To Nation by Revolution: Indonesia in the 20th Century

Chapter 9. Gestapu: A Hesitant Assessment, 1967

184 To Nation by Revolution 184 CHAPTER 9 Gestapu: A Hesitant Assessment, 1967 Even two years after the first upheaval [i.e. 1967],1 it is still almost impossible for anyone to view with complete objectivity the trauma which shook Indonesia on and after the night of September 30, 1965. Among Indonesians, all are involved; there are few who have not felt their jobs, their property, or their lives threatened at some time either before or after Gestapu. In the outside world, on the other hand, reactions have mainly been governed by international alignments. The reversal of the foreign policy of Sukarno and Aidit has brought relief to the major targets of that policy — America, Britain, India and Malaysia — in particular and to a wider group interested in Asian stability and the authority of the United Nations. It has brought further annoyance to China. To understand the coup itself and the bloodbath which followed, however, we must look not at the international power game, at the CIAor Peking-inspired plots beloved of Djakarta wall-daubers, but at the tensions within Indonesian society itself. For if it was the greatest achievement of the Sukarno regime to have created a measure of horizontal national unity among peoples of diverse language and culture, it was among its greatest failures to have only accentuated the vertical divisions within each region, between rich and poor, landlord and labourer, santri and abangan.2 Of course, this is to speak with the advantage of hindsight. Pressing that advantage further, we must consider the various factors combining to produce an explosively tense situation in Indonesia towards the end of 1965. Economic Collapse First, and underlying everything, there was the economic collapse. Extravagant spending on arms and diplomatic gestures, the burden of foreign Gestapu: A Hesitant Assessment, 1967 185 debts, attacks against all the major foreign investors in turn, corruption and inexperience in nationalised concerns, and the severing of commercial ties with Malaysia all contributed to the Government’s inability to pay its servants or maintain essential services. The value of the rupiah dropped with increasing speed (US$1 fetched Rp.5,000 on the Djakarta black market in January 1965; 10,000 in June; and 40,000 in September). City-dwellers, who were worst affected, were accustomed to having their attention diverted from these ills by the increasingly violent attacks on foreign embassies and offices. In this exercise, Sukarno leaned heavily on the PKI for street demonstrations, and at the same time tried to tame it by making criticism of the government appear to be a betrayal of the nation in danger. But urbanites found it harder and harder to accept that the high price of rice was caused by Nekolim, Malaysia, and so forth. For a time, Sukarno kept PKI criticism of his economic mismanagement in check by including Communists in junior posts in his Nasakom cabinet. But by September 1965, the rising prices again provoked repeated Communist demonstrations in Djakarta streets. Usually, the government itself was not directly held responsible for their grievances, but “capitalistbureaucrats , manipulators, and speculators”. The PKI’s Djakarta daily, Harian Rakjat, on 22 September, urged workers to “organise themselves and carry out quick and proper actions” against such elements. Such invitations to take the law into private hands were frequent during the few months before Gestapu, and were endorsed even by Subandrio in some statements. The economic collapse was making Nasakom cooperation more unworkable than it had ever been, but more importantly, it was rapidly undermining respect for government authority and the rule of law. Land Reform In rural areas, it was the land reform programme which began the spiral of increasing tension. In 1959, the Government had passed a Crop Division Law guaranteeing a 50-50 division of returns between tenant and landlord. The following year, a Land Reform Act imposed a maximum limit of five hectares (6.6 acres) of sawah for any one landowner. The excess was to be distributed among landless peasants who would repay the cost over a 15-year period (which, in Indonesian conditions of inflation , insured a minimal price). In fact, the government apparatus was too inefficient and the authority of the landholders too well-established 186 To Nation by Revolution in most areas to allow much effect to be given to the laws. During 1964, however, the BTI (Barisan Tani Indonesia, the PKI’s peasant organisation) began a programme...