Western media forever trumpeting communist Pol Pot killings in Cambodia, few knows killings in Indonesia sponsored by west was far worse
Al Jazeera has again proven itself to be a good source of information. Not too long ago, it reported about a documentary " The Act of Killing". The documentary is about the killings perpetuated by late general Suharto (later president) and gangs in order to seize power from the late former president Sukarno of Indonesia. In total one to three millions were killed.
The total Jews killed by Nazi were 6 millions and that was during war time. The Indonesians murdered by army could be as high as 3 million during peace time, and that was equivalent to half of Jewish casualty in Holocaust.
The Suharto aristocracies are still ruling
Today, the 1965 massacre is still a sensitive topic in Indonesia. The massacre have largely purged an entire elite class, replacing them with new ruling class. These new ruling class is still there in Indonesia and they are largely intact even though Suharto was gone. Powerful families have benefited from the ascend of Suharto.
President Susil Bambang Yudhoyono, for instance, is a former general while his father-in-law, Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, was an Australian-trained officer who led the killings in Central Java.
The players
1) Suharto (army)
2) Sukarno (president)
3) China/USSR
4) Western countries (mainly USA, UK and Australia)
5) Indonesian communist/trade unionist (PKI)
6) Indonesia Muslim groups
7) Chinese Indonesian
The great game during post World War 2 South East Asia
South East Asia was the battle field of two main ideological groups, the capitalist and communist. Most people in South East Asia who received some educations were left leaning. On the other hand, the arm forces, landlords and religious groups were pro western.
Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos went communist, as they were able to receive direct support from China next door. Indonesia had high potential going communist. The Communist Party of Indonesia, PKI was the 3rd largest in the world and was extremely well organized.
It had 3 million members and around 20 millions of peripheral groups like trade unions and educated youth. The PKI was the biggest political party in Indonesia. It was expected to win elections and ascend to power in matter of times.
This is the scenario that the west will prefer not to happen.
The enemies
Late former President Sukarno was left leaning. He has a vision of progressive Indonesia. The PKI and unions were organizing land reform, seizing lands from parasitic landlords and redistributing lands to labor. The parasitic landlord fumed.
Trade unionist were asking for better rights and working conditions, and the rich got angry. The progressive communist who were atheist or moderately religious were also viewed as enemies of Muslim groups. The arm forces, then were traditionally reactionary and hated communist.
The people were supporting communist because this was the first time that oppressed peasants got a piece of land. Also peasants were getting more and more aware of their rights.
The foreign players
The PKI had close relationship with the communist countries. While it is not wrong to say that China and USSR supported PKI, the PKI was more an indigenous and independent movement.
The western countries led by USA found Suharto as a proxy. The west, Indonesian arm forces, rich and Islamic groups formed an unholy alliance.
The Killings
The massacre started after the counter-coup of Suharto. US diplomats and CIA officers, including the former US ambassador to Indonesia and Australia, Marshall Green, subsequently admitted working hand-in-glove with Suharto and his butchers in carrying through the massacres. They personally provided the names of thousands of PKI members from CIA files for the death lists.
David Jenkins, former foreign editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, said that the Australian, British and US embassies were aware of the mass killings, but did not raise a single protest to the systemic slaughter. All the embassies knew the PKI had not initiated the coup but did nothing to protect the victims from the military.
Archive documents released in Australia in 1999 proved that the Johnson administration in Washington was actively agitating for the formation of a military regime, and urging its embassy in Jakarta to co-ordinate closely with the army and insist that the generals act ruthlessly to crush the PKI. When, at the end of October, Washington determined that Suharto should establish a military government, it did so in close consultation with both the British and Australian governments.
