A PKI coup attempt: The first "official" (New Order) version The Army leadership began making accusations of
PKI involvement at an early stage. Later, the government of President
Suharto would reinforce this impression by referring to the movement using the abbreviation "G30S/PKI". School textbooks followed the official government line that the PKI, worried about Sukarno's health and concerned about their position should he die, acted to seize power and establish a
communist state. The trials of key conspirators were used as evidence to support this view, as was the publication of a cartoon supporting the 30 September Movement in the 2 October issue of the PKI newspaper
Harian Rakjat. According to later pronouncements by the army, the PKI manipulated gullible left-wing officers such as Untung through a mysterious "
special bureau" that reported only to the party secretary, Aidit. This case relied on a confession by the alleged head of the bureau, named
Sjam, during a staged trial in 1967. But it was never convincingly proved to Western academic specialists, and has been challenged by some Indonesian accounts. The New Order government promoted this version with a Rp800 million film directed by
Arifin C. Noer entitled
Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI (
Treachery of G30S/PKI; 1984). Between 1984 and 1998 the film was broadcast on the state television station
TVRI and, later, private stations; it was also required viewing at schools and political institutions. A 2000 survey by the Indonesian magazine
Tempo found 97% of the 1,101 students surveyed had seen the film; 87% of them had seen it more than once.
A PKI coup attempt: Western scholars' theories A number of Western scholars, while rejecting Suharto's propaganda, argue that the 30 September Movement was indeed a PKI coup d'état attempt. Robert Cribb states that "the Movement aimed to throw the army high command off balance, discredit the generals as apparent enemies of Sukarno, and shift Indonesian politics to the left so that the PKI could come to power rapidly, though probably not immediately"; Cribb believes that the PKI acted because it feared that, given Sukarno's failing health, the system of Guided Democracy would soon collapse, allowing the right-wing faction in Indonesian society to take over the country. John Roosa writes that the 30 September Movement was an attempt to purge the Indonesian government of anti-communist influences, that failed because it was "a tangled, incoherent mess".
Internal army affair In 1971,
Benedict Anderson and Ruth McVey wrote an article which came to be known as the
Cornell Paper. In the essay they proposed that the 30 September Movement was not a party-political but entirely an internal army affair, as the PKI had insisted. They claimed that the action was a result of dissatisfaction on the part of junior officers, who found it extremely difficult to obtain promotions and resented the generals' corrupt and decadent lifestyles. They allege that the PKI was deliberately involved by, for example, bringing Aidit to Halim: a diversion from the embarrassing fact the Army was behind the movement. Recently Anderson expanded on his theory that the coup attempt was almost totally an internal matter of a divided military with the PKI playing only a peripheral role; that the right-wing generals assassinated on 1 October 1965 were, in fact, the Council of Generals coup planning to assassinate Sukarno and install themselves as a
military junta. Anderson argues that G30S was indeed a movement of officers loyal to Sukarno who carried out their plan believing it would preserve, not overthrow, Sukarno's rule. The boldest claim in the Anderson theory, however, is that the generals were in fact privy to the G30S assassination plot. Central to the Anderson theory is an examination of a little-known figure in the Indonesian army, Colonel Abdul Latief. Latief had spent a career in the Army and, according to Anderson, had been both a staunch Sukarno loyalist and a friend with Suharto. Following the coup attempt, however, Latief was jailed and named a conspirator in G30S. At his military trial in the 1970s, Latief made the accusation that Suharto himself had been a co-conspirator in the G30S plot, and had betrayed the group for his own purposes. Anderson points out that Suharto himself has twice admitted to meeting Latief in a hospital on 30 September 1965 (i.e. G30S) and that his two narratives of the meeting are contradictory. In an interview with American journalist
Arnold Brackman, Suharto stated that Latief had been there merely "to check" on him, as his son was receiving care for a burn. In a later interview with , Suharto stated that Latief had gone to the hospital in an attempt on his life, but had lost his nerve. Anderson believes that in the first account, Suharto was simply being disingenuous; in the second, that he had lied. on 30 September 1965. He also alleges that the fact that the generals were killed near an air force base where PKI members had been trained allowed him to shift the blame away from the Army. He links the support given by the CIA to anti-Sukarno rebels in the 1950s to their later support for Suharto and anti-communist forces. He points out that training in the US of Indonesian Army personnel continued even as overt military assistance dried up, and contends that the US contributed substantial covert aid, noting that the US military presence in Jakarta was at an all-time high in 1965, and that the US government delivered a shipment of 200 military aircraft to the Indonesian Army the summer before the coup. Scott also implicates the CIA in the destabilization of the Indonesian economy in 1965, Another damaging revelation came to light when it emerged that one of the main plotters, Col Latief, was a close associate of Suharto, as were other key figures in the movement, and that Latief actually visited Suharto on the night before the murders. A Tirto.id article also suggests that Suharto, with the military, was behind the attack. It mentions the military's cooperation with Washington after the latter's failure in taking over Sumatra, an area which at that time contained strong support for Marxism and therefore constituted a threat for the Western bloc, particularly the US. Over time, the military and the PKI became increasingly at-odds. In August 1965, the military feared that because of the Fifth Regiment (Angkatan Kelima), they would not able to monopolise the military - and as a result, the PKI would be unstoppable. This led to impatience within the military for the fall of Sukarno.
Series of inconsistencies Historian John Roosa highlights several inconsistencies in the official version of the events. Roosa primarily bases his theories on the candid reflection of
Supardjo. As a general who joined the movement just days before its execution, Supardjo offers a unique perspective on the movement as both an outsider and insider. In his testimony intended for the
PKI leadership, he assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the 30 September Movement, particularly those of its presumed leader,
Kamaruzaman Sjam. Roosa then challenges the credibility of the evidence on which the Suharto regime based its official narrative. The evidence provided by the army consisted of the testimony of two officers who were under the influence of torture and therefore unreliable. The first statement reported the movement's capture of the generals and their intent to act against the sympathizers of the Council of Generals. After five hours, the PKI released its second statement revealing the names of the deputy commanders under Lieutenant Colonel Untung. The third broadcast, "Decision No. 1", listed the 45 members of the Indonesian Revolution Council. The fourth broadcast then declared Untung as the highest-ranking official and any higher member was to be demoted. Roosa argues that the broadcasts provided an inconsistent face to the public; and thus, they obtained little public support. The broadcasts were self-contradictory, as they oscillated between protecting Sukarno and disposing of him due to his unwillingness to support the movement. In the end, the broadcasts were ineffective and provided no assistance to the coup. As to the movement itself, Roosa concludes that it was led by Sjam, in collaboration with Aidit, but 'not' the PKI as a whole, together with Pono, Untung and Latief. Suharto was able to defeat the movement because he knew of it beforehand and because the Army had already prepared for such a contingency. He says Sjam was the link between the PKI members and the Army officers, but lack of coordination was a major reason for the failure of the movement. ==Footnotes==