Transition to the New Order

Period of Indonesian history, 1966–1967

Indonesia's transition to the New Order in the mid 1960s ousted the country's first president, Sukarno, after 22 years in the position. One of the most tumultuous periods in the country's modern history, it was the commencement of Suharto's 31 year presidency. Described as the great dhalang ("puppet master" or "puppeteer"), Sukarno drew power from balancing the opposing and increasingly antagonistic forces of the Army and Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). By 1965, the PKI extensively penetrated all levels of government and gained influence at the expense of the army. On 30 September 1965, six of the military's most senior officers were tortured and killed (generally labelled an "attempted coup") by the so called 30 September Movement, a group of (allegedly) PKI members and/or sympathizers. Within a few hours, Major General Suharto mobilised forces under his command and took control of Jakarta. Anti communists, initially following the army's lead, went on a violent purge of communists throughout the country, which killed an estimated half a million people and led to the banning and dissolution of the PKI, which was officially blamed for the attempted coup and crisis. The politically weakened Sukarno was forced to transfer key political and military powers to General Suharto, who had become head of the armed forces. In March 1967, the Indonesian parliament (MPRS) named General Suharto acting president. He was formally appointed president one year later. Sukarno lived under virtual house arrest until his death in 1970.

The nationalist leader Sukarno had declared Indonesian independence in 1945 and was appointed president. After an internal national revolution and struggle against the former Dutch colonial government, Sukarno had managed to hold together the diverse country; however, his administration had not been able to provide a viable economic system to lift its citizens out of severe poverty. He stressed socialist policies domestically and an avidly anti imperialist international policy, underpinned by an authoritarian style of rule dependent upon his charismatic personality. Pursuing an independent Indonesian foreign policy, Sukarno developed friendly ties with the Eastern Bloc and the People's Republic of China but courted friendly relations with the United States at the same time in his efforts to maximise Indonesian bargaining power in its foreign policy. Sukarno was also a pioneering figure in developing the Non Aligned Movement by playing a lead role in hosting the Bandung Conference in 1955. In Indonesia's domestic politics, Sukarno also carefully balanced Indonesia's various political parties, including the PKI. From the late 1950s, political conflict and economic deterioration worsened. By the mid 1960s, the cash strapped government had to scrap critical public sector subsidies, estimates put annual inflation at 500–1,000%, export revenues were shrinking, infrastructure crumbling, and factories were operating at minimal capacity with negligible investment. Severe poverty and hunger were widespread, and Sukarno led his country in a military confrontation with Malaysia while stepping up revolutionary and anti western rhetoric. Described as the great dhalang ("puppet master"), President Sukarno's position came to depend on balancing the opposing and increasingly hostile forces of the army and the PKI. His anti imperial ideology saw Indonesia increasingly dependent on the Soviet Union and China. By 1965, at the height of the Cold War, the PKI penetrated all levels of government extensively. With the support of Sukarno and the air force, the party gained increasing influence at the expense of the army, thus ensuring the army's enmity. By late 1965, the army was divided between a left wing faction allied with the PKI and a right wing faction that was being courted by the United States.

The same policies, however, won Sukarno few friends and many enemies in the Western world, especially including the United States and the United Kingdom, whose investors were increasingly angered by Sukarno's nationalisation of mineral, agricultural, and energy assets. In need of Indonesian allies in the Cold War against the Soviet Union, the United States cultivated a number of ties with officers of the military through exchanges and arms deals. That fostered a split in the military's ranks, with the United States and others backing a right wing faction against a left wing faction overlapping with the PKI. When Sukarno rejected food aid from United States Agency for International Development, thereby exacerbating famine conditions, the right wing of the military adopted a regional command structure through which it could smuggle staple commodities to win the loyalty of the rural population. In an attempt to curtail the increasing power of the right, the PKI and the left wing of the military formed several peasant and other mass organisations.

In 1963, a policy of Konfrontasi (Confrontation) against the newly formed Federation of Malaysia was announced by the Sukarno regime. This further exacerbated the split between the left wing and right wing military factions, with the left wing faction and the Communist Party taking part in guerrilla raids on the border with Malaysia, while the right wing faction was mostly absent from the conflict (whether by choice or orders of Sukarno is not clear). The Confrontation further encouraged the West to seek ways to topple Sukarno, who was viewed as a growing threat to Southeast Asian regional stability (as with North Vietnam under the domino theory). The deepening of the armed conflict came close to all out warfare by 1965, increased the widespread dissatisfaction with the Sukarno regime, and strengthened the hand of the right wing generals whose forces were still close to the centre of power in Jakarta.