Brad Simpson, Assistant Professor of History and International Studies at Princeton University and author of “Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and US-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968”, said the US and British governments did “everything in their power” to ensure that the Indonesian army would carry out the mass killings. He said US and other Western officials viewed the mass killings as “efficacious terror”, an essential building block of the “quasi neo-liberal policies that the West would attempt to impose on Indonesia after Sukarno’s ouster”. They viewed the wholesale annihilation of the PKI and its supporters as “an indispensable prerequisite to Indonesia’s reintegration into the regional political economy and international system, the ascendance of a military modernising regime and the crippling or overthrow of Sukarno”.
Immediately after the coup, the US administration rushed to express political support for the Suharto regime. It provided covert monetary assistance to the Indonesian armed forces, while the CIA organised arms from Thailand. The US government also provided communications equipment, medicine and a range of other items, including shoes and uniforms.
Muslim groups participants
There is significant role played by the Muslim organisations Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah in the killings. These right-wing organisations, acting at the behest of and at times organised by the military, willingly participated in the eradication of workers and peasants who were seen as a threat to traditional landowners and vested religious interests.
The west help create Islamic Radicalism that hates the west
The Muslims are often lead to believe that USA are bad to them. In fact most of the time the reverse is true. USA during the cold war worked closely with Muslim groups against communist. For example, if the west sit by and let USSR decimated all the Jihadist and built a socialist state, Afghan could be something like Kazakhstan today, extremely secular and Afghani Muslims will reject radicalism.
Many central Asia states like Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are extremely secular in outlook, due to Stalin, who decimated their most religiously fanatics.
In Indonesia, the army and political Islam formed close alliance since. In addition, there was decimation of progressive left wingers. The radicalization of Indonesian Muslim continues till this day, and its reaching a potentially destabilizing level.
Chinese Indonesian in collateral damage
Most Chinese Indonesian being the best educated group in Indonesia were left leaning. They were deemed ally of communist China and being especially singled out for murder.
The Chinese were discriminated under the Suharto regime and suffered yet another pogroms in 1998, this time for no reason at all. The emancipation of Chinese Indonesian came to past after Suharto was kicked out of power.
Communism is badly maligned by elites today. People today are brainwashed. In reality, Stalinism is bad, but Economic Marxism is much better than capitalism. Soon people will rediscover Marx.
Al Jazeera has again proven itself to be a good source of information. Not too long ago, it reported about a documentary " The Act of Killing". The documentary is about the killings perpetuated by late general Suharto (later president) and gangs in order to seize power from the late former president Sukarno of Indonesia. In total one to three millions were killed.
The total Jews killed by Nazi were 6 millions and that was during war time. The Indonesians murdered by army could be as high as 3 million during peace time, and that was equivalent to half of Jewish casualty in Holocaust.
The Suharto aristocracies are still ruling
Today, the 1965 massacre is still a sensitive topic in Indonesia. The massacre have largely purged an entire elite class, replacing them with new ruling class. These new ruling class is still there in Indonesia and they are largely intact even though Suharto was gone. Powerful families have benefited from the ascend of Suharto.
President Susil Bambang Yudhoyono, for instance, is a former general while his father-in-law, Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, was an Australian-trained officer who led the killings in Central Java.
The players
1) Suharto (army)
2) Sukarno (president)
3) China/USSR
4) Western countries (mainly USA, UK and Australia)
5) Indonesian communist/trade unionist (PKI)
6) Indonesia Muslim groups
7) Chinese Indonesian
The great game during post World War 2 South East Asia
South East Asia was the battle field of two main ideological groups, the capitalist and communist. Most people in South East Asia who received some educations were left leaning. On the other hand, the arm forces, landlords and religious groups were pro western.
Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos went communist, as they were able to receive direct support from China next door. Indonesia had high potential going communist. The Communist Party of Indonesia, PKI was the 3rd largest in the world and was extremely well organized.
It had 3 million members and around 20 millions of peripheral groups like trade unions and educated youth. The PKI was the biggest political party in Indonesia. It was expected to win elections and ascend to power in matter of times.
This is the scenario that the west will prefer not to happen.
