History is messy. Usually, the stories we get are cleaned up, polished, and presented with a clear hero and a clear villain. But the Indonesian killings of 1965-66 don't fit into a tidy box. This wasn't just a war or a simple coup. It was a massive, terrifying unraveling of a society that left somewhere between 500,000 and one million people dead in just a matter of months.
It started with a bang—literally.
On the night of September 30, 1965, a group of mid-level military officers calling themselves the 30th September Movement (G30S) kidnapped and killed six top Indonesian army generals. They claimed they were protecting President Sukarno from a CIA-backed "Council of Generals." It was chaotic. It was violent. And it failed almost immediately. Major General Suharto stepped into the power vacuum, blamed the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) for the whole thing, and sparked a nationwide bloodbath that changed Southeast Asia forever.
Honestly, the scale of what followed is hard to wrap your head around. Imagine neighbors turning on neighbors, not because of a long-standing grudge, but because of a political label that many didn't even fully understand.
Why the Indonesian Killings of 1965-66 Happened
You've got to look at the pressure cooker that was Indonesia in the mid-sixties. President Sukarno was playing a dangerous game of "Nasakom"—trying to balance nationalism, religion, and communism. The PKI was the third-largest communist party in the world, trailing only behind the Soviet Union and China. They had millions of members. They were organized. And the Indonesian Army hated them.
When the generals were murdered, Suharto’s propaganda machine went into overdrive. They told stories—most of them later proven false—about communist women dancing naked and mutilating the generals. It was psychological warfare. It turned the PKI from a political rival into a demonic threat that had to be "exterminated."
The violence wasn't just carried out by the army. That’s a common misconception. The military provided the weapons, the lists of names, and the logistics, but they recruited local youth groups, religious organizations like Ansor (the youth wing of Nahdlatul Ulama), and even local gangsters to do a lot of the actual killing. It was decentralized. It was intimate.
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The Geography of Terror
The killings weren't uniform across the archipelago. In Central and East Java, where the PKI had deep roots among the peasantry, the violence was systematic. Bodies were dumped into rivers in such numbers that people stopped eating fish for months. They were scared the fish were feeding on human remains.
Then you have Bali.
People think of Bali as this peaceful, spiritual paradise. But in 1965, it was one of the bloodiest places in the country. The social tensions between different castes and political factions exploded. Some estimates suggest that 5% to 10% of Bali's entire population was wiped out in a few months. The "Island of the Gods" became an island of mass graves.
The Role of Foreign Powers
We can't talk about the Indonesian killings of 1965-66 without talking about the Cold War. The United States was terrified of a "domino effect" in Southeast Asia. Documents declassified decades later, and analyzed by historians like Bradley Simpson, show that the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta was actually tracking the killings with approval. They even provided lists of communist operatives to the Indonesian military.
The West saw this as a victory. Time Magazine called it "the West's best news for years in Asia." It’s a chilling reminder of how geopolitics can prioritize "stability" over human life.
Life Under the New Order
After the dust settled, Suharto didn't just stop at the killings. He built a "New Order" regime that lasted 32 years. If you were associated with the PKI, or even if your second cousin was, you were blacklisted. You couldn't get a government job. Your ID card had a special mark on it.
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This wasn't just about physical death; it was about social death.
Families were silenced. For decades, the official state narrative was the only one allowed. Every schoolchild had to watch a grisly propaganda film called Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI (The Treachery of G30S/PKI) every year. It reinforced the trauma and the fear, ensuring that no one would ever question the military's version of events.
Breaking the Silence: The Act of Killing
For a long time, the world sort of forgot. Then Joshua Oppenheimer released his documentary The Act of Killing in 2012. If you haven't seen it, be warned—it’s heavy. He found the aging executioners in North Sumatra and asked them to reenact their crimes.
They didn't hide. They bragged.
They showed how they used wire to strangle people because it was faster and less messy than beating them to death. Seeing these men treated like local heroes while the victims’ families lived in fear next door brought the Indonesian killings of 1965-66 back into the global spotlight. It forced a conversation in Indonesia that many are still trying to shut down today.
Why Does This Still Matter?
You might wonder why we’re still talking about something that happened sixty years ago.
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Because the ghosts haven't been laid to rest. There has never been a formal state apology. There has been no Truth and Reconciliation Commission like they had in South Africa. In recent years, there’s even been a resurgence of "anti-communist" paranoia in Indonesia, often used to target activists, human rights defenders, or anyone criticizing the government.
Understanding this period is the only way to understand modern Indonesia. The wealth gap, the political power of the military, and the way the country handles dissent all trace their roots back to those bloody months in 1965.
What We Can Learn from the Records
If you want to dig deeper, the evidence is there.
- The CIA Reading Room: Declassified documents show the level of awareness (and assistance) from the US.
- The Komnas HAM Report: In 2012, Indonesia’s own National Commission on Human Rights declared the events a "gross human rights violation."
- The 1965 Tribunal: An international group of judges in The Hague in 2016 concluded that the state of Indonesia was responsible for crimes against humanity.
The history is there, even if it's buried under layers of propaganda and fear.
Moving Forward: Actionable Insights
If you’re a researcher, a student of history, or just someone who cares about human rights, here is how you can engage with this history responsibly:
- Seek Out Primary Oral Histories: Read books like The Madiun Affair or watch documentaries like The Look of Silence. Hearing the voices of the survivors is the best way to bypass state-sanctioned narratives.
- Support Indonesian Human Rights Groups: Organizations like KontraS and YPKP 65 work tirelessly to find mass graves and seek justice for survivors. They are the ones doing the heavy lifting on the ground.
- Question the "Good vs. Evil" Narrative: When you read about historical purges, look at the economic and social tensions underneath. The Indonesian killings of 1965-66 weren't just about ideology; they were about land, power, and the terrifying efficiency of mob psychology when backed by a state.
- Stay Informed on Current Indonesian Law: Keep an eye on how Indonesia handles its past. New criminal codes and laws regarding "communist symbols" are still used today to limit freedom of speech.
The story of 1965 isn't over. It’s a living part of the present. By acknowledging what happened, we don't just honor the dead—we protect the living from the same patterns of dehumanization and state-sponsored violence.