On the night of 30 September – 1 October 1965, six senior army generals were kidnapped and executed in Jakarta by a battalion of soldiers from the Tjakrabirawa Regiment (Presidential Guard) in an "attempted coup". The right faction among the top generals was wiped out, including the powerful Chief of Staff of the Army, Ahmad Yani, but the Minister of Defence, Abdul Haris Nasution, escaped. Around 2,000 troops from coup groups occupied three sides of Merdeka Square, and commanded the Presidential Palace, radio station, and telecommunications centre, but did not occupy the east side, site of Kostrad headquarters. Calling themselves the "30 September Movement", the group announced on radio around 7am that they were trying to stop a military coup backed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that was planned to remove Sukarno from power. Furthermore, the soldiers proclaimed the establishment of a "Revolutionary Council" consisting of various well known military officers and civilian leaders that would be the highest authority in Indonesia. Additionally, they declared President Sukarno's Dwikora Cabinet as invalid ("demisioner"). According to one chief conspirator, Lt. Col. Latief, the Palace Guards had not attempted to kill or capture Major General Suharto, commander of Kostrad (Komando Strategi dan Cadangan TNI Angkatan Darat – the Army Strategic Reserve Command), because he was considered a Sukarno loyalist. Suharto, along with the surviving General Nasution, made the counter allegation that the G30S was a rebellious movement that sought to replace President Sukarno's government with a Communist government under the PKI, whose leaders were cabinet ministers without portfolio. Upon hearing of the radio announcement, Suharto and Nasution began consolidating their forces, successfully gaining the loyalty of Jakarta Garrison Commander Maj. Gen. Umar Wirahadikusumah and Colonel Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, the commander of army special forces RPKAD (Resimen Para Komando Angkatan Darat – the Army's Para Commando Regiment). During the evening of 1 October, RPKAD soldiers recaptured RRI and Telecommunications Building without any resistance as the rebel soldiers had retreated to Halim Air Force Base. RPKAD forces proceeded to attack Halim Perdanakusumah AF Base on the morning of 2 October but was stopped by the rebel soldiers in a fierce gunbattle in which several fatalities were inflicted on both sides. A direct order from President Sukarno managed to secure the surrender of the rebel soldiers by noon, after which Suhartoist forces occupied the base. On 4 October, the generals' bodies were discovered at Halim, and on 5 October (Armed Forces Day) a large public funeral was held. After the assassinations of those generals, the highest ranking officer in the Indonesian military, and third highest in the overall chain of command, was the Defense Minister and Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Abdul Haris Nasution, a member of the right wing camp. On 2 October, Suharto accepted Sukarno's order for him to take control of the army, but on the condition that Suharto personally have authority to restore order and security. The 1 November formation of Kopkamtib (Komando Operasi Pemulihan Keamanan dan Ketertiban, or Operational Command for the Restoration of Security and Order), formalised this authority and Suharto was appointed its first commanding general. In the aftermath of the assassinations, however, Suharto and his KOSTRAD (Army Strategic Reserve Command) units were closest to Jakarta. By default, Suharto became the field general in charge of the prosecution of the G30S. Later, at the insistence of Gen. Nasution, Pranoto was relieved of his post, and Suharto was in his stead appointed the new Army Chief of Staff on 14 October 1965.

