13:21
Exotic lands to make you dream. Java, Bali, Sulawesi, the Moluccas, Borneo, Sumatra, Papua. Are they countries? No. 13,000 islands form one single nation, Indonesia. To start with, Indonesia is a Greek term created by an Englishman. Since the year 2000, it's been the third largest democracy in the world by number of inhabitants after India and the United States. It's also the world's largest Muslim country, although this republic, with its 240 million inhabitants, recognises six religions equally.
719 languages and more than 13,000 islands, but they form a single consciousness, Indonesia. Earth, sea, fire, water. Tsunamis that surge from the oceans, volcanoes and earthquakes that constantly redraw the archipelago's geography. No wonder Indonesians have a sense of the ephemeral. There was the earthquake and the tsunami in Aceh in 2004, the Niass earthquake in 2005, Yogyakarta in 2006, and then the one in Padang, West Sumatra, in 2009. Is God being particularly harsh with this country? In Jakarta, despite what people often imagine, a climate of tolerance reigns and the veil is more of an anti-pollution trend.
Anyone who claims to represent the Muslim world should in fact obtain the approval of Indonesian Muslims. Today, close to 90% of the population is Muslim. The rest is shared between Hindus, Buddhists, Confucianists. and animists of all kinds. As for Catholics and Protestants, though they may sometimes work in mysterious ways, they represent around 9% of the population.
Here, Islam cohabits with other religions, but the largest Muslim country is also an invisible giant. Did you know that by 2030 it will be the sixth largest global economic power? For centuries, Muslim kingdoms with their princes and their princesses, their sultans and their sultanas, exerted their influence. It's a world that can still charm, thrill and sometimes frighten Westerners. Almost like a fairy tale, at times evil and at others magical. That's where tradition lies far from all folklore.
Here, Dinsi Yamsuddin is a leading figure. He's chairman of the Indonesian Ulema Council, a semi-official organisation which aims to represent to the authorities the great diversity of Indonesian Islam. but which remains dominated by the conservatives. Islam entered Indonesia peacefully during the 11th century. Some claim that Islam arrived from Gujarat in India. Others maintain it came directly from the Arabian Peninsula. It is nonetheless clear that when Islam did arrive in Indonesia, Indonesian culture was already very much influenced by the values of the religions already present, such as Hinduism, Buddhism and other even more ancient religions.
This is what forged Indonesian culture, a culture that emphasizes harmony between man and God, between man and nature, and between man and his fellow man. And this provides us with a key to understanding what feeds today's Indonesian Islam. Before being a Muslim land, the archipelago was dominated by the great Hindu-Buddhist empires, with their universities and their sumptuous temples. But at what moment did the first devout Muslim prostrate himself on Indonesian soil? When Marco Polo stopped over in Sumatra, he reported that the port sovereign was a Muslim. That was in 1292.
The success of the Silk Road. or silk route drove more Muslim merchants to drop anchor in these distant lands, and local authorities converted to Islam in droves, forging more meaningful commercial bonds with these foreign traders. Islam wasn't brought by one person. Its presence dates back to the arrival of foreign traders. Indonesia, at the crossroads of India and China, had its golden age. Islam gradually and peacefully forged its power and its singularity from this intellectual and commercial capital. The Indonesians like to project an image of calm Islam, but well see that it's not without its tensions and its contradictions.
This is what we later called archipelago Islam. This is Islam as it has been practiced for a very long time in Indonesia. What we have here are the true teachings of Islam, an Islam which promises peace, based on tolerance, which gives women a place so that they may be active in society. In the 16th century, the Westerners landed. Their domination of the archipelago lasted until 1949. It was this complex and by then predominantly Muslim world that the first settlers discovered.
The Portuguese, the British and most especially the Dutch, who imposed a merciless colonial order on the whole population. What did these fascinated Westerners covet? To better understand the stakes involved in colonization, the easiest solution is to take out the recipe books. Hello! I'm Chef Bara, and today we're going to cook a dish from Ambon Island in Maluku. The name of the dish is kohu-kohu.
