp. 357-67; “Smoking Volcano,” Far Eastern Economic Review, January 11, 1968, pp. 7o-2; and “Menacing Shadows,” Far Eastern Economic Review, January 25, 1968, pp. 156-9. 42 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 10] === Indonesian Communism since the 1965 Coup The first half of 1968 thus saw a new post-Gestapu high in Communist activity as well as in government attempts to contain it. Late in March 1968, for example, a spokesman for the Army’s Operasi Kalong (“Operation Bat”) reported from Djakarta that in the preceding three months more than three hundred PKI members had been arrested. More than 70 per cent of those arrested were said to be in the armed forces. It was also alleged that attempts had been made to establish a new party regional committee for the capital and five district committees, along with branches of terrorist organizations, including an “Indonesian People’s Liberation Army Command” (Lasjkar Pembebasan Rakjat Indonesia—LPRI).?* Meanwhile there were increasing reports of stepped up PKI terrorism in the heart of East Java province and in Central Java.?® In April 1968 Djakarta military authorities declared that a new PKI underground group had been uncovered, the so-called Kala Tjakra (a Hindu Javanese symbol of the “wheel of time”) movement, with its own fighting band or barisan for street brawls and demonstrations. Kala Tjakra was accused of attempting to bring Sukarno to power in cooperation with pro-Sukarno and left-wing elements in the PNI and was alleged to be mainly composed of members of the military.*° Alleged TPRI elements attacked a local civil defense (Pertahanan Sipil or Hansip) depot at Tulungagung, East Java. Two weeks later a terrorist band, said to belong to the local “strategic cadre” (kader strategis) of the PKI underground, attacked an Airforce armoury in Surabaja. Fifteen Airforce personnel as well as civilians were subsequently arrested for having tried to steal weapons during this last attack. In early May more Airforce personnel, along with a score of alleged PKI members were arrested, this time at the Panasan airbase near Surakarta, Central Java, on grounds of complicity in a plot to capture the base and its arms depot. And all the while, near Kediri, Madiun, and Malang, and surrounding East Java rural areas, there were regular attacks by roving guerrillas on villages, guard houses, police posts, and armouries. Reports now spoke of a regularly functioning underground Communist “counter government,” formally headed by Hutapea as president of an “Indonesian People’s Republic” and headquartered near Blitar. A Maoist tactical variant also appeared to be in the process of being implemented. Meanwhile arms stolen from armouries and police and military posts were distributed to the péasantry. Establishment of a reliable in- 24 Kompas, March 26, 1968. 25 Jbid., March 2, 1968, and Djakarta Times, March 23, 1968, Forty members of the Nahdatul Ulama were reported killed by Communists in East Java, apparently in revenge of killings during the anti-PKI pogrom. Sunday Mail (Kuala Lumpur), March 17, 1968. 26 Armed Forces Courier, April 10, 1968, and Harian Kami, April 16, 1968. 43 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 11] === Pacific Affairs frastructure of well-indoctrinated peasant cadres—possibly also for the development of new front groups—was the evident aim.?7 Waves of arrests of alleged PKI members or supporters even in the top echelons of the police and armed forces continued, ‘The undoubted evidence of a new PKI offensive seemed to provide justification for ever more intensive purges, mainly conducted by the Army and extending beyond Java. Indeed, the pattern of arrests was so widespread and their occurrence so persistent as to suggest a vast conspiracy whose tentacles seemed to regenerate again and again as soon as they were cut off. The PKI, declared Air Vice-Marshal Saleh Basarah in April, appeared to be creating a “long series of little explosions” designed to weaken the armed forces and the country. Toward the close of May 1968, Major-General Pranoto Reksosamudra, whom Sukarno at the height of the Gestapu coup on October 1, 1965, had appointed as army chief in place of the slain General Yani, was ordered confined to quarters preparatory to standing trial on charges of having been a key figure in the alleged Communist conspiracy. This development occurred almost simultaneously with a government report, issued on May 20, that “Communist inspired” plotters had been foiled in their plans to assassinate President Suharto and nineteen cabinet ministers and generals as they were praying at a mosque on the grounds of Merdeka palace in Djakarta on March g, 1968. In South and East Kalimantan several scores of military and civil government personnel were discharged and/or arrested because of alleged Communist sympathies, Numbers here were relatively small compared to East Java where an Army spokesman revealed at the end of May 1968 that a total of 8725 civil servants had been dishonorably discharged “due to complicity” in the Gestapu affair; 4275 of the discharged employees had been working at the offices of the basic education department in East Java.?® After incessant warnings in preceding weeks by local Army commanders of a resurgent PKI and amidst more arrests, an investigating delegation of the provincial legislature (DPRD) of West Java issued its report in August 1968 after an on-the-spot study of East Java developments. Quoting the East Java Police commander that “we in East Java have been negligent of the danger” coming from the Communists, the report declared that in East Java the PKI had developed a Viet Cong style underground movement with the aid of local Chinese. Military training had been given the PKI cadres by Lieutenant-Colonel Pratomo. The Communists had had no difficulty in acquiring a popular following, the report went on; no less than go per cent of the inhabitants of the South Blitar area, where Hutapea had had his headquarters, were reported to have assisted the PKI. There had been at least 300 defections from the military to the PKI 27 Berita Yudha (Djakarta), June 10, 1968. 28 Antara Daily News Bulletin, May 31, 1968. 44 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 12] === Indonesian Communism since the 1965 Coup since 1965, and while all of these were said to have been arrested, most of their weapons had not been recovered.?® The report clearly suggested that the PKI had not only been able to reconstitute itself under the very noses of the authorities as purges were going on, but that the Communist underground had been well on the way in establishing a functioning “counter government” in parts of East Java. By the time these findings were published, the Army in East Java was already claiming decisive success in its “Sambar Raga” and “Trisula” operations against the Communists which it had launched late in May. Hutapea was reportedly captured and stoned to death (others say he was shot) by a village defense force near Blitar in early July 1968, while in the next few days, Tjugito, Munir, Sukatno, Rewang, and a number of lesser figures were apprehended. With their arrest, and with a general claim that the South Blitar PKI stronghold had been wiped out, came additional Army information on recent PKI tactics. The Communists, according to the Army reports, seemed to have had a penchant for developing a network of redoubts on the slopes of mountains. The “complex” of Mounts Merapi and Merbabu in Central Java had already served such a Communist tactical purpose in the past and also during and after the Gestapu affair.