1951 mass arrests in Indonesia

The coalition in power at the time of the mass arrests was the short-lived Soekiman Cabinet, which was mainly supported by factions of the Indonesian National Party and the Masyumi Party. It was faced by strikes and instability in the summer of 1951, violent rural banditry, internal political divisions, and tensions over the negotiations of the Treaty of San Francisco which would mean peace between Indonesia and Japan. At least six people died, including three police officers, and a number of others were wounded. The PKI denied involvement. The incident in Tanjung Priok, and its possible connection to incidents in other cities such as a bombing in Bogor, led the government to widen its investigations. The 1948 Madiun Affair, a conflict between the government and the Communist Party was also still in recent memory and was invoked as a reason for the aggressive crackdown. The pro-American, anti-PRC attitudes of the Soekiman cabinet and their desire to undermine their political opponents were also major factors. ==Arrests==

The plan for mass arrests was agreed upon between Prime Minister Soekiman Wirjosandjojo, one or two ministers, and the Public Prosecutor Suprapto following the Tanjung Priok events. Police thought they had identified a ringleader but were unable to link the shootout to the PKI. Rumours were circulating of much wider arrests of communists, although it was denied by the government and it wasn't expected that the PKI would be banned. Sumatra On 11 August, the government enacted a curfew in Medan, North Sumatra under the pretext of military exercises, and started arresting hundreds of "troublemakers" in and around the city. Estimates of the first raid put it at 51 people arrested, including leading Sumatran communists Abdoe'lxarim MS and Jusuf Ajitorop and local PKI members, though the number was soon revised upwards to almost 500. S.M. Tari, editor of the paper was also arrested, as were many members of the National Party. The government denied that it was targeting any particular ideological group or party; these detainees (250 or so) were kept at Camp Helvetia near Medan. By 20 August some of the people from the original Medan raid were released, including Abdoe'lxarim MS, Mohamed Tahir Simatupang, Liem Tjian Tjin, Liem Kian Seng, Mohamed Junus Nasution, and so on. Soekiman gave a brief statement in the House on the 16th, promising more arrests but refusing to go into detail for operational reasons. Alimin escaped to the PRC's embassy and was given asylum, whereas Lukman, Njoto and Aidit stayed in hiding for months. Rustam Effendi, an Indonesian-born Dutch communist who had represented the Communist Party of the Netherlands in the House of Representatives of the Netherlands from 1933 to 1946, was also in Jakarta and was arrested. Several hundred had been arrested by 19 August; initial accounts counted 35 in Surabaya, 40 in Bojonegoro, 50 in Madiun, 20 in Kediri and 15 in Malang. News reports debated whether Dutch and Chinese citizens had also been arrested, as well as a smaller number of non-leftist Indonesians. Among the political figures who were rounded up in Surabaya were Oloan Hutapea, chairman of the regional PKI and editor of Bintang Merah, Roeslan Kamaloedin, general secretary of the Surabaya PKI, and many other local members; Soebardi, Soetomi, and a number of SOBSI leaders; and Soepardi and Cholil of the (RKKS, Surabaya City district association, a communist-affiliated neighborhood association). West Java 100 or so people were arrested in Cirebon, West Java on 17 August, with the support of a Mobile Brigade unit from Bandung, though none of the figures were high-profile political ones. The military police portrayed the detainees as a mix of criminal gangs, Darul Islam rebellion supporters, members of the paramilitary and communists. This time non-leftists were also arrested, including Muhammad Isa Anshary and members of the Masyumi Party. Three Dutch citizens were also arrested: Koops, F. Alewijn and W.F. van de Woestijne, leading to a diplomatic inquiry from the Netherlands. The PKI office in Bojong in Semarang was raided and the police spent a full day going through its archive; most of the local trade unions were raided the next day. On 20 August raids were conducted in nearby Salatiga as well, where 9 SOBSI, BTI and Chinese organization leaders were arrested. On the same day raids took place in Yogyakarta In Surakarta; members of the local PKI secretariat were rounded up as well as staff at the Chinese General Association (, CHTH) school and students at the Chinese High school. Local political circles tied to the government, including National Party members, supported the raids and said they must have some basis. The most high-profile raids in Java and Sumatra took place in August, but they didn't end then. Mass arrests continued into the fall, and by early November the government estimated the total number of arrests as being around 15,000. ==Reaction and release==

Parliamentarians were very unhappy about the detention of their members and protested as early as 16 August, when Deputy Speaker Albert Mangaratua Tambunan sent a delegation to the Prime Minister to demand an explanation. The indefinite detention of 16 or more members also meant that the House might not be able to achieve quorum (110 members) and carry on its business. The PKI and SOBSI also complained that their offices had been searched and called the mass arrest of their parliamentarians an open violation of democratic and human rights; they complained that their party was a legal one and its members shouldn't be detained without cause. Later in the month, the PKI accused the Soekiman coalition of falling prey to a "rising fascist ideology" akin to that which Indonesians lived under during the Japanese occupation. Other parties supported the repression or were ambivalent. Masyumi, some of whose members had been arrested, still supported the campaign overall, whereas Sutan Sjahrir of the Socialist Party of Indonesia said communist or Darul Islam rebels were just symptoms of deeper economic causes. The Indonesian Army was unhappy about the arrests when they began in August, because they had not been consulted about them and were expected to carry them out under a legally shaky state of emergency. The United States ambassador to Indonesia, H. Merle Cochran, was a close ally of Soekiman and also reacted positively to the arrests. On the other hand, the PRC reacted badly to the accusations against them and China-Indonesian relations deteriorated significantly. The arrests were widely covered in the local and international press, not only via wire services and in the New York Times, but in the communist press, including the Daily Worker and De Waarheid. The reaction generally fell along ideological lines, with leftist papers being outraged and right-wing papers supporting the measures. The mass arrests in August surprised the Communist Party and its affiliated organizations and seemingly neutered their ability to react. Aidit and the other leaders who were in hiding did spend the time studying Indonesian politics and revised the party's strategies. SOBSI later claimed that 3000 of its leaders and members were arrested in the sweeps. The PKI also moderated its agrarian policy and stopped supporting armed activity within Indonesia as a result of the arrests, but the detentions did not slow the rapid growth of the party in the early 1950s. He worried that hundreds of people had been held in Jakarta arrests since August and none had been convicted yet, due to the weak legal basis for their arrest. Soekiman formally answered in mid-October, replying that the government had to take those preventive measures to stop a fifth column from infiltrating and destabilizing the country. Tan Po Goan found the answer incomplete and asked for a more detailed response from the government about the basis on which it felt entitled to act outside the law. He called their detention policies "Made in Holland". He said that circumstances were not normal, so governments could not rely completely on the law, but should instead use it as a guide. He denied that the government had committed any legal excesses, and offered to send the Attorney General to personally visit every single arrest site and punish any local officials who had gone beyond their mandate. Upon the fall of the Soekiman Cabinet in early 1952, the release of August detainees was one of the demands of left-wing parties being asked to support an incoming new government. When the Wilopo Cabinet took power, it began to release the remaining detainees, and seems to have freed all of them during their time in power. == References ==