It is fairly common in these islands and very easy to prepare. A little nutmeg from the island of Ran, two cloves from Malacca, manioc from Borneo, pepper from Sulawesi, mustard from Flores. And then basil, lemon, chili, bean shallots, soya bean shoots, almonds. All the riches of Indonesia on a plate. In other words, during the colonial era, a kilo of nutmeg or cloves was worth 40 grams of silver, which would make Chef Bara's recipe pretty expensive. This confetti-like country seems to be the center of nothing and at the crossroads of everything. The archipelago is filled with seemingly inexhaustible supply of treasures, and for the Dutch settlers, who had come from their cold, flat little country,
it was as if Indonesia contained all the wonders of the world. All the varieties, all the flavours, all the resources, all the colours. And you only had to help yourself. So for the settlers, the natives' religion didn't matter as long as they were submissive. Fauna, flora and raw materials were more important than local beliefs. There was neither crusade nor evangelization. The main religion of Indonesia is the religion of Mahometan. But religious prescriptions are not seriously observed anywhere. And. In fact, until the end of colonization, there was great incomprehension, to say the least, when the Westerners gained to look at the people here.
Unscrupulous settlers filled boats with rich cargoes and sent them to Amsterdam with no regard for the natives. Between 1830 and 1870, when the cultivation system was wound down, the Dutch made 832 million guilders out of Java. All of it profit, none of it going back to Java. And in modern terms, that's equivalent of about 75 to 100 billion US dollars. They used that to build their fortification system against France, they used it to amortise the national debt, and to set up a canal and railway system to extend. And it eased their passage to the modern world.
It was the most successful colonisation in history. One image predominates, that of a good-natured, happy-go-lucky people, exploited at will, looked upon with detached amusement and viewed as part of the scenery. Java was always the most populated of the islands and accounts for close to 60% of the whole country's population. In the 16th century, it took nine months to journey between Asia and the West. When they erected the city of Batavia, which would later become Jakarta, the Dutch failed in their bid to make it a colonial city, because back then so few European women agreed to undertake such a long trip.
There was great animosity between the Dutch and the local population. For that reason, the Dutch brought in ethnic Chinese people from Macau to turn Batavia into a bustling trade centre. At the time, the ethnic Chinese were seen as a hard-working people, as a merchant class, which made Batavia into a prosperous city. The success of Batavia subsequently attracted even more people from southern China to come to Southeast Asia. That's the reason there are lots of Chinese in Indonesia.
Over the years and even today, those of Indonesian extraction haven't looked favourably on the social rise of the Chinese community, and it's often been subjected to racist violence. According to ancient accounts, eruptions of the volcano Merapi have always presaged great political upheavals. The 1822 eruption heralded the desperate war waged by Muslim prince de Pornigoreo against the Dutch colonial forces. Then a particularly hierarchical feudal order reigned, one of often extravagant local authorities, headed by sovereigns who made deals with the invader in exchange for the illusory perpetuation of their privilege.
But some members of the local aristocracy, both literati and warriors, were not collaborators and went into action, dragging the people into revolt, swords drawn. There were no images of Deponegori's Indonesia, as the cinematograph didn't exist yet, but some archives filmed a century later, in the 1920s, give a good idea of what the country was like at the time of the Java War, which caused hundreds of thousands of casualties.
At the top of these steps is a cave that became a sanctuary for the Indonesian people. It's here that the prince set up his HQ in 1824. Diponegoro is a well-known figure, my students' favourite character. When you hear his name, the image of Diponegoro on his horse instantly springs to mind. When you read Diponegoro's story, you find that he always refused to be crowned sultan. It's the beginning of a new era because basically what Diponegoro is pointing to is a sense of identity which transcends.