®° Prior to his arrest, Sukatno, it was now disclosed, had had responsibility as “project officer” for developing a similar Communist stronghold along the slopes of Mount Semeru in East Java (the so-called Gunung Banjak complex). At Mount Lawu, on the border between Central and East Java, Muhammad Munir had served as PKI “project officer” with a comparable assignment.*? The two Communist “complexes,” along with the one in the Blitar area headed by Hutapea, had been able to develop not just because of open or tacit support of the surrounding population, but also because, as East Java military commander Major-General Mohammed Jasin charged, local East Java government officials, including members of the East Java provincial legislature (DPRD), had been protecting PKI leaders; Jasin also disclosed that a continuing purge of suspected Communists and sympathizers was taking place within his own command (182 military, including staff and field grade officers, had recently been arrested, he said). This purge and the drastic severity of some of Jasin’s other anti- Communist operations in East Java seem to have been actuated at least in some degree by the reported upsurge of Communist-directed violence, including Communist revenge killings. Members of the Muslim youth group 29 For this report see again Kompas, August 2, 1968, and Djakarta Times, August 3, 1968. For the Army’s operation against the Communist stronghold in Blitar-see Redaksi “Skets Masa,” Operasi Trisula Brawidjaja Menghantjurkan PKI-Gaja Baru (Surabaja: Grip, 1968, Edisi istimewa).: 80 C£, Pewarta-Surabaia (Surabaja), November 16, 1965. 81 Djakarta Times, July 18 and August 1, 1968. 45 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 13] === Pacific Affairs Ansor were particular victims of these alleged Communist murders, while among the East Java military who deserted to the PKI underground were those who had lost their families in the earlier anti-Communist pogrom “and some are thought to have deserted to avenge them.”** The wave of arrests, both in East Java as well as elsewhere on the island, and particularly the action against the Blitar stronghold, appears to have been initiated to a large degree by the confessions of Lieutenant-Colonel Pratomo, By early August Jasin claimed that more than 800 Communists had been arrested during the preceding two months, mainly in the South Blitar region, and that about 500 “underground” meeting places, dwellings, and various covert party “project command” headquarters had been broken up. The total number of PKI members killed in the Blitar operation was estimated at about 50, but other reports go to twice that figure, Even so, the East Java party organization seemed far from totally destroyed; by late November the remnants of Hutapea’s organization were reported to be active again near Banjuwangi, new propaganda leaflets were being disseminated, and a new network of underground caches and “project commands” were in process of construction. Still, the East Java arrests and Pratomo’s reputed confession had widespread repercussions. In late July and early August extensive arrests began in the Army’s Siliwangi division in West Java.** About 50 officers, including a general and two colonels, were among the detainees, some of whom were said by Siliwangi commander, Major-General Dharsono, to have been involved in the Gestapu coup. The mayor of the city of Bandung, Colonel Didi Djukardi, was arrested on August 10, and shortly a division spokesman declared that the PKI had been attempting to win control of all important posts in the division. New arrests in subsequent weeks allegedly revealed a wide network of Communist penetration in West Java and the capital, The private secretary of the Prosecutor-General, Indonesian graduates of foreign Communist universities (e.g., the Lumumba University in Moscow, and the Peking University), leaders of a national teachers’ association, more than a rooo employees of the national Garuda airlines, and some 1000 postal service workers were all either apprehended or dismissed from their jobs because of alleged Communist or “PKI/Gestapu” activities. In Central Java, meanwhile, the Army intensified its anti-PKI operations. South Sumatra, particularly the Lampung district, was also developing into a major concentration of new PKI activity. The Lampungs have been for a long time a major resettlement area of migrants from overcrowded parts of Java, particularly from Central and East Java (the heartland of PNI and PKI strength before the Gestapu coup), and many migrants’ politi- 82 Reuters despatch, Surabaja, June 30, 1968; Sarawak Tribune, July 1, 1968. 83 Kompas, August 9 and 12, 1968. 46 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 14] === Indonesian Communism since the 1965 Coup cal and cultural ties with Java have remained strong.™ In the 1955 general elections the Communists proved to have considerable following in the Lampungs, and the plight of migrants since then certainly has done little to mitigate radical tendencies among them, It is now certain that during the Rewang-Widjajasastra reconstruction of the party in Central and East Java during 1966-67 PKI cadres infiltrated into the Lampung district. Among the more than 400 alleged PKI members and sympathizers arrested by the military in the Lampung region in June and July 1968, at least nine were subsequently identified as cadres recently having come from Semarang, Bojolali, and other Central Javanese towns. South Sumatran DRPD and military leaders repeatedly charged that South Sumatra was rapidly be- ‘coming a major PKI tactical target; indeed, South Sumatran military commander, Brigadier Ishak Djuarsa, declared that the Lampungs had become second in importance only to East Java as a center for Communist subversion in Indonesia®® Little has thus far been published about specific Communist tactics in the Lampungs. But the pattern of small kompros organizing “red” base areas through “people’s war” courses and then swarming out to win new followers in adjacent “white” or “pink” zones appears to have been applied here. However, Djuarsa declared in November 1968 that there was an apparent division in the Lampung PKI movement between an ideologically oriented faction desiring an immediate armed struggle and a more cautious and pragmatic group which preferred to wait for politically more opportune circumstances. It should be stressed that South Sumatra was by no means the only area beyond Java where a PKI resurgence was reported. Speaking to the regional legislature of the Riau islands at the end of August 1968, President Suharto not only noted alleged PKI plans to make Riau into a new stag- — ing area for its future operations, but also said that throughout the country there were some 220,000 Communist party members still at large. Shortly before Suharto spoke a number of Army officers had been arrested in Central Sumatra on grounds that they were attempting to form a Communist “base area” in Riau, and by the middle of November 1968 the Riau area military commander, Brigadier Widodo, asserted that nine covert Communist organizations in Riau had been broken up.