Almost overlords yesterday, almost outlaws today: What happened to the PKI? (Dennis Bloodworth)

=== [PDF page 1] === Peking’s arms and bad atvice {¢ DENNIS BLOODWORTH What happened to the PKI? LMOST overlords yesterday, almost Az today, the Indonesian Communists who were so deeply implicated in the ruthless but abortive left-wing coup d’etat in Jakarta on October | seem to have miscalculated their moment, their strength, their strategy, and the savage determination of the military and the Muslims to wipe them out. But their mistakes did not end there. The key to successful revolution in Indonesia was the support of President Soekarno, whom the overwhelming majority of ordinary Indonesians — in and out of uniform — regarded as father of the nation. But the odious brutality that accompanied the “30 September” coup at once made it impossible for the “Bung” to back it openly. === [PDF page 2] === Six leading generals were done to death, horribly mutilated by doe-eye girls of the Indonesian Communist Party’s®’ [PKI] “Gerwani” women’s movement, and their bodies pitched into a well. Moreover. the secret of the coup had leaked, and although he was in fact sceptical about the intelligence reports. General Nasution the anti-Communist Defence Minister, was alert enough to possible danger to skip over his garden wall when the “Gestapo” conspirators came to gun him down. Their failure to kill this arch-enemy was fatal, and they compounded it by murdering his five-yearsold daughter. Cold-blooded With this single demonstration of cold-blooded inefficiency they made the man who controlled the half-million-strong armed forces of Indonesia thelr most bitter and implacable enemy, and they simultaneously stripped of all significance Soe!sarno’s kiss-andmake-up arguments in favour of internal peace and unity. Today it is not the Communists who dominate the streets of Jakarta. It is the outraged Muslim mobs thet now take their revenge oa them. A disarmed Soekarno has been reluctantly obliged to appoint tough, anti-Communist Major-General Suharto. whom he heartily dislikes. Commander - in- Chief of the army, and is reduced to making empty speeches. === [PDF page 3] === The crow its roaring for the dismissal of Dr. Subandrio, the First Deputv Premier, who has so obligingly cooperated with the PKI in the past. and onlv now decided to denounce it as “treasonous.” The PKI, torn from its pre-eminent position of strength in Indonesian affairs, is now at bay. Thonsands of its members have been arrested for suspected implication in the coup, and there are conflicting reports that Aidit himself has been killed. The most charitable explanation for this Communist debacle is that the PKI was forced into hasty action by a conviction that if it were not quick it would be dead. It has been said that the Chinese doctors attending the President, acting on orders from Peking, whispered that Soekarno This is supposed to have galvanised into revolution Communist leaders who knew that his demise must in any case lead to confrontation with Nasution and the army, and felt that they must therefore literally jump the gun. The Chinese regarded Indonesia as the larger-thanlife working model that proved their theory of | “permanent world revolution”, and looked upon Jakarta as the other terminal of an axis on which South-East Asia must one day spin. For them, therefore. much was at stake. === [PDF page 4] === Weakness Somewhat significantly, they had invited up to 100 Indonesian Generals to Peking for their National Day celebrations on October 1, and had then dropped a hint that big changes were about to take place in Jakarta. Purveyors of arms to the PKI, they may also have been purveyors of bad advice, for the abortive revolution smacked above all of the besetting weakness of Chinese Communists — over-confidence. There is also the story that the anti-Communist Indonesian leaders were in that the PKI chiefs at least believed so. and were therefore reluctantly compelled to draw knives first. Finally, apologists for Aidit suggest that Nioto and Lukman. his immediate lieutenants who controlled the partv machinery. were more interested in revolutior, than in national unitv and the peaceful acoutis!- tion of power, and pushed their more cautious leader into ill-timed action. But this is by no means certain. Aidit himself condemned suggestions that the PKI should wait until the country was ruined so completely by its corrupt and inefficient government that the party would only have to raise a finger to start a revolution. It is possible that Aldit acted in the catastrophic traditions of his party. In 1922 the Dutch colonial authorities hobbled the young Indonesian Communist movement by exiling one of its leaders after he had tried to act too early, and they banished another a year later. The Communists next tried to call a premature === [PDF page 5] === general strike. and im consequence a third leader was removed from the country. In 1926 the Communists rose in revolt, selzed telegra and telephone build. ings in the capital, and raised barricades in provincial towns. The Dutch crushed the insurrection within a week, hanging nine ring-leaders and jailing thousands of their supporters. In 1948 the party mounted another armed rebellion at Madiun in East Java. The rebellion was smashed in three months, the leadership liquidated, and Tan Malaka, master-mind of the revolt, executed. The Communists then followed this up with another campaign of agitation. murder and arson. By 1951. 15.000 more of them had been arrested. Guerillas Will masochistic history repeat itself? So far Soekarno has refused to sack Subandrio or ban the PKL but most qualified observers believe that his influence will continue to wane, and that Nasution and Suharto — who now See him as little as Ssible — wiil not be deflected from their self-imposed task of destroying the PK1. bloodily if necessary. Java may be churned up by prolonged guerilla resistance, and the revolution may even enter another phase in which the communists will suddenly reveal a new masterly strategy and formidable reserve of power. But the odis seem to be against a vistory for Aidit. For when the generals, the Muslims and the non- Communist masses of Indonesia look at the PKI these days they no. longer eae 2 progressive varty of compatriots with which it might be sensible to compromise for the sake of national unity — thev simply see red.