Locality. We are Wong Islam. To be a Wong Islam, to be a Muslim, you can be Javanese, you can be Sundanese, Makassarese, you can be Buginese, you can be Madurese. So it's beginning to break down a sense of da'era. And Diponegoro's vision was, in his negotiation, Something has told me that we cannot live without the Dutch. We live in a globalised world. But the way the Dutch got control of Java also carried within it the seeds of its own destruction. Because they got it by stealth, they got it by guile, they got it by betraying their word of honour. Indeed, after several years of fighting, the Dutch pretended to agree to a negotiation and captured Diponegoro by surprise.
He was exiled to the other side of the archipelago and would die there in 1855. To Indonesians, the arrest of Diponegoro by the colonial forces will forever remain an act of infamy. If Diponegoro had won, the passage to the modern world in the Indies, Indonesia, would have been very different. It took several decades for other resistance movements to get sufficiently organized. Around 1875, the Dutch war against Aceh, north of Sumatra, began and lasted for 30 years up to 1904 and the arrest of Kut Niyak D.
N., aristocratic leader of the guerrillas and feminine icon of courage and determination to the whole Indonesian people. In Bali in 1906, it was time for desperate revolt. The king, anticipating Dutch reprisals for a looting incident, torched his palace and took to the road with the whole of his royal house and more than 300 servants for a final confrontation with the Dutch. The Balinese, armed only with lances and swords, marched to meet the settlers. The men were clothed in white. As for cremation ceremonies, and the women, all in white too, stopped a few meters in front of the heavily armed Dutch soldiers.
Amidst the beating of the disturbing, incessant Balinese war drums, the incredulous foreign soldiers saw the king die instantaneously when one of his priests suddenly plunged a dagger into his heart, thereby triggering a frenzy of death. through a ritual mass suicide of all the assembled Balinese. It was the dawn of the 20th century, urban planning the advent of cinema. press and radio, education for the elite. All these phenomena paved the way for the birth of various nationalists and religious movements. For the first time,
Indonesian Islam was given structure and would contribute to the people's emancipation. Indonesian Muslims have one characteristic. They all belong to very structured Muslim organizations. The oldest is Muhammadiyah. created in 1912, followed by NU, which was founded in 1926. There are many national Muslim organizations with branches in at least two-thirds of the country's provinces. In 1928, students from the island of the Dutch East Indies met in Jakarta, then Batavia, to take the Oath of Youth,
which laid the foundations for the Indonesian Republic. One land, Indonesia. One nation, the Indonesian nation. One language, Indonesia. Indonesian. A national anthem was written. The Indonesian nationalist movement was born, one in which women played their part. The feeling of belonging to the same nation is profound, and the ocean unifies more than isolates people. The Dutch were divided.
Some saw that they couldn't keep the natives on the margins of society forever. Schools were set up to provide the country's elite. The Dutch decreed an ethical policy. But by 1930, the Great Depression had halted this virtuous reform and swift return to bad habits followed. And indeed, the penultimate governor was himself on the board of Dutch Shell, de Jong. And when he was asked in 1933. What did he think about the nationalist movement and the future of the Indies? He said, we've ruled with the whip and the club here for 300 years.
It will be another 300 years before this childish people will be ready for its independence. The years just before the war already gave an image of a paradise lost. And then the Second World War redrew the map of the world. The Japanese were coming.
One month after Pearl Harbor, Japan galvanized into action, attacked the Dutch East Indies in January 1942. In Tokyo cinema, Japanese newsreels resembled fiction worthy of the great warrior epics, with a thunderous ride of the Valkyries appended. This sound of illustration exalting and making aesthetic the pleasure of killing is certified as authentic. Other apocalypse nows came later.
The Dutch resisted for two months before surrendering. Everything was going badly for them. It was the end of more than three centuries of domination and their own country was busy dealing with the German army. The Indonesians rejoiced in the former settlers' misfortunes and hailed the triumph of the Japanese seen as liberators. Today, schoolchildren are encouraged to study this period. There's no denying that the Japanese were acclaimed upon arrival. But history doesn't stop there. The memories retained focus more on the anxiety caused by the passage of the Japanese.
