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4. Sjam and the Special Bureau
- University of Wisconsin Press
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4 Sjam and the Special Bureau His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering . He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902) The Supardjo document enables us to solve one mystery: the relationship between the military officers (Untung, Latief, and Soejono) and civilians (Sjam and Pono) within the leadership of the movement. Of the five core leaders, Sjam was the most important one. Unfortunately, the document does not help us answer the questions that logically follow: Who was Sjam? Was Sjam a loyal servant of Aidit’s and only following orders? Was Aidit, then, the real leader of the movement, pulling Sjam’s strings from behind the screen? Or did Sjam have autonomy, such that he was able to design the movement by himself and keep Aidit in the dark about the details? Was Sjam working for the army rather than Aidit? Or was he working for a third party? What was his Special Bureau and how did it function inside the party? Given the lack of evidence, it has been possible to imagine a wide variety of scenarios with differing levels of culpability for the actors involved . Aidit, for instance, can be represented as either the mastermind of the entire operation, personally involved in every aspect, or as the hapless fall guy in an elaborate setup engineered by Sjam. The inner workings of the party have been completely obscure, at least to those concerned with facts and not obliged to believe the fairy tales imposed on the Indonesian public by the Suharto regime. 117 In this chapter I present new information that can help reduce the number of plausible scenarios. Many holes remain but some elements of the story can be clarified. Much of the information comes from a former PKI member who had detailed and intimate knowledge of Sjam and the Special Bureau. I spoke to him on numerous occasions over a period of several years. After he was confident that I could be trusted with his story, and I was confident that his story could be trusted, we recorded an interview. He also gave me a sixty-one-page typed autobiographical essay. Because he has requested anonymity, I cannot describe his position in the party and explain how he came upon his knowledge. I can only affirm that I am certain that he was in a position to know the workings of the Special Bureau first hand. Since his story is the only primary source so far available about bureau members, apart from their testimonies at Mahmillub trials, it deserves careful examination. Based as it is on memory, it probably contains a number of inaccuracies. However , I believe that his story is largely credible. Parts of it can be corroborated by other sources. The pseudonym used for him here, Hasan, was chosen at random. Background on Sjam and the Special Bureau When did the Special Bureau begin? According to Hasan, Sjam was technically correct when he claimed, in the course of his courtroom testimony , that it began in 1964.1 Hasan affirms that the name originated around 1964 but says that the organization itself had been functioning since at least the early 1950s, when the party was reorganized under Aidit’s leadership. One branch of the party was assigned the task of cultivating supporters within the military. This clandestine branch functioned within the PKI’s aboveground Organizational Department, which handled matters such as the recruitment, posting, and training of members. Until 1964 this branch had been known as the Military Section (Bagian Militer) of the Organizational Department. Most of the department’s staff did not know that this branch existed. It was headed by a man named Karto. Sjam testified that he had been in the Organizational Department since 1960. What he did not say was that he had been working under Karto as a secret member of that department. He became head when Karto died around 1963 or 1964. Hasan describes Karto as a senior PKI member who joined the Communist Party in the 1920s. Karto was originally from Solo and had been active in the armed revolt against the Dutch forces from 1945 to 118 Sjam and the Special Bureau t [3.230.128.106] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 12:32 GMT) 1949. Hasan, a member of a laskar (people’s militia) in Central Java, knew Karto during...