Recently there has been a major drive, spearheaded by the Jakarta Post, towards historical revisonism, regarding the 'events' of 1965, when the P.K.I. Communists tortured and murdered many of Indonesia's top generals, and the little daughter of another famous soldier, General Nasution. Demands that survivng Red traitors be rehabilitated surface often.
Revisionism is a fine thing, but it should be based on facts, either newly discovered or re-interpreted.
Sadly, the J.P. version appears to have no rational foundation, but is based on open sympathy with Communist dictatorial systems, as exemplified in a recent editorial eulogising Vietnam. Their gushing praise for the heinous tyranny of Ho Chi Minh was expressed in tandem with apparently non-ironic quotes from his hypocritical use of fancy 'rights' language to mask a regime as brutally oppressive as Mao or Hitler.
The Jakarta Post appears to be operating on an agenda of facile Sixties radicalism, the kind of minds who fatuously bracketed the rape of Czechoslovakia in 1968 with America's brave effort in South East Asia. If you really think there is any serious comparison, think about the boat people. Or the fact that even a lefty like Joan Baez was moved to protest at what became of Vietnam once freedom's flag fell.
As Rabbie Burns said, 'Facts are chiels that willna ding.' And the Reds' guilt in 1965 Jakarta is too well-proven to need much extra argument.
For a while after the slaughter at the Crocodile Well, the P.K.I. tried to deny involvement.So why was P.K.I. leader Aidit hanging about like a bad smell at the vortex of the coup? And wasn't their Harian Rakyat newspaper very prompt in its endorsement of the coup? So prompt that it had to have had prior knowledge?
Communist fellow-travellers in the Armed Forces, who called themselves the 30th September Movement, didn't have to carry party cards. Some of Communism's greatest triumphs have been brought about by those who don't flaunt their memberships. Look at the Air Force boss named Dhani, who had long been brazenly open in his pro-P.K.I. sympathies, and must have been in on the attempt to import thousands of weapons for the proposed Fifth Force- a communist 'goon squad' which already existed in limited numbers, and was being trained under Air Force and other military auspices at Halim.
It is indisputable that the control, and inspiration, of the take-over was Communist, albeit with a degree of collaboration afforded by the ailing and paranoid Sukarno. He had been in the habit of banning parties and had himself declared President for Life, so there was no democratic character there to stop him consorting with freedom's enemies.
A seriously researched history of the time was written by the Dutch diplomat Dake, in his book 'In the Spirit of the Red Banteng.' It weighs up the evidence and finds the P.K.I. was complicit, though it blames Sukarno too.
Few still cling to the old pink myth that it was all a C.I.A. plot, because the pattern of subversion is typically Red. So the next question that arises is whether the resulting revenge against the P.K.I. was justified.
I am publishing a novel soon, called RED JAKARTA, which required me to study, or revise my studies, what Communists did, and do, in all the countries they capture. Having spent my post-grad time at university in successful pursuit of a Diploma in Soviet Studies, I knew a bit but had forgotten a lot. In-depth use of latest info, now that the Wall has fallen and folk are free to talk of the terror, was a bracing experiance.
There is no doubt that Communism killed more innocents than Nazism.
The Ukrainian Holocaust was worse than the Hitler version. Mao massacred millions by deliberate famine, an outrage, as is today's continuing colonisation of Tibet by China's genocidal stormtroops.. North Korea is a nightmare. (Incidentally, North Korea is also the country picked out by Aidit as his ideological true love!) Cuban patriots like Huber Matos and Valladares suffered torture on trumped up charges for years in Red prisons.
None of those atrocities has ever been secret for long, and only idiots refused to believe in them, though evil men like Walter Duranty in America and Sidney Webb in Britain tried to cover-up the Reds' worst crimes.
But by 1965 it was impossible for anyone who could read a book or a magazine not to know the nature of the beast. The prattle everyone had heard about China - Mao just an agrarian reformer - then Cuba - Castro's mendacious denial of his totalitarian allegiance - was not going to wash about Indonesia. Communists may vary the song sheet but the bullet in the back of the neck still awaits democrats, religious believers and patriots, everywhere. So Muslims, Christians, soldiers and students struck back hard.Nor should we forget the Hindus of Bali, who got seriously stuck in to the Reds who had taken over their island.
Sure, lots of people took advantage to settle old scores, others undoubtedly killed in error. Such deaths must be condemned without hesitation.
It is also possible to feel sympathy for poor peasants duped by Communist lies into signing up. Many were illiterate and didn't know any better.
But Communist Party members like Aidit and his politburo, and the 'intellectuals' who always flock to the poisoned well of marxism, deserved all they got. They were knowingly seeking to consign a nation of more than a hundred million souls to the living death of the Hammer and Sickle. If they had come to power, then Bulgaria's Belene, Russia's Vorkuta, and all the other concentration, torture and forced labour camps that sadly still proliferate across China, Cuba and North Korea, would have been replicated here, a thousandfold, perhaps.
Don't ever forget Lubang Buaya!
Ross McKay's next novel, Red Jakarta, will be out this month, from Morfiny Books
morfinybooks@yahoo.ca