We were all scared. When there was gunfire, we were scared. We didn't leave the house, my family and I. The shots came from the sky. They would take the girls. and put them to work in the hotels. They wanted to take me out, to take me to Japan, but my father refused. He wouldn't leave me in their hands. They did as they pleased. They arrested people. Even my father was arrested, despite the fact he was a humble doctor.
Museums highlight the stress inflicted by the suffering, the forced labour, the sex slavery. Yet one man realised how he could profit from the Japanese presence in Indonesia. Young and handsome, his name was Sukarno. As engineer by training, he was able to study thanks to the short-lived Dutch ethical policy. Before the war, he was close to the Sarakat Islam Organisation, as well as the Social Democratic Party. which would become the Indonesian Communist Party. In 1927, he founded the Indonesian National Party and was exiled by the Dutch.
He then became the go-between for the Japanese. They promised independence from Indonesia as soon as the war was over. They would be allies, and Westerners would no longer be welcome in this part of the world. Indonesia would belong to the Indonesians. Soekarno,.made every effort to promote a national heritage, hitherto stifled by the Dutch colonizers. Like in these images where he visits the grave of Diponegoro, the martyred hero, Sukarno's nationalism allowed him to close his eyes to abuse by the Japanese, the Nazi's allies.
And this period of history continues to be more or less taboo in the Indonesian consciousness. Curiously, the Japanese understood. that they should at least pretend to give independence to Indonesia. That's why many of the Indonesian nationalists collaborated intelligently, in my opinion, with the Japanese government. They're not particularly proud of it, because they still find the collaborationist situation a little embarrassing. But that's what actually happened. At any rate, in 1945, here came the cavalry. The story of the Battle of New Guinea is the story of brilliant cooperation between Australians and Americans.
The Americans and the Australians landed in Papua and Borneo. They bombarded the oil reserves held by the Japanese, cutting them off a little more. The Japanese collapsed and signed their surrender on August 15, 1945 against a backdrop of rain, mud and dishonor. Speed was of the essence. For once the Japanese were gone, who would support the Indonesian people? Two days later, on the morning of August 17, 1945, Sukarno proclaimed the independence of an Indonesia of which he would be president.
A government was formed, with a prime minister and ministers. But then the Dutch rode back into town, keen to reclaim what was theirs. In agreement with the local authorities, Dutch troops landed on the island of Lambok, in the Indonesian archipelago. A long war of independence began. The Republican troops were mainly made up of militiamen who often had no weapons and instead fought with sharpened bamboos. Each could become a soldier of freedom at the drop of a hat.
Many in the West would express disappointment at seeing the Second World War endure on the fringes of the world. Why didn't these natives lower their weapons? Why was there so much hate towards the great Dutch protectors? In my country, a small town, only one European woman has stayed. Before the separatists took over, they turned these regions into ruins. This is not inhuman land, it is man who does not retreat from the cruel policy of burnt land. So Cárdenas' new government had to go into exile in Gio Giacarta with the vital support of the Sultan, who welcomed them into his palace.
Gio Giacarta became the temporary capital of the Republicans under the high protection of the Sultan. Attempts to negotiate with the enemy sometimes took a fairly comical turn. Peace might be some time coming. And the violence spread. But it would turn out that the violence mainly involved the Indonesians themselves. The names of thousands of victims who fell under the bullets of the colonizers were etched in marble. For the rest, victims of the Indo-Indonesian War, a mass grave was preferable.
Between 1945 and 1949, the decolonization war waged by the Dutch was perhaps first and foremost a civil war. And there were doubtless more casualties between Indonesians than the Dutch caused in Indonesia. That was because the self-proclaimed New Republic led by Sukarno had to get its own house in order. Social democrats, communists, religious movements, each was fighting for its own cause. Here, the founding of the Islamic State of Indonesia was announced. Elsewhere, an independent republic of South Maluku sprang up, and in Madiun, there was a communist insurrection to deal with.
