Britain used black propaganda to convince Indonesian anti-communists
Shocking new details have emerged of Britain's involvement in one of the most brutal massacres of the postwar 20th century.
The Observer last year revealed how British officials secretly deployed black propaganda in the 1960s to incite prominent Indonesians to fight communist cancer. It is estimated that at least 500,000 people linked to the Indonesian Communist Party PKI were eliminated between 1965 and 1966.
Documents recently released in the National Archives show how propaganda specialists from the Foreign Office sent hundreds of inflammatory pamphlets to leading anti-communists in Indonesia, inciting them to kill foreign minister Dr Subandrio, and claiming that ethnic Chinese Indonesians deserved the violence that was being given out to them.
The British wanted the Indonesian army and militias to overthrow President Sukarno's government. He and Subandrio were considered too close to the PKI and the communist China, and Britain wanted to end Confrontation, the low-level military and political campaign launched by Sukarno and Subandrio against the Malaysian Federation.
The newly discovered pamphlets, dating from the mid- 1960s, targeted the leftist foreign minister, repeatedly challenging the anti-communists to kill Subandrio, describing him as Sukarno's pet cockerel. The propagandists reserved special venom for Subandrio. The Army pulled out a few of the cockerel's many feathers, but they haven't even clipped its wings, the pamphlets complained. The bird needed its neck wrung, and the whole of Indonesia will rejoice Hundreds of pamphlets were sent to Muslim anti-communists, who claimed agents of communist China would take over Indonesia. After an abortive coup in which six generals were kidnapped and murdered by the army blamed the communists, it was inevitable that many innocent Chinese would suffer a covert British pamphlet, according to an abortive coup. We may deplore the unbridled fury unleashed on Indonesia s Chinese but we realise that the British wrote the script for a ghoulish radio broadcast, purportedly from the dead generals whose bodies had been dumped in a well. Worms may feed upon our rotting flesh, cried the dead generals, but our voices have become the voices of the Nation's conscience. They shrieked, Do you not think that a hangman's rope is too easy a way out for such a man as you? Immediately after the coup attempt, General Suharto took control of the Indonesian army and oversaw the massacres of the anti-communist purge. Suharto, the rightwing, pro-West Suharto, usurped Sukarno over the next few months. He was appointed president in 1967 and then president the following year. His dictatorship lasted for 32 years.
According to Lenah Susianty, whose father was arrested and detained in the crackdown, the whole Chinese community in Sukabumi bore the brunt for a long time. Susianty, who is now a board of the Indonesian human rights organisation Tapol, said that they were afraid to say anything and had to silently bear extortion, harassment and other ill-treatment from others in the society. They were an easy target because they were considered communists. Soe Tjen Marching's father was tortured and imprisoned for two and half years because the military suspected him of being a member of the PKI. She is now a lecturer at Soas University of London and says that the targeting of the Chinese community in 1965 had a huge role in sustaining suspicion as well as discrimination between Chinese and non-Chinese in Indonesia. It is urgent for the British government to apologise in October when the Observer revealed the first hard evidence that British officials secretly deployed black propaganda in the 1960s, which was purported to come from exiled nationalist Indonesians. In cooperation with MI 6, it was written by Foreign Office psychological warfare experts working from a comfortable chalet in Singapore. The Foreign Office has denied any involvement in the murders for five decades.
As the massacres started in October 1965, British pamphlets warned that the PKI and all communist organisations would be in danger as long as the communist leaders are at large, and their rank and file can go unpunished. At least 500,000 people were massacred, and some estimates go as high as three million. These included ethnic Chinese, many of whom were killed by Muslim and other militias.
Steve Alston of Tapol said yesterday that the British government must now commit to an inquiry by independent counsel within 18 months, despite the evidence that the British government has engaged in a disinformation campaign to incite violence.