** Yet by early February 1969 Widodo still could announce the arrest of 119 “Communist activists” in Riau, who, he said, had been trying to set up a “people’s army” and a “people’s army training school.” 84 On the Javanese migration to the Lampungs see, e.g., H. J. Heeren, Het Land aan de Overkant: Transmigratie van Java naar Sumatra (Meppel: J. A. Boom en Zoon, 1967), and the literature there cited. 85 Djakarta Times, August 16 and 24, and September 16 and 17, 1968. 36 Kompas, August 14 and 29, 1968; Straits Times, August 29, 1968; and Djakarta Times, November 20, 1968. 47 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 15] === Pacific Affairs Perhaps the most spectacular aspect of Communist operations in the Outer Islands of Indonesia was the full-scale guerrilla war on the Sarawak- Indonesian border. Here young dissident Sarawak Chinese, some trained in guerrilla tactics in camps on the Indonesian side of the border during 1963-65, the main period of Indonesia’s “confrontation” campaign against Malaysia, joined with local PKI elements and some Indonesian Chinese in a “Sarawak People’s Guerrilla Movement” (Pasokan Gerilja Rakjat Sarawak—PGRS), which evolved into a force of some 700 insurgents roaming on both sides of the border.” In July 1967 a r00-man PGRS force launched a successful surprise attack on an airstrip and munitions depot at Singkawang, in Indonesian West Kalimantan. It was the beginning of a chain of ambushes and raids which necessitated an increasing Indonesian military commitment and stepped up border control in cooperation with Malaysian forces. Partly because the indigenous Dayak population turned against the predominantly Chinese PGRS, and partly because of effective military counter measures, the PGRS lost strength significantly by the end of 1968. By early January 1969 Brigadier A. J. Witono asserted that only 70 PGRS members, or about ro per cent of the original dissident force, remained to be pursued, But he also announced that his forces were beginning operations against a new insurgent force, called the “North Kalimantan People’s Army” (Pasokan Ra’ayat Kalimantan Utara-Paraku)°° This force, considered less militantly Communist than the PGRS, is a continuation of the earlier Brunei-based anti-Malaysian North Borneo secessionist movement that erupted in 1963 as the “National Army of North Kalimantan” (Tentara Nasional Kalimantan Utara—TNKU).° While the exact degree of PKI influence in Paraku is not known, there is little question that scattered PGRS and PKI elements, as well as the Maoistoriented Communist underground in Sarawak (variously referred to as CCO, for “Clandestine Communist Organization,” or SCO for “Sarawak Communist Organization”) have joined it or meshed their operations with it. In July 1969 as action against Parakw was continuing, Malaysia’s Major- General Ungku Nazaruddin, the military operational director for Eastern Malaysia, declared that the 160- to 170-man Paraku force was getting new recruits and assistance from Sarawak.*® Although not a major direct threat to the regimes in Djakarta or Kuala Lumpur or Kuching, Paraku and the substratum of Chinese frustrations in Sarawak and West Kalimantan do constitute a continuing security problem that shows few indications of 87 Justus M, van der Kroef, “The Sarawak-Indonesian Border Insurgency,” Modern Asian Studies, vol. TH (1968), pp, 245-65. 88 Sunday Tribune (Kuching), January 12, 1969, and Djakarta Times, January 24, 1969. 49 On the TNKU see my Communism in Malaysia and Singapore: A Contemporary Survey (The Hague: Martinus N¥hoff Publishers, 1967), pp. 186-90, 49 Sarawak Tribune, July 12, 1969. 48 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 16] === Indonesian Communism since the 1965 Coup being solved despite periodic claims by Indonesian Army commanders that the insurgency is virtually over. Late in August increases were announced in security forces on both sides of the Sarawak-Indonesian border. Complicating the PGRS-Paraku problem is the suspicion that the rebels may have friends among the Indonesian military supposedly operating against them. In January 1969, Brigadier Witono announced the arrest of 13 officers in his command “believed to be former Communist cadres,” and subsequent investigation disclosed that the insurgents had been obtaining regular Army weapons from a second lieutenant in the command. These arrests were followed shortly by the arrest of 50 officers and men in South Kalimantan, as well as of several civilians, on grounds of having Communist party ties dating from before the Gestapu affair.*? West Kalimantan military spokesmen subsequently intimated that a “network” of subversion embracing the PGRS-Paraku border rebels and members of West and South Kalimantan army commands, as well as local Chinese and prominent other civilians, had been uncovered. It is increasingly difficult to assess the truth of all such allegations. While the existence of Communist guerrilla insurgency or preparations, whether in Java, the Lampungs, or West Kalimantan, can hardly be denied, it is equally clear that local Army commanders throughout Indonesia—sometimes as if on cue—discover supposed “Communist” activity in their midst only to have questions raised about their judgment later on. During the first week of July 1968, for example, the military commander of South Sulawesi at Makassar, Brigadier Solichin Purwanagara, ordered the “destruction” of an allegedly Communist “Volunteer Army” of the “United Republic of Sulawesi” operating in the Palopo and Luwu region. Solichin alleged that the rebels were being aided by Chinese in Tawau, Sabah, who, he said, were sympathizers of Peking.*® Solichin’s campaign attracted much attention in the press. It shortly turned out, however, that not only was the ¥o-man, poorly equipped rebel “Volunteer Army” in no way a significant threat to anybody, but also, far from being Communist-oriented, the band consisted of remnants of the fanatically anti-Communist, Muslim theocratic, Darul Islam movement, intermittently active since the 1940s. Undaunted by such disclosures Army commanders as a matter of policy keep calling attention to freshly discovered Communist plots as the chain of purges and arrests keeps lengthening. The then Djakarta military commander, Major-General Amir Mahmud, declared at the end of August 1968 that the PKI was rehearsing for a planned major comeback attempt in 1970 and that the party’s recent Blitar operation had been but a preliminary 41 Djakarta Times, January 16, 1969: Sarawak Tribune, January 23, 1969. 