Sukarno's regular army repressed these numerous adventures. Heads were chopped off and hangings were public, with insurgents forced to dig their own graves. The wild beasts were unleashed and volcanoes simmered. And during this time, literally speaking, the earth continued to tremble in Indonesia. And the rains continue to fall on the country, war or no war. Most of the time, our society was the main victim. The people were suffering from the political uncertainty, the economic instability.
Why couldn't we all work together? That was how we approached things with our students. In Madiun, Repression of the communists reached the peak of its terror. Gradually, Sukarno's determination not to be overwhelmed by the PKI communists, nor by the Muslims inspired by the USA's trusts, the Americans obviously rejoiced at the sight of Indonesian communists massacred in Madiun. The whole paradox of this affair is that the Dutch took advantage of this insurrection in Madiun to launch what they called, in December 1948,
a second police operation, which was in fact a fresh military operation against the Republic. But circumstances turned against them, since the Republican troops managed to quell the communist insurrection in Madiun, and because of that, the United States forced the Dutch, under threat of being sidelined by the Marsha Plan, to negotiate with the Republican authorities. This led to recognition of the Republic of Indonesia in December 1949 by the former colonizers. At the Royal Palace of Amsterdam, a page of the history of the world is written today.
Juliana, Queen of Holland, sovereign of the distant lands of India, has come to sign the document that will make Indonesia a free, sovereign, independent state. The representative of the United States of Indonesia signs his turn. It's done. At the antipode, a new power is born at this minute. Or better said, for the poor face of God. The Dutch were gone and very little remained of their presence. A few architectural traces lived on, but the new republic spent a lot of time erasing and assimilating the traces of their passage.
There were too many painful memories. Sukarno was finally free to assume his functions as head of state without an election. He was enthroned in the Sultan's Palace in Jogjakarta on December 27, 1949. On what base would Sukarno build this new republic? Fragmented into thousands of islands, 719 languages and antagonistic religions, Indonesia must be unified. Though himself a Muslim, Sukarno rejected the idea of an Islamic state, feeling that Islam would be insufficient as the nation's only foundation.
To each his own faith, as long as it was directed towards one God. He imposed a single language for all. A five-point agreement, the Panchasila, would become the nation's philosophy, rather like Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité is to the French. But in keeping with the strange, audacious times, everything was placed under the protection of the eagle Garuda, a Hindu symbol. This astonishing eagle protector of the world's biggest Muslim country called for belief. in the one and only God, a just and civilized humanity, the unity of Indonesia, democracy guided by wisdom and social justice.
For the current Vice President of the Republic, the five principles of the Pancasila are still the reason Indonesia stands proudly. He received us in his palace, alongside that of the President of the Republic, a political veteran. He judges his action by the yardstick of the Pancasila. The Panchasila is the philosophy that unites all our people's differences. It is composed of five principles. Belief in one God, nationalism, unity, justice, and the path we must all take to a just democracy.
These principles are objectives to be achieved in implementing Bineka Tunggal Ika, unity in diversity. It is this philosophy which binds the nation. In all spheres of power, the Pancasila is the key to understanding Indonesia. Suya Palo is a very wealthy businessman, owner of the largest television station and head of a political party. With his false air of Pavarotti, he evokes the Pancasila as one might sing an opera aria. I think that these five basic principles are the masterpieces of their creator, the Indonesian people. The beauty of a philosophical foundation whose values are, I believe, universal.
The most surprising thing about the Pancasila is that the word was not only written in golden letters on the front of official buildings, it would also appear near the country's borders, where the Republic was still blighted by poverty. It rang out like a claim being staked, a cry of hope. Sukarno might have added a sixth principle to the Pancasila, non-alignment, as embodied by the Bandung Conference in 1955. At the time of the Bandung Conference in 1955, only 25 of the countries of Asia and Africa were independent.