The enemies
Late former President Sukarno was left leaning. He has a vision of progressive Indonesia. The PKI and unions were organizing land reform, seizing lands from parasitic landlords and redistributing lands to labor. The parasitic landlord fumed.
Trade unionist were asking for better rights and working conditions, and the rich got angry. The progressive communist who were atheist or moderately religious were also viewed as enemies of Muslim groups. The arm forces, then were traditionally reactionary and hated communist.
The people were supporting communist because this was the first time that oppressed peasants got a piece of land. Also peasants were getting more and more aware of their rights.
The foreign players
The PKI had close relationship with the communist countries. While it is not wrong to say that China and USSR supported PKI, the PKI was more an indigenous and independent movement.
The western countries led by USA found Suharto as a proxy. The west, Indonesian arm forces, rich and Islamic groups formed an unholy alliance.
The Killings
The massacre started after the counter-coup of Suharto. US diplomats and CIA officers, including the former US ambassador to Indonesia and Australia, Marshall Green, subsequently admitted working hand-in-glove with Suharto and his butchers in carrying through the massacres. They personally provided the names of thousands of PKI members from CIA files for the death lists.
David Jenkins, former foreign editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, said that the Australian, British and US embassies were aware of the mass killings, but did not raise a single protest to the systemic slaughter. All the embassies knew the PKI had not initiated the coup but did nothing to protect the victims from the military.
Archive documents released in Australia in 1999 proved that the Johnson administration in Washington was actively agitating for the formation of a military regime, and urging its embassy in Jakarta to co-ordinate closely with the army and insist that the generals act ruthlessly to crush the PKI. When, at the end of October, Washington determined that Suharto should establish a military government, it did so in close consultation with both the British and Australian governments.
Brad Simpson, Assistant Professor of History and International Studies at Princeton University and author of “Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and US-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968”, said the US and British governments did “everything in their power” to ensure that the Indonesian army would carry out the mass killings. He said US and other Western officials viewed the mass killings as “efficacious terror”, an essential building block of the “quasi neo-liberal policies that the West would attempt to impose on Indonesia after Sukarno’s ouster”. They viewed the wholesale annihilation of the PKI and its supporters as “an indispensable prerequisite to Indonesia’s reintegration into the regional political economy and international system, the ascendance of a military modernising regime and the crippling or overthrow of Sukarno”.
Immediately after the coup, the US administration rushed to express political support for the Suharto regime. It provided covert monetary assistance to the Indonesian armed forces, while the CIA organised arms from Thailand. The US government also provided communications equipment, medicine and a range of other items, including shoes and uniforms.
Muslim groups participants
There is significant role played by the Muslim organisations Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah in the killings. These right-wing organisations, acting at the behest of and at times organised by the military, willingly participated in the eradication of workers and peasants who were seen as a threat to traditional landowners and vested religious interests.
The west help create Islamic Radicalism that hates the west
The Muslims are often lead to believe that USA are bad to them. In fact most of the time the reverse is true. USA during the cold war worked closely with Muslim groups against communist. For example, if the west sit by and let USSR decimated all the Jihadist and built a socialist state, Afghan could be something like Kazakhstan today, extremely secular and Afghani Muslims will reject radicalism.
Many central Asia states like Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are extremely secular in outlook, due to Stalin, who decimated their most religiously fanatics.
In Indonesia, the army and political Islam formed close alliance since. In addition, there was decimation of progressive left wingers. The radicalization of Indonesian Muslim continues till this day, and its reaching a potentially destabilizing level.
Chinese Indonesian in collateral damage
Most Chinese Indonesian being the best educated group in Indonesia were left leaning. They were deemed ally of communist China and being especially singled out for murder.
The Chinese were discriminated under the Suharto regime and suffered yet another pogroms in 1998, this time for no reason at all. The emancipation of Chinese Indonesian came to past after Suharto was kicked out of power.
Communism is badly maligned by elites today. People today are brainwashed. In reality, Stalinism is bad, but Economic Marxism is much better than capitalism. Soon people will rediscover Marx.