42 Straits Times, July 8, 1968. 49 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 17] === Pacific Affairs to the rchearsal. A third “generation” of PKI cadres (the first two “generations” had been led and trained by Sudisman and Hutapea respectively) was now being trained, Mahmud asserted, adding subsequently in perhaps a typical phrase that while “today the Army had smashed the Communist underground” the Communist danger was still “latent.” Throughout most of 1969 the PKI’s presumed “latency” indeed proved rather relative, if one were to judge by the wave of new arrests and announcements of new plots. To cite but a few examples. In January 1969 there were arrests of “PKI elements” including those of the “A” or “heavy” category in the military command of the Maluku (Moluccas) region where new PKI cells were said to have been discovered. In February there were new skirmishes between alleged PKI bands and the Army in Klaten, Central Java, more than a hundred “Communist suspects” were arrested in Krawang, near Djakarta, where hidden arms caches were also discovered, and Antara reported that an attempt to organize an underground PKI in the Poso regency of Central Sulawesi (Celebes) had just been foiled by military intelligence. In March there were extensive arrests of former Communists, including members of Gerwani (the PKI’s former women’s front), in the Sarko regency of Djambi province, Sumatra; there was a charge by a Djakarta police spokesman that “Communists” had attempted to sabotage the government mint in the capital by starting a fire; there was a warning by Djakarta garrison commander, Mahmud Murod, that Communists were trying to regroup and entrench themselves in the rural sections just outside the city; there were repeated warnings by President Suharto that “the PKI continues to launch an illegal movement for its comeback”; and there was the discovery of a network of “Vietcong type underground tunnels” and arms caches, as well as the arrest of allegedly PKI underground leaders, in the Purwodadi area of Central Java. In April and May clashes continued between PGRS-Paraku guerrilla insurgents and Malaysian and Indonesian forces along the Sarawak border, and new warnings were given by military commanders in Central Java against an alleged PKI “comeback” in the wake of the so-called “Purwodadi affair”, to be discussed presently. In July and August 1969 there were expressions of official concern that left-wing elements in the PNI (the so-called PNI-Asu, the latter acrostic standing for Ali Sastroamijojo and the late Surachman) were adopting tactics similar to those of the PKI, establishing illegal “armed struggle commands” and the like; while in Bandung the Siliwangi Division’s commander declared that many political parties and mass organizations in the country were “watering at the mouth for former members of the Indonesian Communist party” in order to add them to their lists of supporters in connection with the forthcoming election. The new protective cover and political legitimacy afforded the Communists by these developments ap- 43 Kompas, September 2, 1968; Straits Times, November 21, 1968. 50 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 18] === Indonesian Communism since the 1965 Coup parently had begun to worry the Army. In September, as arrests in and around Djakarta continued, a report in the Djakarta weekly Mingguan Chas, dealing with allegedly secret contacts between Algerian, Syrian, and other Arab diplomats stationed in Indonesia and the PKI remnant, aroused new speculation about the Communists’ seemingly inexhaustible resurgent capacity. In November 1969 East Kalimantan military commander Brigadier-General Sumadi reiterated that “the Communists should be crushed now and not tomorrow because they can multiply their number very fast.” Sumadi warned of possible Communist infiltration in Kalimantan through the Malaysian border areas.** In such an overheated “Red scare” atmosphere, and whatever the legitimacy of the Army’s and the government’s concern over continuing Communist activity, brutal disregard of justice becomes only too likely. In the wake of the Army’s operations against the PKI complex in Blitar in the first half of 1968, there was unleashed, according to reliable reports, a holocaust of killings of “PKI/Gestapu” prisoners and suspects, many held in camps for some time, others more recently rounded up. One such report in an authoritative English weekly, despite official Indonesian disclaimers, has had considerable impact: Hundreds and perhaps thousands of Communist suspects are being shot in political prisons on the island of Java, Indonesia’s newspapers have not reported the shootings, though they are now beginning to discuss the previously unmentionable subject of the prison camps. But senior generals admit in private that mass executions, reminiscent of the holocaust of 1965-66 have been taking place for the past six or eight months, In East Java most of the shooting was done between June and September, before and immediately after the discovery and destruction of an embryonic communist “liberated area” near Blitar on the south coast. Local camp commanders, believing or professing to believe rumors that communist guerrillas would fan out from Blitar and let prisoners out of the camps, decided to shoot the more “dangerous” of their inmates. Others simply dealt out retribution for the several dozen soldiers who had died as a result of communist terrorism in the Blitar area. In the central and western provinces of Java food shortages in the camps seem to have been used as a justification for the executions.#5 Confirmation of such atrocities has come from other sources.*® At the close of February 1969, new reports began to circulate about mass execu- 44 Djakarta Times, January 10, 17, February 7, February 22, March 13, 1969; Straits Times, February 19 and March 13, 1969; Indonesian Current Affairs Translation Service Bulletin, July 1969, p. 399, August 1969, p. 464; Antara Daily News Bulletin, September 22 and November 14, 1969. 45 Economist, November 30, 1968, p. 28, 48 Vietnam Bulletin/Indonesié Informatie (Amsterdam), July 19, 1969, p. 4. This is a publication of the “Komité Indonesié," a group of intellectuals and politicians predominantly, though not exclusively, leftist in orientation in the Netherlands, among them a few notable Indonesian scholars (Professor W. F. Wertheim, Dr, J, M. Pluvier), and concerned with providing “factual information about the current situation in Indonesia,” as well as providing assist- 51 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 19] === Pacific Affairs tions of political prisoners in areas around the town of Purwodadi, east of Semarang, capital of Central Java, where units of the Army’s Diponegoro division and local civic guards were said to have killed some 3500 alleged followers of the PKI by means of blows of iron staves in the neck.