Nowadays, thanks to the fervor of Bandung, which promoted the principle of independence, more than 100 countries in Asia and Africa are independent. That's why Indonesia. as well as the other Asian and African nations that took part in the conference, always called the event the Spirit of Bandung. In the early days of the Cold War, the young Indonesian leader succeeded in bringing together the best the world could muster in emerging anti-capitalist countries. This included Zawin Lai in China, Nehru in India and Nasser for Egypt, 29 independent states. Most recently decolonized and with one intention, to form a third way, one that wasn't accountable to the Soviet bloc or to the Western powers.
They were against nuclear testing, against colonialism, and for a peace zone founded on Pacific coexistence. France was particularly condemned as a colonial power and South Africa for its apartheid. It is a new departure in the history of the world that leaders of Asian and African peoples can meet together. In their own countries. Bandung, the awakening of the colonized people. Bandung, or the end of the colonial era. That same year, Sukarno was confronted by an ordeal.
The first elections since the advent of the Republic. Four parties came more or less joint first. The party that supported Sukarno, as well as the PKI Communist Party and two Muslim parties. This, within the framework of a proportional system, made the country almost ungovernable. The 1955 elections were a democratic success, but on the other hand they also signalled the exhaustion of parliamentary democracy, something Sukarno then used to usher in what he called directed democracy. This democracy was in fact just the repetition, with an Asiatic flavour, of Italian fascism, Mussolini's first version.
America says welcome in a big way to President Sukarno. Vice President Nixon. In America, despite the smiling faces of Vice President Nixon, this directed democracy, this cast of bandung, along with its good relations with anti-colonialist and communist movements, disgusted President Eisenhower. He saw only a ticking time bomb. Although nearly independent. The whole balance of Southeast Asia was at stake. The Vietnam War had only just begun and there was the war in Korea and soon civil war would engulf Laos and Cambodia.
The major ambiguous role that Sukarno wanted to fill caused distress and worry to the Americans. Mr. Khrushchev making a brief call at. As the enthusiast of the non-aligned movement, the Indonesian president had elective, contradictory, and somewhat explosive friendships. Sukarno had gone too far. The CIA went to work. Guerrilla movements were financed by Washington in 1958. But a failed assassination attempt only strengthened the image of the Indonesian leader who became, for many of his fellow citizens, virtually immortal. This superman was now president for life.
Sukarno was thrilled to be allowed to play with the big boys and greedily embarked on world tours, glad-handing the powerful far from the Indonesian quagmire. A thaw seemed to be on the cards when John Kennedy came to power. Kennedy was attentive to the non-aligned movement. To expect nothing from the Soviet bloc could be taken as a pledge for the Americans. This support, which didn't last, was frowned on by the American right.
For Indonesians, life had changed little. The agrarian reform had only sowed antagonism, and in cities the revolution was slow to change the lives of citizens. But as ideological debate inflamed the students, the arrival of communist ministers in the government worried the Muslim organisations and others besides. It took a balancing act from Sukarno to contain the opposing political forces. Sukarno sought to consolidate his international position, but he was faltering, wading into a crisis with neighbouring Malaysia and its British protector.
He left the UN and attacked West Papua, which was backed by the Netherlands. The US, British and Australian secret services eagerly went back to work to counter the Sukarno regime. The autocrat was gradually sinking, grey-haired and a little lost in the geopolitical labyrinths of the era. He didn't have the intuition to understand that with Kennedy having been radically sidelined, Johnson would conspire against him. But it was a little early to foment a coup against Sukarno. Lyndon B. Johnson, from Jakarta, date January 22nd, 8am. If military were forced to move in near future while they might present Sukarno with fait accompli,
coup would be handled in such a way as to preserve Sukarno's leadership intact. Even critics were convinced that there was no possibility of any coup succeeding against Sukarno. He was still beloved of the masses. He was guilty of looking favorably on the rise of the Indonesian Communist Party, or PKI, which at that time boasted 3.5 million members, making it the third largest communist party in the world, after China and the USSR. Nor did the president want to see the material suffering in which his people lived. And anyway, the economy wasn't really his thing.
