LANDLESS PEASANTS SINGLED OUT IN INDONESIAN MASSACRE
The Paris daily Le Monde published an interview February 18 with Professor Wertheim, head of the Department of Sociology and Modern History at the University of Am-
GENERAL SUHARTO
GENERAL SUHARTO
sterdam, on the subject of the massacre in Indonesia in which as many as 500,000 victims perished following the seizure of power in October 1965 by generals Suharto and Nasution. Professor Wertheim, a specialist in the countries of Southeast and South Asia, lived in Indonesia from 1931 to 1946 and again in 1956-57. He is known particularly for two books, Indonesian Society _in Transition and East West Parallels. While some of his political conclusions in the interview are questionable, such as his view that the Chinese Communist party had no responsibility for Aidit's suicidal policies, Professor Wertheim offers some useful information and illuminating insights into the motives of the massacre.
Jacques Decornoy, who conducted the interview, asked: "Many elements remain obscure in the abortive September 30, 1965 putsch. Could you clarify this affair which the present leaders in Jakarta reduce to a Communist conspiracy?"
Professor Wertheim responded: "It is possible to say with what we now know that at the time a big conflict existed in the army. Particularly in the center of Java, a group of officers had an ideal of incorruptibility, linked to the traditional Javanese mysticism. These men were critical of the generals in power, but not General Suharto, whose personal life was irreproachable, and whom the insurgents thought might line up on their side. They spared his life, but he was able then very intelligently to take power and he turned against then.
"It is certain, on the other hand, that a group of generals had got together and were preparing something at the time. They wanted to form a council which would be set up close to Sukarno. That was why this group got in touch in September 1965, thus before the putsch, with Dutch religious circles, whose material and moral support they sought. Part of the infantry, but particularly the air force, were against these generals. This officers movement was something like Nasser's. If they had won, probably they would not have been anti-Communist, at least in the beginning.
"Communist youth were certainly being trained at the Halim air base, but it is not at all evident that the PKI and its leaders played a role in the affair. If it did have a role, it was very marginal. The presence at the base of Aidit, the head of the PKI, has never been explained. It is not known whether it was voluntary or if the military plotters were trying to compromise him. No appeal was issued to the masses, and the list published by the Revolutionary Council on October 1 included fewer Communists than members of other parties. At the sessions of the military tribunal that tried those supposed to have been guilty of the coup, it was said that the putschist officers met in the presence of two civilians, Pomo and Sjam, who were Communists. But why weren't they ever brought to trial? It is not known what became of these two individuals, probably provocateurs, who in addition went under pseudonyms.
"Another item going against the official thesis -- in October the generals published some lists of Muslims, Catholics and Protestants whom the Communists were supposed to have marked for death if the putsch succeeded. These lists were false. At the time, nationalists complained that they were not included on the Communists' lists... So their names were added to these documents... In any case the brutal assassination of six generals and some other persons was avenged by a massacre of the left which took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians, including entire families."
Decornoy: "How are these massacres to be explained? Does sociology have anything on it?"
Wertheim: "The anti-Communist witch-hunt began at the beginning of October, and the party did not react until toward the twentieth, in central Java, after the arrival of green beret commandos acting without orders from their leaders. Two of them, Lukman and Njoto, in addition, turned up at Bogor, near the president, which was not any special sign that the PKI was seeking to organize a resistance.
"The massacres were primarily rural. To understand them, particularly in Java, it is necessary to go back to 1960, when Sukarno had a law passed on agrarian reform. It was badly applied by functionaries of little zeal. So the peasant unions themselves began to divide the land of Muslim proprietors who were often very pious. The PKI collaborated in Sukarno's government, and these movements served as a challenge to the party which tried to hold them back at the end of 1964, all the more so since at the time, parties like the Nahdatul Ulama (Muslim party that split from the banned traditional Masjumi party) and the Indonesian Nationalist party threatened to withdraw from the coalition if the PKI did not put a stop to the unilateral division of the land.
"What was seen next, in the fall of 1965, was the proprietors recuperating their land. So it was a massacre of the landless; it was the poor who were killed, along with their families. But why, one could ask, kill the laborers on the holdings? We have to take into account Java's overpopulation. After killing the landless, there still re-
mained a large mass of rural workers, and the feudal system of the owners enables us to understand why the proprietors, to whom a part of the rural population remains traditionally attached, were able to execute those who had divided up the land. The Islamic factor should be added. In Indonesia it is associated with landed property; in the absence of a transformation, it threatens, in this country, to remain tied to the reaction."
Decornoy: "The thirtieth of September was said to have been a defeat for China..."
Wertheim: "Chinese intervention in the September putsch has never been proved. We should also note that the PKI's policy of collaboration with forces like the Muslims and Sukarno was contrary to the views of Peking, and rather in accord with the Soviet theses. According to the Chinese, an alliance can be made with other groups, but on condition that the CP takes the leadership and is not dependent. But Sukarno's foreign policy pleased Peking.
"I can tell you that the Chinese were not satisfied with the PKI's tactics. In 1957 Mao advised Aidit to go underground and told him, ‘When are you going to retire into the mountains?' But it must be said that the strategy of the Chinese CP is difficult to apply in Java for geographical reasons. In addition, 'power corrupts'; the PKI, in collaborating with Sukarno, did not escape this rule. The PKI should have been mistrustful of Sukarno; it should have disengaged and followed an independent policy, organizing in the countryside, not beginning the revolutionary struggle until the moment it was certain of being able to carry it through to the end.
Decornoy: "What do you think of the present situation?"
Wertheim: "It is a little reminiscent of things in China in 1927 after the Shanghai affair. There, too, the collaboration between the Communists and the Kuomintang, established under Sun Yat-sen, was broken by the military chiefs like Chiang Kai-shek, who unleashed a savage repression against the left. And in China, time was required for the revolutionary movement to again gain the lead...
"But in the Indonesian military corps, contradictions are already appearing. There are tensions between Suharto and Nasution. Suharto is from Java; Nasution from Sumatra. Nasution is linked with some groups of fanatic Muslims. Some tensions are also to be noted in central and eastern Java between the nationalists and the generals, who are particularly strong in western Java. Nothing is stable. As for the 'Kami' youth movement, it was not spontaneous. It was created under the auspices of some of the military figures. Particularly strong in Jakarta, but in trouble in Bandung, for example, and a minority in Jogjakarta and Surabaya, it is linked to Nasution and swept over Suharto in his criticism of Sukarno.
"Today, in the streets of Jakarta, they talk about the 'Ampa Hidjau,' the 'four greens,' which are supposed to be ruling the country. These are, the green beret commandos, Islam, the Kami, whose insignia is green...and the ambassador of the United States, Mr. Green."