*? The executions had occurred upon the order of local Army commanders without the knowledge or approval of Djakarta authorities. Simultaneously Hadji Johannes Princen, a Dutchman who in 1948 during the Indonesian revolution had deserted the Dutch Army to fight on the side of the fledgling Indonesian Republic and since then had risen to political prominence in his adopted homeland, declared after a journey to Central Java that from two to three thousand alleged Communists had been killed by the Army in the Purwodadi area during the preceding November. In camps in the Kuwu district alone, Princen charged, at least 860 prisoners had been beaten to death with iron staves, and in some cases prisoners had been tortured with electrical shocks and their nails had been pulled out to make them confess.*® Princen’s charges gave new impetus to the small group of Java-based attorneys and intellectuals united in the Lembaga Pembela Hak-Hak Azasi Manusia (Human Rights Institute)—of which Princen is a deputy chairman—who have expressed repeated alarm over the post- Sukarno government’s disregard for the rule of law, especially in political cases, But Princen’s revelations also produced an immediate and sharply defensive reaction from the Army. The Central Java Military Commander, Major-General Surono, though admitting the existence of Army security operations in the “Red area” of Purwodadi, denied that there had been brutal treatment and mass killings. The governor of Central Java, Major- General Munadi, strongly implied that Princen had Communist sympathies and referred to recent press reports warning that a resurgent PKI was attempting to make a comeback “by using foreigners” (presumably a reference to Princen’s Dutch origin). A special investigating team of the “Operations Command for Security and Order” (KOPKAMTIB), sent by the Army commander-in-chief, General Mareden Panggabean, to Central Java, on March 7, 1969, denied that any massacre had occurred. Panggabean said that “only a very small number” of victims had fallen during the Army’s continuing anti-PKI/Gestape operations. A week later, the Minister of Information, Budiardjo, speaking for the government, reiterated the denial, while at the same time asserting that the casualties in the Army’s security drive in Central Java “did not constitute a massacre.” Budiardjo ance to opposition to repression of political liberties. Its publications have focused on alleged atrocities committed against political prisoners in Indonesia by the Suharto government, Amnesty International also has called repeated attention to the plight of Indonesian political prisoners. 47 Cf, Henk Kolb in Haagsche Courant (The Hague), February 24, 1969, and Frank Palmos in Sydney Morning Herald, February 25, 1969. 48 Digkarta Times, March 1, 1967, and Volkskrant (Amsterdam), February 27, 1969. 52 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 20] === Indonesian Communism since the 1965 Coup subsequently declared that the cabinet had come to the conclusion “that there must be a tight relation between foreign Communists and Gestapu/ PKI remnants here, in an effort to discredit the Government.” Asked specifically whether this meant that Princen had relations with the Communists, Budiardjo reportedly said: “You can draw your own conclusion on Meanwhile, government and Army spokesmen were stressing that the Purwodadi area was, and had been for some time, a hotbed of underground PKI activity. On September 11, 1968, ironically at the very time that the purge of suspected pro-Communists in the Diponegoro division was taking place, the Army reported that it had “smashed” an allegedly Communist “People’s Defense” band at Purwodadi.®° By the middle of March 1969, Budiardjo was quoted as saying that the PKI had made Purwodadi “a bastion for underground activities,” and the First Assistant Army Chief, Major-General Sutopo Juwono, declared at about the same time that the PKI Purwodadi base had been established for the purpose of launching a peasant insurrection throughout Central Java province. Other reports now spoke of Indonesian troops, disguised as civilians, hunting “Communists” through the Purwodadi woods, of a “Vietcong type dug out” being discovered, of the seizure in the area of Russian-made arms and of homemade weapons like dozens of spikes, made from bicycle spokes, dipped in snake venom and fired from crude rifle butts fitted with springs, and of comments attributed to the Purwodadi military district commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Tedjosuwarno, to the effect that 4o per cent of the people in his area were still “Communist orientated” as compared to 65 per cent at the time of the Gestapu affair.®* Subsequently, Tedjosuwarno was quoted as saying that the PKI remnant had declared 1969 “as the year ‘H’ for their underground movement” (presumably meaning that this was to be the year of a major Communist offensive), that a company of Communist “Black Cats” had recently been established in the area, that there were now sixteen camps in Purwodadi with a total of 987 detainees, and that Princen’s charges of alleged brutalities committed against Communist prisoners “had given more incentives” to the local Communists to step up their own terrorism; there had been eight assaults on local people and security posts, Tedjosowarno claimed, since the news of Princen’s accusations had become known in the Purwodadi area.” Shortly after Princen made his charges Munadi announced the capture near Purwodadi of Pono, said to be a close associate of Sjam alias Kamarusaman, who was expected to reveal “all the Communists’ role in the Police 49 Djakarta Times, March 3, 5, 6, 8, 17, 21, 1969. 50 Sarawak Tribune, September 12, 1968. 51 The Australian (Sydney), March 28, 1969. 52 Djakarta Times, March 20, 1969, and Antara despatch, Djakarta, March 10, 1969. 53 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 21] === Pacifie Affairs Force and Navy.”®* By June the head of the Purwodadi “regency” government, Mardjaban, disclosed that PKI elements were launching a new *People’s Armed Resistance” (Pendjuangan Rakjat Bersendjata-Perdjuta) in the area, complete with “killings and robberies.”** The emphasis on these developments given in the Indonesian media at this particular time, as much as the attempt to link Princen himself with the Communists, suggests government concern to deflect public attention from the Purwodadi situation and, indeed, from the issue of political prisoners in Indonesia generally. Yet these problems have become increasingly interwoven with the Suharto regime’s whole policy of dealing with the Communist resurgence. Estimates of the number of political prisoners confined in Indonesia since the Gestapu affair have fluctuated. At the end of October 1969, Army Commander-in-Chief Panggabean said there were 71,907, while Attorney-General Sugih Arto earlier had variously spoken of 120,000 prisoners (September 1966) and 105,000 (February 1967).