He said so himself. Indonesia is hungry. The government's major problem is to feed 100 million people representing the fifth largest population in the world. Then came the year of living dangerously, as Sukarno said so, with an expression borrowed from Mussolini. It was a phrase that stuck. The year was 1965. The Under-Secretary of State, secret, March 18, 1965. Memorandum for the President Our relations with Indonesia are on the verge of falling apart. Sukarno is turning more and more toward the communist PKI.
Within the past few days, the situation has grown increasingly more ominous. Not only has the management of the American rubber plants been taken over, but there are dangers of an imminent seizure of the American oil companies. Sukarno remained the unquestioned father of the nation, but he couldn't control the ideological tensions that were rumbling in Indonesia. Although it's not clear which ideologies these were, there was an adrenaline in the air. Communists here, Muslims there, the ghost of Mussolini hidden somewhere, and the CIA prowling around, working in silence, and in particular, the army always close at hand.
Central Intelligence Agency, Intelligence Information Cable, Country Indonesia, date of 14th of May 1965. the Indonesian government will probably sever diplomatic relations with the United States within three months. Gunawan Muhammad is a major figure in civil society. His father was assassinated by the Dutch, and as a journalist he founded the authoritative publication Tempo magazine. He now runs a cultural centre. Extreme, violent clashes had already taken place before 1965. The situation was similar to war.
The events of 1965 were the apogee of all the violence that had happened up to then. Then, on the 30th of September 1965, everything changed dramatically. Today, in Indonesia, they still say that no one really knows what happened. We know it was at night, and it was raining, or maybe not. This is the official story, the one they've been telling for 50 years.
The PKI, the Indonesian Communist Party, fomented a coup d'etat and kidnapped six generals in their homes. Some victims resisted. They were murdered on the spot. The others were taken to suburbs of Jakarta. They were tortured at length with indescribable sadism. Frenzied communist women torturers castrated them. The bodies, sometimes still alive, were thrown into a well they called the Crocodile Hole.
It was bloodthirsty communist madness at work. Except that it almost certainly didn't happen that way. On the night of September 30th, 1965, a small group of progressive officers tried to kidnap the Indonesian army chiefs of staff. They accused them of straying from revolutionary ideals and of planning a coup d'etat. Their aim was to parade them before Sukarno, have them confess their sins and thus humiliate them.
The badly prepared coup turned into a major blunder as soon as the generals tried to defend themselves. It all went. quickly downhill. On the morning of October the 1st, officers linked to the previous night's murders announced the formation of a revolutionary council on the radio. They were hoping for the support of Sukarno, who refused to endorse their methods. From then on, the cause was lost. They fled their homes, went into hiding, were chased, imprisoned and killed. Sukarno was suspected of being in league with the communists. and subsequently as a traitor to the nation.
Rumors were flying around, but he remained untouchable. Destabilized by the affair, he blustered, improvised, minimized, with power draining visibly from him. He was overwhelmed. Okay, okay. I, president, supreme commander of the armed forces of the Republic of Indonesia. I appoint Major General Suharto, where is the man? This man,
I appoint him as Minister, Commander of the Army. The CIA had warned that they couldn't risk a coup d'etat head-on and that they would have to come up with a plan. And this man was their plan, Suharto, commander of the land army's strategic reserves, who would head the repression in order to save the country. Ayang studied in Paris at the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. He's now a researcher at the Islamic University of Jakarta. His expert analysis contrasts with the opinions of many of his fellow citizens.
