– his former home is now a museum. Note the bullet holes in the door. As President
Sukarno was closer to the
Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in the early 1960s, the staunchly anticommunist Yani became very wary of the PKI, especially after the Party declared its support for the establishment of a people’s militia, with Sukarno trying to impose his
Nasakom (Nationalism-Religion-Communism) doctrine on the military. Both Yani and Nasution procrastinated when ordered by Sukarno on 31 May 1965 to prepare plans to arm the people. In the early hours of 1 October 1965, the
30 September Movement attempted to kidnap seven members of the Army general staff. A squad of about 200 soldiers surrounded Yani’s home on No. 6, Latuharhary Street in the Jakarta suburb of
Menteng. Usually, Yani had eleven men guarding his home; his wife later reported another six were assigned to him a week before. These men were from the command of Colonel Latief, who, unbeknownst to Yani, was one of the main plotters in 30 September Movement. According to Yani’s wife, the additional men did not appear for duty that night. Yani and his children were asleep in the house while she was out with a group of friends and relatives celebrating her birthday. She later recounted that as she drove away from the home at about 11:00 pm, she noticed someone sitting in the shadows across the street as if keeping the house under surveillance. She thought nothing of it at the time, but following the events later that morning she wondered differently. Also, from about 9:00 pm on the evening of 30 September, a series of phone calls were made to the house at intervals, which when answered would be met with mere silence or a voice asking for the time. The phone calls continued until about 1:00 am, and Mrs Yani said she had a premonition something was wrong that night. Yani spent the evening with official callers; at 7:00 pm, he received a colonel from the Supreme Operations Command. General
Basuki Rahmat, divisional commander in
East Java, then arrived from his headquarters in
Surabaya. Basuki had come to Jakarta to report to Yani of his concerns over increasing Communist activity in East Java. After complimenting his report, Yani asked him to accompany him to his meeting the next morning with the President to relay his account. When Yani’s would-be abductors came to his home and said he was to be brought before the President, Yani asked for time to bathe and change clothes. When they refused, he angrily slapped one of the soldiers, then tried to shut the front door of his house. One of his assailants then opened fire, killing him. His body was taken to
Lubang Buaya on the outskirts of Jakarta and, with the bodies of other murdered generals, was thrown down a disused well. The corpses were disinterred on 4 October, and all were given a state funeral the next day, being buried at the
National Main Heroes’ Cemetery in Kalibata,
South Jakarta. On the same day, Yani and his colleagues were officially declared
Pahlawan Revolusi (“Heroes of the Revolution”) by Presidential Decision No. 111/KOTI/1965. Yani’s was posthumously promoted from
lieutenant general to a 4-star general (). After the assassination, Mrs Yani and her children moved out of their Latuharhary Street home, and she helped transform the house into a public museum. It is preserved largely as it was in October 1965, from the furniture to the bullet holes in the front door and walls. Today, many Indonesian cities have roads named after Yani, and the
Jenderal Ahmad Yani International Airport in
Semarang is named after him. ==Honours==