°> Overarrest has been common. From time to time Indonesian government spokesmen have announced actual or impending releases of some of the prisoners. For example, Brigadier-General Widodo of the West Sumatra military district, announced around mid-October 1969 that 11,000 political prisoners in the so-called “C” category (i.e., suspected of only limited involvement in subversive activity) would be released shortly, and other government spokesmen, at about the same time, intimated the impending release of as many as 30,000 prisoners “in the coming year.” But one obstacle impeding prisoner release is the hostility of the Indonesian population, especially in the villages, a hostility and suspicion often so deep that even “C” group prisoners, for fear of their lives, prefer to remain in, or even to return to, their camps after having been allowed out. At the end of September 1969, Social Affairs Minister A. M. Tambunan strongly appealed to the public to be “willing to welcome” returning prisoners to their communities. Commenting on Tambunan’s appeal, the official Antara news agency commented that the Minister's words were spoken “in an obvious attempt to end public rejection of the returning prisoners to their former places, Most of the detainees refuse to go home because they fear that their former neighbors would take revenge.”"® 53 Djakarta Times, March 15, 1969. 54 Jhid., June 20, 1969. 55 Suluh Marhaen (Djakarta), October 31, 1969 (Panggabean), and Amnesty International Review, November 1967, pp. 6-7 (Sugih Arto). Subsequently the Indonesian Attorney-General has been quoted as saying there are 116,000 unsentenced political detainees in the country. Amnesty International Review, November 1969, pp. I, 4. 56 Antara despatch, Djakarta, September 27, 1969. Earlier, in an August 16, 1969, radio address on the eve of Indonesia's independence day, President Suharto urged the nation to accept recently released detainees: ‘Those who are really not guilty and who can become citizens should be accepted again in society.” The question might well arise, upon hearing Suharto’s words, why those “really not guilty” had been arrested in the first place. 54 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 22] === Indonesian Communism since the 1965 Coup Local Army commanders, however, have often made rehabilitation difficult. Throughout 1968-69, in part because of the public rejection problem to which the government’s own continuing anti-Communist drive seemed to contribute, various government agencies seriously discussed resettling the prisoners as “colonists” in relatively remote areas of the country. Provisions had been made in January 1969 for an eventual resettlement of some prisoners in West Kalimantan, specifically in the Binuang area; by the middle of the year Buru island, in the Moluccas, had been chosen as the principal site for a resettlement of so-called “B” category prisoners (ic., relatively hardcore PKI or front activists, many also suspected of close involvement in the Gestapu affair and/or subsequent PKI activity), and by November the first 2500 such prisoners arrived, with annual contingents of 2500 and more to follow until most of the total of eleven to fifteen thousand “B” group detainees are transported. By the middle of October the Attorney- General and the Army high command had apparently also decided to proceed as quickly as possible with the trial of the approximately 5000 “A” (party and coup leaders) category prisoners, and with the gradual release of the twenty-six to twenty-nine thousand “C” group and probably also of the twenty-two to twenty-seven thousand “D” group (a “miscellaneous” classification including those of only very slight culpability). Those freed, but rejected by their communities, would reportedly be resettled under routine migration procedures in Sumatra and Kalimantan.*” But the cumbersome slowness, confusion, and inefficiency, of the Indonesian judicial process is as likely to impede the proposed rehabilitation of the prisoners as is the shortage of transportation and funds for resettlement. Then, too, the Indonesian press increasingly has noted such incidents as extortions of PKI suspects by the military, the barring from school attendance of children whose parents are politically suspect, the threat of famine in some prisons because of inadequate funds for food, and the general campaign of intimidation and arbitrary arrest of alleged Communist sympathizers.°® The third congress of the Indonesian trial attorneys’ association, Peradin, in Djakarta in August 1969 issued a statement declaring that the rule of law still did not prevail in the country, and urged the government to recognize and guarantee basic human rights and order the immediate release of those detained without lawful cause."° The modest pressures exerted by the Indonesian “Human Rights Institute” have in the 57 O, G. Roeder, “A Morsel of Mercy,” Far Eastern Economic Review, October 16, 1969, p. 152. 58 Kompas, April 25, 1969; Indonesia Raya, August 9, 1969; Sinar Harapan, April 16, 1969; Pikiran Rakjat, October 2, 1969; Harian Kami, June 26, 1969; and Vietnam Bulletin/Indonesité Informatie, no. 4, September 27, 1969, pp. 4-7. Conditions in the Indonesian detention camps, including instances of murder, brutality, and food shortages, were the subject of a special report by the “International Conference on Torture, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment,” sponsored by Amnesty International in Stockholm in August 1968, 59 Indonesia Raya, August 22, 1969. 55 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 23] === Pacific Affairs past year been amplified by foreign—particularly Dutch—protests against the alleged “unlawful deprivation of liberty” of writers and artists in Indonesia. But there is a strong tendency on the part of Suharto government spokesmen, whether at home or abroad, to attempt to brand all such criticism as leftist or Communist inspired.®° The net effect of all this is to deepen resentments and ideological cleavages. Indonesia must live not only with the legacy of a bloody anti-Communist pogrom following the Gestapu affair in 1965, but also with the consequences of endless and often arbitrary arrests, brutalization of prisoners, and an atmosphere of distrust in which exhibitions of violent anti-communism are believed to be the best way to convince suspicious local military of one’s bona fides, It is not difficult to gauge that precisely such a climate of suspicion and fear is conducive to the further development of new Communist stratagems. An unknown quantity in the PKI’s recent resurgence and appeal is the concern for it shown by both the USSR and China. The perspectives of Moscow and Peking on the Gestapu coup and on the resulting debacle of the PKI have been described elsewhere." Suffice it to note here that two groups of PKI émigrés gravitating respectively toward the Moscow and Peking ideological lines have each published their own analyses of Gestapu and its aftermath and on what the PKI needs to do now, and continue to belabor each other for allegedly tactical and doctrinal errors, The first major Moscow-oriented