In early October, a military propaganda campaign began to sweep the country, successfully convincing both Indonesian and international audiences that it was a Communist coup and that the murders were cowardly atrocities against Indonesian heroes. 30 September Movement was called Gestapu (from Gerakan September Tigapuluh, "30 September Movement"). The Army, acting on orders by Suharto and supervised by Minister of Defense Nasution, began a campaign of agitation and incitement to violence among Indonesian civilians aimed at the Communist community and toward President Sukarno himself. PKI's denials of involvement had little effect. The regime was quickly destabilised, with the Army the only force left to maintain order. At the funeral of Nasution's daughter Irma, Chief of Staff of the Navy Admiral Eddy Martadinata gave Muslim leaders the signal to attack Communists and their allies, who then responded with calls for Holy War against the PKI and its member and affiliate organisations in Indonesia, a general obligation upon the Muslim community. On 8 October, the PKI head office was ransacked and burned to the ground while firefighters stood by idly. They then marched demanding the dissolution of the Communist Party. The homes of senior party figures, including PKI chairman D. N. Aidit, M. H. Lukman and Nyoto were also torched. The army led an armed forces campaign to purge Indonesian society, government, the armed forces and law enforcement of the influence and power of the communist party and other leftist organisations allied to it (but not the Murba Party that was against the PKI and had been banned by the government because of its opposition to it). Leading PKI members were immediately arrested, some summarily executed. members and associates of the PKI and members of party affiliated organizations. The US government covertly supported the massacres, providing extensive lists of suspected communists to be targeted. The killings started in the capital Jakarta, spread to Central and East Java, and later Bali. Although killings occurred across Indonesia, the worst were in the provinces of Central Java, East Java, Bali, and North Sumatra all PKI loyal provinces. The massacres reached their peak over the remainder of the year before subsiding in the early months of 1966. The estimates of the death toll of the violence range from over 100,000 to three million, but most scholars accept a figure of around 500,000. Many others were also imprisoned, and for the next ten years, people were still being imprisoned as suspects. It is thought that as many as 1.5m were imprisoned at one stage or another. As a result of the purge, one of Sukarno's three pillars of support, the PKI, had been effectively eliminated by the other two, the armed forces and political Islam, helped in Bali by proponents of the Balinese caste system who saw the PKI and its allies as a threat to their way of life.

While resentment toward Chinese Indonesians by indigenous Indonesians descended peoples of the archipelago dated back to the Dutch East Indies era, the New Order instigated anti Chinese legislation following the quashing of the Communists. Stereotypes of the Chinese as disproportionately affluent and greedy were common throughout the time (both in Indonesia as well as Malaysia), but with the anti communist hysteria, the association of the Chinese Indonesians with the People's Republic of China caused them also to be viewed as a communist fifth column. Indonesia's hitherto friendly diplomatic relations with mainland China were severed, and the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta burnt down by a mob. New legislation included the banning of Chinese language signs on shops and other buildings, and the closure of Chinese language schools, adoption of "Indonesian" sounding names, and limits on Buddhist temple construction.

The liquidation and banning of the Communist Party (and related organisations) eliminated one of the largest political parties in Indonesia. It was also among the largest Communist Parties in the Comintern, at an estimated three million members. Along with the subsequent efforts by Suharto to wrest power from Sukarno by purging loyalists from the parliament, the civilian government in Indonesia was effectively put to an end by the coup countermeasures. Strident anti communism remained a hallmark of the 31 year regime. The new regime that emerged from the upheavals of the 1960s was dedicated to maintaining political order, promoting economic development, and excluding mass participation from the political process. The military was given a substantial role in politics, political and social organisations throughout the country were bureaucratised and corporatized, and selective but effective and sometimes brutal repression was used against opponents of the regime. Bradley Simpson, Director of the Indonesia/East Timor Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, says "Washington did everything in its power to encourage and facilitate the army led massacre of alleged PKI members, and U. S. officials worried only that the killing of the party's unarmed supporters might not go far enough, permitting Sukarno to return to power and frustrate the [Johnson] Administration's emerging plans for a post Sukarno Indonesia." According to Simpson, the terror in Indonesia was an "essential building block of the quasi neo liberal policies the West would attempt to impose on Indonesia in the years to come". Historian John Roosa, commenting on documents released from the US embassy in Jakarta in 2017, says they confirm that "the US was part and parcel of the operation, strategising with the Indonesian army and encouraging them to go after the PKI." Geoffrey B. Robinson, a historian at UCLA, argues that without the support of the U. S. and other powerful Western states, the Indonesian Army's program of mass killings would not have happened. As early as 1958, the U. S. and its allies backed anti communist elements within the Indonesian Army with secret assurances, financial and military support, and this support solidified once the mass killing campaigns were underway, demonstrating the "resolve" of the army. During the height of the violence, U. S. embassy official Robert J. Martens provided lists containing roughly 5,000 names of high ranking PKI members to the Indonesian Army, which, according to Robinson, "almost certainly aided in the death or detention of many innocent people". He notes that providing these kill lists "sent a powerful message that the US government agreed with and supported the army's campaign against the PKI, even as that campaign took its terrible toll in human lives."