30 SEPTEMBER 2015

50 YEARS AFTER G30S, A TIME TO RECOVER THE TRUTH!

50 years ago, on 30 September 1965, when there was rumours about a planned coup against Sukarno, a group of officers mainly consisted of Presidential Guards staged a “countercoup”, where 6 generals, including General Ahmad Yani, the Commander of the Indonesian Army, were kidnapped and killed.

General Suharto immediately mobilized army under his command to take over Jakarta and claimed that he defeated the “coup”. Suharto and his men then started a massive propaganda campaign pointing fingers at the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), alleging PKI for behind the “30 September Movement” or abbreviated as G30S, tarnished their image by claiming the bodies were mutilated, even though there were never any forensic evidence of mutilation. This cumulated in mass murder of PKI members and left-wing sympathizers in Indonesia, and the humiliating removal of Sukarno and his house arrest, and finally the ascend of Suharto to be the second President of Indonesia as well as the beginning of the 32-year rule of the repressive “New Order” regime.

The G30S was used as the pretext by Suharto to stage the military coup immediately after the event and unleashed a campaign of terror and bloody massacre which took away lives ranging from 500,000 to 1 million people, alleged for their involvement in the PKI. Suharto regime even funded a film telling the “official version” of the G30S story and aired in state TV station from 1984 until its downfall in 1998, in the aimed to brainwash and establish the legitimacy of Suharto’s takeover of power. Taboo towards communism during Cold War era which created since the G30S event still exist until today in Indonesia, and there are still much of the untold truth about the G30s yet to be revealed.

There were facts revealed that the G30s and the Suharto-led military coup as well as the bloody anti-communist mass killings, were supported by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States. The government of US had been uneasy with Sukarno for his close ties with Soviet Union and China, as well as his support for PKI. PKI then was the third largest communist party in the world and grown into the largest mass movement.

The US National Security Council had adopted a series of policy documents as earliest as 1953 calling for “appropriate action, in collaboration with other friendly countries, to prevent permanent communist control” of Indonesia. The CIA poured millions of dollars to support right-wing groups and anti-communist army officers in influencing the events of 1965. The US government is definitely has blood in its hand together with the “New Order” regime in the 1965-66 massacre across the country.

Sukarno, the leading figure of Indonesian struggle for independence, had tried to build the new nation in a different pathway, by converging progressive forces across political spectrum through the concept of NASAKOM (nationalism, religion and communism), introducing agrarian reforms and embarking on the effort to build Third World non-aligned anti-imperialism through the Bandung process. Such moves were perceived as serious threats to the interests of western imperialist power in South East Asia. The military coup which brought Suharto to power was intended to derail the process towards Third World self-determination.

It has been 17 years since the downfall of Suharto regime, and the Indonesian people have elected a President who is not associated with the military or “New Order” ruling elites for the first time in 2014. Yet, the menace of Suharto’s New Order is still haunting the country and the democratization process, when the remnants of New Order were rallied behind the opponent of Jokowi during the presidential election last year.

There is still a strong unwillingness of the Indonesian government until today to tackle the history of massacre followed the G30S. There is a need to revive the abandoned Truth and Reconciliation Commission to analyse and restore the true stories in relations to the G30S events and the anti-communist massacre. There is a need to revisit and re-establish an objective narration over the past bloody events, in order to advance democratization process in the country. There shall be no actual democratization for Indonesia as long as there is no genuine effort to recover the truth behind G30S and the years of anti-communist terror.

Released by,

Cecilia
PSM Kajang