analysis, published late in 1966 by a self-styled “Marxist-Leninist Group of the PKI,” some of whose leaders reportedly have found temporary havens in India, Ceylon, and Japan, as well as in Europe, criticized the PKI’s pre-Gestapu “adventurism,” its emphasis on violent revolution, and its neglect of more peaceful tactics, while it also deplored Indonesian Communism’s “lopsided” orientation toward Communist China. Since 1965, in the Prague published World Marxist Review, known as the principal international mouthpiece of Soviet-oriented Communist parties in the world, there have appeared a number of short pieces, some of them presumably written from Djakarta by members of the PKI underground or by Moscow-oriented PKI émigrés abroad, and generally tending to emphasize the severity of the anti-Communist pogrom and the repressive police measures of the Suharto regime. These accounts, however, as well as those by Soviet writers on conditions in Indonesia appearing in such Soviet organs as Narody Azii i Afriki, Pravda and Izvestiya (with their 60 See, e.g., Antara Daily News Bulletin, October 25, 1969. A noted attorney in Djakarta, Yap Thiam Hien, active in the Human Rights Institute, was arrested on January 1, 1968, on charges of Communist sympathy but released about two wecks later after a public furor. The Yap case has perhaps been the best known recent instance of military-judicial arbitrariness operating in the context of the anti-Communist campaign. See Sekretariat Persatuan Advokat Indonesia, Proses Yap Thiam Hien S, H, (Test case bagi Rule of Law di Indonesia (Djakarta, Peradin, 1969). 61 Justus M, van der Kroef, “Indonesia's ‘Gestapu': The View from Moscow and Peking,” Australian Journal of Politics and History, August 1968, pp. 163-76. 56 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 24] === Indonesian Communism since the 1965 Coup emphasis on the dangers posed to Indonesia by “the extreme Right,” by which seems to be meant the student action fronts and by the new influx of Western development capital) are notable for omissions of avowed praise for “people’s revolutionary” movements in Indonesia and other anti-Suharto activity which tend to be the stock in trade of the publications of the Peking oriented PKI émigré group or of the Chinese Communists.” In September 1966 a group of PKI émigrés and Indonesian students supporters in Peking, led by Jusuf Adjitorop, a former PKI Politburo member and the party’s expert on relations with intellectuals, who was in Peking for medical treatment at the time of the Gestapu affair, adopted an otokritik or “self criticism,” entitled “Build the PKI along the Marxist-Leninist Line to Lead the People’s Democratic Revolution in Indonesia.” The previous month had already seen the issuance of a new policy statement by a purportedly new Maoist-PKI “Politburo.” Both documents were subsequently published in Indonesian Tribune, the principal organ of Maoist Indonesian Communists, and the publication address of which is in ‘Tirana, Albania, though much of the editorial work appears to be done also in Peking. Yet another PKI Central Committee “manifesto” was issued in September 1967, and since then Chinese Communist media have from time to time disseminated additional statements by a “delegation” of the PKI Central Committee, as well as by Adjitorop who is currently designated as the delegation’s leader. The “delegation” appears to be primarily based in Peking. Peking-sponsored publications like the Afro-Asian Journalist and the Bulletin of the “Indonesian Organization for Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity” continue to provide opportunity to the Adjitorop group to articulate a “New Program” for the PKI as well as to offer running attacks on the Suharto regime. Taken together, all these Maoist-PKI documents stress the urgency of implementing a new tactic of revolutionary militancy, openly acknowledging Mao’s thought as the ideological lode star, and guided by “three banners”: building a genuine Marxist-Leninist revolutionary party uncontaminated by “revisionist,” “subjectivist,” and other evils; waging “a protracted armed struggle,” integrated with the agrarian revolution of the peasantry; 62 For analyses of the Gestapu affair, its aftermath, and of communism’s role in the Suharto era by the Soviet oriented PKI group, see Ali Husseini, “Indonesian Patriots Fight On,” World Marxist Review, March 1969, pp. 38-9; Thomas Sinurja, “On the Situation in the Communist Movement of Indonesia,” World Marxist Review, September 1969, pp. 32-4 and “Urgent Tasks of the Communist Movement in Indonesia,” Information Bulletin (Peace and Socialism Publishers, Prague), 1969, no. 7, pp. 23-42. The last article is a mew program statement, purportedly issued in Djakarta in February 1969 by the Soviet oriented, self-styled ‘Marxist Leninist Group of the PKI,” For some Soviet evaluations of Indonesian events and the place of the PKI, see, e.g., V. Viktoroy, “Indonesia’s Hour of Trial,” International Affairs (Moscow), December 1968, pp. 43-7; “The Collapse of the Indonesian Communist Party: A Soviet Analysis,” Mizan, March-April 1968, pp. 60-3, and “Moscow, Jakarta and the PKI,” Mizan, March- April 1969, pp. 105-18. 57 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 25] === Pacific Affairs and forming a worker-peasant based alliance of all anti-Suharto forces led by the proletariat. Struggle “in the countryside and in the mountains and jungles,” no less than “in the prisons and concentration camps” in Indonesia is described as the concrete expression of this new tactic. For the Indonesian government, including Army spokesmen, all this is no mere rhetoric. In August 1966 the paper Ampera accused Peking of training Indonesians living in People’s China to be cadres of a fresh Communist drive in Indonesia. Since then Jocal Army commanders have not only charged the PKI underground with adopting Maoist tactics, e.g., of seeking to encircle towns from rural base areas, but have also maintained that Peking’s agents, operating through the Chinese community in Indonesia, have been supplying the PKI underground. Such accusations of alleged Communist Chinese burrowing after the Gestapu coup, were a major factor in creating the tense atmosphere that saw the suspension of Sino- Indonesian diplomatic relations in October, 1967.4 But the USSR, too, continues to be suspected of aiding subversion. Early in December 1968 Nusantara reported that the fugitive former Brigadier- General Suharjo, suspected of involvement in the Gestapu plot, had recently been discussing the revival of the PKI with a Soviet diplomat in Surabaja, and that a number of Indonesian employees of the Soviet consulate in Surabaja had been arrested.