Indonesian Mass Killings and Suharto's Seizure of Power
Between 500,000 and a million people were killed in Indonesia in the months after 1 October 1965. The trigger was a failed coup that night, in which a group of officers calling themselves the 30 September Movement killed six generals and dumped their bodies in a well. What it was — an internal army affair, a communist plot, or something engineered to be blamed on the communists — has never been established. Major General Suharto, one of the few senior officers not on the list, took control within hours, put down the movement, and declared the Communist Party responsible. The PKI was the largest communist party outside the Soviet bloc and China, with perhaps three million members and affiliated organisations reaching twenty million, and had been protected by Sukarno. What followed was organised by the army and carried out substantially by civilian militias — Muslim youth organisations in particular, in Java and Bali — with lists supplied, transport provided, and villages worked through methodically. Rivers were reported blocked. The American embassy passed lists of names to the Indonesian army, which was acknowledged decades later in declassified cables. Britain and the United States welcomed the outcome. Around a million more people were imprisoned without trial, some for over a decade. Sukarno was progressively stripped of power and Suharto ruled until 1998. No official accounting has been made. A national commission in 2012 found gross human rights violations, and no prosecution has followed. It is among the largest mass killings of the twentieth century and among the least examined.
- Year: 1965 CE
- Category: Political
