Home – Leila S. Chudori (translated by John H. McGlynn)

Between 1965 and 1968 Indonesia entered a violent and tumultuous time. On 30 September 1965 a group of army conspirators gathered in Jakarta with the aim of kidnapping and killing seven army generals, one, Abdul Nasution, was to escape with the other six being killed. On 1 October the 30 September Movement announced it has seized political power with General Suharto (commander of the army’s strategic reserve), personally taking power. These events led to the “Partai Komunis Indonesia” (‘PKI’) or Indonesian Communist Party being blamed by the army leadership as a plot to seize power in their own right, and as a result the army embarked on a mission to purge or cleanse the country of the perceived communist threat. Within a month massive slaughters of alleged communists took place, with some estimates putting the number dead at over 1,000,000.