** There have been earlier Indonesian allegations of Soviet spying and of Soviet assistance to the formerly pro-Sukarno PNI compounded by a Soviet defense of the PKI against charges that the PKI was involved in Gestapu®® However, at the end of August 1969 a new Soviet ambassador in Djakarta assured the Suharto government that the USSR did not wish to interfere in the internal affairs of any other coun- 43 For policy statements and analyses by Peking-oriented Indonesian Communists (in addition to those noted in my article cited in note 61 supra) see, e.g., P. Fadjar, “Following the Road of the Chinese Revolution,” Indonesian Tribune (Tirana), vol. 1, no. ro (1968), pp, 22- 27, 43; “Manifesto of the PKI Central Committee Politburo, September 1967,” Pacific Community (Melbourne), June 1967, pp. 83-92; “Solidly United Under the Great Red Banner of Mao Tse-tung’s Thought...” (PKI, Central Committee’s delegation statement, May 23, 1968), Peking Review, May 31, 1968, pp. 17-19; “New Program of Indonesia's PKI,” OISRAA Bulletin, December, 1968, cited in World Revolution, January-March 1969, pp. 51-9; “Statement by Jusuf Adjitorop, Leader of the Delegation of CC of Indonesian Communist Party,” Peking Review, March 28, 1969, pp. 19-20. 84 See Justus M. van der Kroef, ‘“The Sino-Indonesian Rupture,” China Quarterly, January- March 1968, pp. 17-46. On charges by Indonesian officials that People’s China has been sending its nationals, including military personnel, into Indonesia for subversive purposes, see, ¢.2., Antara Daily News Bulletin, November 24, 1967, and January 10, 1968, and Sunday Tribune (Kuching), November 26, 1967. On alleged Communist Chinese burrowing in Indonesia generally see also Asian Almanac, February 1, 1969, p. 3154. In September 1968 Indonesian Attorney-General Sugih Arto claimed to have discovered a massive import fraud and trade swindle in Indonesia which, he charged, ‘was linked with China’s subversive network to undermine Indonesia's economy.” Straits Times, September 18, 1968. Somewhat earlier, on August 21, 1969, the former Indonesian ambassador to Bulgaria, Sukjipto, charged that “Indonesian Communists’ from Albania, were “actively campaigning” to discredit the Suharto government. 45 Cited in Straits Times, December 7, 1968. 88 Djakarta Times, September 15 and 16, 1967. Reuters despatch, Djakarta, July 11, 1967. 58 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 26] === Indonesian Communism since the 1965 Coup try.°? The assurance came at about the same time that a visiting fifteenmember Soviet mission was involved in discussions in Djakarta to renegotiate Indonesia’s $800 million debt to the Russians. The discussions ended in failure, however, and Soviet-Indonesian relations remain cool. Indonesia’s continuously strident anti-PKI campaign cannot but put Moscow off: on October 29, 1968, for example, three prominent captured PKI leaders, Politburo members Sudisman and Njono, and Djokjakarta party leader Wirjomartono, were executed despite appeals by President Podgorny, by the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist party, and despite a barrage of protests in the Soviet press. Then, too, the Soviet line has had relatively few followers in the post-Gestapu PKI. Moscow’s criticism in recent years of pre-Gestapu PKI policies, particularly of Indonesian communism’s allegedly pro-Peking orientation, has coincided with the evident adoption of Maoist tactics by the underground PKI remnant in Indonesia today, e.g., in the Hutapea campaign in East Java. The new current Soviet political and diplomatic thrust into Southeast Asia is then, at least for the moment, not likely to have much significance for the scattered Indonesian Communist resistance. And the fact that the Russians seem prepared, however reluctantly, to put their creditor position toward Indonesia on a new basis, does not necessarily signal an impending alteration in the tone of aggrieved disappointment that continues to be heard in Russian comments on events in Indonesia and on the performance of the PKI. To all intents and purposes, then, the PKI remnant in Indonesia itself, whatever the doctrinal bickerings among émigré factions and alleged assistance from the Chinese, finds itself thrown primarily on its own resources. Once again the party seems in a phase of regrouping and consolidation after the decimation of its “second echelon” leaders in the Blitar campaign. Both short- and long-term tactical opportunities continue to present themselves to the PKI, ranging from the persistence of inequitable land tenure patterns and rural impoverishment in Central Java, to mounting discontent, evident along most of the partisan political spectrum, as well as in the intellectual, academic, and student communities with the heavy influence of the military establishment in all aspects of public life in Suharto’s orba and with the relative absence of the rule of law in matters of civil and human rights. Though efforts are made to give political prisoners better treatment, arbitrary arrest and intimidation of political suspects (especially if they happen to be Chinese) continues.®* Meanwhile purges in the govern- 87 Antara Daily News Bulletin, August 29, 1969. 68 The author has been provided with copies of petitions and complaints by Indonesian citizens addressed to the earlier named Lembaga Pembela Hak-Hak Manusia (Human Rights Institute) of Bandung, which, even if discounted in measure, appear to justify grave concern over persistent brutality of treatment, extortion, and arbitrary arrest of the Indonesian public at the hands of police and military, See also Amnesty International Review, November, 1969, pp. 4-5 on the treatment of remaining political prisoners in Indonesia. 59 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 27] === Pacifie Affairs ment services, including the armed forces, also persist unabated: in March, 1970, it was reported that “a just concluded rescreening within the Public Works and Electricity Department shows that 8,549 of the total of 20,000 officials of the department throughout the country are cormmunist elements”.®® At about the same time some 200 Indonesian airforce personnel were arrested, including 77 officers, for alleged ties with illegal Communist organizations.” As Indonesian graduates and former students of Soviet or East European universities continue to be rounded up by police, “new operations” against “Communist remnants” in West and Central Java are announced by local military commands, and yet another alleged PKI front, this one called the Partai Nasional Merah Indonesia (National Party of Red Indonesia) and said to comprise primarily Chinese Indonesians, is discovered.7! Few military commanders in the provinces beyond Java have not yet found a new basrev or Communist “revolutionary base” in their area and announced appropriate measures. A “third line” PKI leadership, judging by such reports, seems well on the way to tactical deployment, even as the Suharto government itself seems to become increasingly dependent on a partly real and partly imaginary Communist threat to justify its powers. University of Bridgeport, April, 1970 89 Antara Daily News Bulletin, March 4, 1970. 70 The New York Times, March 8, 1970. 71 The Djakarta Times, January 24, 1970; Antara Daily News Bulletin, March to and 17, 1970. 60 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia