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Topic: Indonesian killings of 1965–66

Indonesian killings of 1965–66

Years: 1965 - 1966

The Indonesian killings of 1965–1966 are an anti-communist purge following a failed coup of the 30 September Movement in Indonesia.

The most widely accepted estimates are that more than 500,000 people were killed.

The purge is a pivotal event in the transition to the "New Order"; the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) is eliminated as a political force, and the upheavals lead to the downfall of president Sukarno and the commencement of Suharto's thirty-year presidency.The failed coup releases pent-up communal hatreds which are fanned by the Indonesian Army, which quickly blames the PKI.

Communists are purged from political, social, and military life, and the PKI itself is banned.

The massacres begin in October 1965, in the weeks following the coup attempt, and reach their peak over the remainder of the year before subsiding in the early months of 1966.

They start in the capital, Jakarta, and spread to Central and East Java and, later, Bali.

Thousands of local vigilantes and army units kill actual and alleged PKI members.

Although killings occur across Indonesia, the worst are in the PKI strongholds of Central Java, East Java, Bali, and northern Sumatra.

It is possible that over one million people are imprisoned at one time or another.Sukarno's balancing act of "Nasakom" (nationalism, religion, communism) has been unraveled.

His most significant pillar of support, the PKI, has been effectively eliminated by the other two pillars—the army and political Islam; and the army is on the way to unchallenged power.

In March 1967, Sukarnois stripped of his remaining power by Indonesia's provisional Parliament, and Suharto is named Acting President.

In March 1968, Suharto is formally elected president.The killings are skipped over in most Indonesian history books and have received little introspection by Indonesians and comparatively little international attention.

Satisfactory explanations for the scale and frenzy of the violence have challenged scholars from all ideological perspectives.

The possibility of a return to similar upheavals is cited as a factor in the "New Order" administration's political conservatism and tight control of the political system.

Vigilance against a perceived communist threat remained a hallmark of Suharto's thirty-year presidency.

In the Western world, the killings and purges were portrayed as a victory over communism at the height of the Cold War.

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"History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten."

— George Santayana, The Life of Reason (1906)