The killings peaked at different times in different regions. The majority of killings in Central Java were over by December 1965, while killings in Bali and in parts of Sumatra took place mainly in early 1966. Although the most intense of the killings was over by mid-March 1966, sporadic executions took place in most regions until at least 1970, and there were major military operations against alleged communist underground movements in West Kalimantan, Purwodadi (Central Java) and South Blitar (East Java) in 1967-69.
It is generally believed that the killings were most intense in Central and East Java, where they were fuelled by religious tensions between santri (orthodox Muslims) and abangan (followers of a syncretic loca Islam heavily influenced by pre-Islamic belief and practice); in Bali, where class and religious tensions were strong; and in North Sumatra, where the military managers of state-owned plantations had a special interest in destroying the power of the communist plantation workers’ unions. There were pockets of intense killing, however, in other regions. The total number of victims to the end of 1969 is impossible to estimate reliably, but many scholars accept a figure of about 500,000. The highest estimate is 3 million.
Aidit, who went underground immediately after the failure of the coup, was captured and summarily executed, as were several other party leaders. Others, together with the military leaders of the September 30 Movement, were tried in special military tribunals and condemned to death. Most were executed soon afterwards, but a few were held for longer periods and the New Order periodically announced further executions. A few remained in jail in 1998 and were released by Suharto’s successor, President B.J. Habibie.
It is important to note that Chinese Indonesians were not, for the most part, a significant group amongst the victims. Although Chinese have repeatedly been the target of violence in independent Indonesia, and although there are several reports of Chinese shops and houses being looted in 1965-66, the vast majority of Chinese were not politically engaged and were expressly excluded from the massacres of communists in most regions.
Outside the capital, Jakarta, the army used local informants and captured party documents to identify its victims. At the highest level, however, the military also used information provided by United States intelligence sources to identify some thousands of people to be purged. Although the lists provided by the US have not been released, it is likely that they included both known PKI leaders and others whom the American authorities believed to be agents of communist influence but who had no public affiliation with the party.
Alongside the massacres, the army detained leftists on a massive scale. According to official figures, between 600,000 and 750,000 people passed through detention camps for at least short periods after 1965, though some estimates are as high as 1.5 million. These detentions were partly adjunct to the killings – victims were detained prior to execution or were held for years as an alternative to execution – but the detainees were also used as a cheap source of labour for local military authorities. Sexual abuse of female detainees was common, as was the extortion of financial contributions from detainees and their families. Detainees with clear links to the PKI were dispatched to the island of Buru in eastern Indonesia, where they were used to construct new agricultural settlements. Most detainees were released by 1978 following international pressure.
Even after 1978, the regime continued to discriminate against former detainees and their families. Former detainees commonly had to report to the authorities at fixed intervals (providing opportunities for extortion). A certificate of non-involvement in the 1965 coup was required for government employment or employment in education, entertainment or strategic industries. From the early 1990s employees in these categories were required to be ‘environmentally clean’, meaning that even family members of detainees born after 1965 were excluded from many jobs while their children faced harassment in school. A ban on such people being elected to the legislature was lifted only in 2004. A ban on the teaching of Marxism-Leninism remains in place.
Although the 1948 United Nations Convention on Genocide does not acknowledge political victims as victims of genocide, the Indonesian case indicates that the distinction between victims defined by ‘national, ethnical, racial or religious’ identity on the one hand and political victims on the other may be hard to sustain. Indonesian national identity is defined politically, rather than by ethnicity or religion, so that the communist victims of 1965 and after, constituting a different political vision of Indonesia from that of their enemies, may be said to constitute a national group.
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