General Suharto ordered the assassination of these six generals. Because there was a personnel problem with them, but also because these generals outranked Suharto. Is Ayang telling the truth? How can we know for sure? Who manipulated whom? Taking advantage of the failure of this operation, which went beyond its initial purpose, taking advantage too of the involvement, albeit minimal, of the Communist Party in the attempted putsch, Suharto set in motion a plan that had no doubt. been arranged long before, to eradicate Indonesian communism.
He also benefited from the fact that on the evening of September 30th, the putschists allowed him to move freely, as they expected if not his support, then certainly his neutrality. War was declared, at first with pictures as the generals' bodies were hauled out of the crocodile hole in front of the media. No detail of the communist's supposedly murderous fury was left out, as Soeharto scanned the horizon for trouble. The US media picked up on the story and ran with it.
International public opinion soon followed. They even had special mutilation squads made up of girls. The night of the coup, Endahir tortured Nastutyan's aide to death with a razor. They call it death of a thousand cuts. The girls were instructed by a communist women's organization called Gerwani. For six months before the coup, they were meticulously trained in the fine art of torture. The spectacular atrocities were calculated to so terrorize Indonesia. that there would be no resistance to the coup. Very soon after September 30th, the army spread a rumour that members of the Gourgouanis, which was the female arm of the Communist Party,
tortured and even castrated the murdered generals. This rumour was totally unfounded, as the autopsies carried out days later showed, but it served as a foundation for the total violence that characterised the repression after 1965. And in particular, it enabled this repression to be extended to women. Everyone screamed for vengeance. Muslim militias flared up. Communists, those godless people, became the embodiment of evil, the devil. Working from lists of communists supplied by the CIA, massive arrests were made of suspects whose fate was already sealed.
The dikes gave way. The whole of Indonesia imploded. All the citizens, the Muslim militias, the Hindus from Bali, became drunk on violence, encouraged by the army that itself was being kept busy executing thousands of people. Neighbours were killed with machetes, the Chinese community was targeted, scores were settled left, right and centre. Bodies were thrown into the rivers, which were soon blocked by the accumulated corpses. Neutrality was impossible. Often it was a case of kill or be killed. Today historians estimate that this fury resulted in Indonesians killing at least 500,000 of their own.
Half a million murdered with machetes, clubs, picks, ropes. Some even estimate up to 3 million deaths. Who knows? At that level, all the figures show is a society in total disintegration, the horror. I remember late one night, I was in my shop, people were shouting in the street, PKI. They were shouting that they were going to be murdered, except that they were killed by their friends. My mother had to burn books behind our home, little by little. We could have been arrested immediately for having dangerous books.
The United States rejoiced. The rest of the worst closed its eyes. It was too far away, too complicated. There wasn't enough news about what was really going on. Vietnam was the focus of indignation, and Vietnam had pictures. As for Indonesia, there was an attitude of nothing to see here. The new order reigned. I heard talk about all that, but I've not seen anything, so.
What happened to Sukarno? He transferred power to Suharto, who, in return, gave him the inalienable role of the father of the nation. Forced into admitting defeat, Sukarno was quietly placed under house arrest, with all due regard to his rank. General Suwarto murdered President Sukarno discreetly and gradually. How did he do it? He was placed in a house, he wasn't able to speak to many people, he wasn't given his medication, etc. So in fact, General Suwarto did kill President Sukarno discreetly and gradually. not right away.
Forced into silence, mummified during his lifetime, the seemingly friendly Sukarno declined, strutted in the void, still sporting a certain charisma. But it was a far cry from the handsome Sukarno of independence. How will he be remembered? Sukarno died in 1970. Suharto led the country for 31 years, two months and nine days. These were times of economic boom and international recognition. For the first time in history, a president of the United States of America is visiting Indonesia.
Stability was achieved at the cost of infinite social inequalities, through corruption and by handing all power to the army. No freedom of association, no freedom of press, no freedom at all. This is what Suharto called the new order. What was to become of Indonesia?
