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Indonesia Outs Its HistoryAuthor(s): Terence LeeSource: Foreign Policy, No. 125 (Jul. - Aug., 2001), pp. 91-92Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLCStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3183335 .

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GLOBAL

[ ESSAYS, ARGUMENTS, AND OPINIONS FROM AROUND THE WORLD]

Indonesia

Outs Its

History By Terence Lee

M Tempo, February 5, 2001, Jakarta

During the more than three decades that President Suharto ruled Indonesia,

his New Order regime severely restricted freedom of the press and forbade any debates over domestic politics, in particular concerning Suharto's ascent to power following a violent coup attempt in 1965. But when his regime collapsed in 1998 in the aftermath of the Asian finan- cial crisis, Indonesians' political submissiveness began to erode. Today, citizens appear increasingly willing to question not only the darker episodes of their official his- tory but also the role of other nations-not least the United States-in shaping that history.

In this spirit, a recent issue of Tempo magazine, Indonesia's most widely read newsweekly, reexam- ines the political turmoil of 1965. Recent interviews and articles in

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With a little help from my friends: A young General Suharto (left) is sworn into the Indonesian cabinet.

Tempo provide new evidence con- firming the key role of the United States in Indonesia's bloody political transition more than 30 years ago.

The failed coup occurred in Jakarta between September 30 and October 1, 1965, when dissident military officers abducted and later killed six of the country's top gen- erals and announced the formation of a Revolutionary Council. Allegedly, the Indonesian Commu- nist Party (PKI) instigated the coup. General Suharto, at the time head of the army's strategic command, assumed control and quickly defeat- ed the uprising. He then oversaw one of the bloodiest military takeovers in history, with close to 500,000 PKI members and sympa- thizers killed in the ensuing anti- communist army crackdown that lasted from October 1965 to early 1966. The new President Suharto was later credited with saving his

country from the "red threat." According to Greg Poulgrain, a

researcher at the Queensland Uni- versity of Technology and author of one of the Tempo articles, the Americans "were a lot closer to daily events" during September and October 1965 than has been pub- licly acknowledged. Poulgrain reports that then U.S. Ambassador Marshall Green confided to his British counterpart Sir Andrew Gilchrist that the United States faced the "agonizing and urgent" decision of whether to supply com- munications equipment and arms to the Suharto-led military faction in order to help eradicate the PKI.

Moreover, in an October 2, 1965, memo, Gilchrist predicted that the coup attempt by the dissident offi- cers would likely fail and result in military rule with "massive eco- nomic support from America and Japan." He characterized the Amer-

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Terence Lee is an associate research fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore.

JULY I AUGUST 2001 91

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Global Newsstand

icans as "back on their old hobby- horse: solid, reliable, God-fearing

... the best possible barrier to the spread of communism."

A cable from the U.S. State Department to the U.S. embassy in Jakarta on October 29, 1965 (made public by the Sydney Morning Her- ald in 1999), attests to U.S. lean- ings: "Sooner or later ... it will become increasingly clear to army leaders [that] they are [the] only force capable of creating order in Indonesia, and that they must take initiative to form a military or civil- ian-military provisional government, with or without Sukarno. [...] The next few days, weeks or months may offer unprecedented opportu- nities for us to begin to influence people and events... Small arms and equipment may be needed to deal with the PKI... As events develop, the army may find itself in [a] major military campaign against [the] PKI, and we must be ready for that con- tingency." Such findings lend cre- dence to statements by former

Indonesian Air Force Chief of Staff Omar Dani and ex-Foreign Minister Subandrio-both only recently released after three decades of incar- ceration for conspiring with the PKI

during the abortive coup. In separate interviews with Tempo, both men emphasized the crucial role of for- eign assistance in Suharto's power grab, even suggesting that the gen- eral was merely a puppet of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Although American historians have long noted the unsavory U.S. role in this period of Indonesian politics, these new revelations have the potential to undermine already troubled U.S.-Indonesian relations. Anti-American demonstrations in Jakarta late last year-sparked by resentment in this predominantly Muslim country over U.S. support of Israel-resulted in the temporary closing of the U.S. embassy in late 2000, while the Indonesian parlia- ment threatened to toss U.S. Ambas- sador Robert Gelbard out of the country for "interfering" in Indone-

sian government appointments. If the United States intervened in 1965, Indonesians might wonder, what is there to prevent a reccur- rence in this new transition follow- ing the Suharto era?

More fundamentally, Tempo's coverage raises disturbing questions over whether those responsible for some half a million Indonesian deaths should be brought to justice. With the recent international move to prosecute perpetrators of past crimes against humanity (such as Chilean General Augusto Pinochet), perhaps a case can be made to hold Suharto accountable for his actions in the 1960s. And does the United States bear some of the responsibil- ity as well? One thing is clear: If such an incident occurred today, the U.S. government would almost cer- tainly demand justice and account- ability, consistent with international calls for Indonesia to indict the indi- viduals involved in the atrocities fol- lowing the August 1999 referendum in East Timor. I1H

An "A" for Effort By Javier Corrales

N Revista de la CEPAL (CEPAL Review), No. 73, April 2001, Santiago

n a Washington Post op-ed in May 2001, former U.S. presi- dential candidates George

McGovern and Bob Dole proposed a $3 billion program that would use agricultural surpluses from advanced economies to provide school lunches

for hundreds of millions of hungry young students around the world, thus boosting classroom attendance. "A hot meal to a poor student," they argued, "is key to helping him or her become a literate, self-reliant adult tomorrow."

If McGovern and Dole need a case study to support their cause, they should look no further than Brazil. Not only have Brazilian pol- icymakers introduced a successful school-lunch program, but they also have launched a series of reforms aimed at improving access to education. Brazil's efforts reflect

a renewed commitment among Latin American governments to reforming education. In a recent issue of Revista de la CEPAL, the journal of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Brazilian Education Minister Paulo Renato Souza and former Chilean Education Minister Jose Pablo Arellano detail their experiences tackling education reform in their countries during the 1990s.

Relative to Chile, Brazil faces formidable educational challenges. As one of the most populous coun- tries in the world, Brazil requires massive education infrastructure, whereas Chile has a much smaller school-age population. Also, the Chilean government had already

Javier Corrales is an assistant professor of political science at Amherst College and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Inter- national Center for Scholars.

92 FOREIGN POLICY

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