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1. The Incoherence of the Facts
- University of Wisconsin Press
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34 1 The Incoherence of the Facts If any section of history has been painted gray on gray, it is this. Men and events appear as reverse Schlemihls, as shadows that have lost their bodies. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) The Morning of October 1 The September 30th Movement first made itself known by a broadcast over the national radio station on the morning of October 1, 1965. Troops loyal to the movement occupied the station and forced the announcer to read a typed document for the broadcast. Those tuning in to their radios at about 7:15 a.m. heard a ten-minute announcement that seemed to be a simple news report. Instead of writing the statement in the first person, the organizers of the movement wrote it in the third person, as though a journalist had composed it. The message twice mentioned a “statement obtained from Lieutenant Colonel Untung, the Commander of the September 30th Movement,” implying this radio report was quoting from another document. This feigned third-person voice lent a more reassuring air to the message. It seemed as if the radio reporters were still on the job and that gun-wielding troops had not burst in and interrupted their normal broadcasting. In this way, the movement’s first statement did not appear to have been issued by the movement itself but rather by the radio station’s news service. It was the beginning of a long series of discrepancies between appearance and reality.1 The only member of the movement whose name was announced in this first message was that of Lieutenant Colonel Untung. He was identified as a battalion commander of the presidential guard who wished to prevent a “counterrevolutionary coup” by a group known as the Council of Generals (Dewan Jenderal). These unnamed generals “harbored evil designs against the Republic of Indonesia and President Sukarno” and planned to “conduct a show of force on Armed Forces Day, October 5.” In acting against their superior officers, the troops within the movement appeared to be motivated by a higher loyalty, that to President Sukarno, the supreme commander of the armed forces. The message noted that the movement had already arrested “a number of generals” and would soon take wider action. There would be “actions throughout Indonesia against agents and sympathizers of the Council of Generals in the regions.” The people who were to carry out such actions went unnamed. Something called an “Indonesian Revolution Council” (Dewan Revolusi) would be established in Jakarta and would exercise some sort of executive power. All “political parties, mass organizations, newspapers, and periodicals” would have to “declare their loyalty” to the Indonesian Revolution Council if they were to be allowed to continue functioning. Lower-level revolution councils would be established at each rung of the government’s administrative hierarchy , from the province down to the village. The announcement promised that details about the revolution councils would be forthcoming in a later decree. In addition to taking over the radio station and forcing the newscaster to read the statement, the movement’s troops also occupied Merdeka Square, the city’s main square, which was in front of the radio station .2 Along the four sides of this expansive grass field stood many of the nation’s most important centers of power: the presidential palace, army headquarters, ministry of defense, army reserves headquarters (Kostrad), and the U.S. embassy. In the middle of the field stood the 137-meter-high monument to the national struggle for independence. To the extent that the sprawling archipelago of Indonesia had a locus of political power, Merdeka Square was it. Most of the roughly one thousand soldiers in this square were from two army battalions: Battalion 454 from Central Java, and Battalion 530 from East Java. These troops were stationed on the north side of the square in front of the palace, on the west side in front of the radio station, and on the south side near the telecommunications building, which they also occupied and shut down. The telephone network in Jakarta was put out of operation. By positioning themselves in this central square, one section of the movement’s troops had made themselves visible. Much less visible was The Incoherence of the Facts 35 t [54.226.222.183] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 07:01 GMT) another contingent that was operating from Lubang Buaya, an uninhabited grove of rubber trees seven miles south of Merdeka Square. At...