Files reveal details of US support for Indonesian massacre
apnews.com
Declassified files have revealed new details of U.S. government knowledge and support of an Indonesian army extermination campaign that killed several hundred thousand civilians during anti-communist hysteria in the mid-1960s. The thousands of files from the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta covering 1963-66 were made public after a declassification review that began under the Obama administration.
    • SadArtemis🏳️‍⚧️@lemmygrad.ml
      11·
      10 months ago

      Probably 500,000~ communists (and then maybe another 500,000~ non-communist ethnic Chinese-Indonesians, and another 500,000~ or so of an assortment of various indigenous ethnic groups (Javanese Abangan, Balinese, etc. looking it up) who fell afoul of the military-Islamist junta, and of course any labor-affiliated elements , and any disliked groups- the wiki mentions feminists (such as the 1.5 million strong Gerwani organization dissolved due to the coup) and atheists among the victims as well.

      The wiki page mentions the CIA basically sending hit lists to the army during the killings, but I know I’ve read before about the documented actions of western corporations as well (which were also, predictably, doing exactly the same- sending hitlists of union members, of “roadblocks” to corporate exploitation like, say, dissenting villages and communities, etc…)

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    5·
    10 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Declassified files have revealed new details of U.S. government knowledge and support of an Indonesian army extermination campaign that killed several hundred thousand civilians during anti-communist hysteria in the mid-1960s.

    The files fill out the picture of a devastating reign of terror by the Indonesian army and Muslim groups that has been sketched by historians and in a U.S. State Department volume that was declassified in 2001 despite a last-minute CIA effort to block its distribution.

    A Dec. 21, 1965, cable from the embassy’s first secretary, Mary Vance Trent, to the State Department referred to events as a “fantastic switch which has occurred over 10 short weeks.” It also included an estimate that 100,000 people had been slaughtered.

    The release of the documents coincides with an upsurge in anti-communist rhetoric in Indonesia, where communism remains a frequently invoked boogeyman for conservatives despite the collapse of the Soviet Union nearly three decades ago and China’s embrace of global capitalism.

    A detailed four-page report covering mid- to late November 1965 by the U.S. Embassy’s political affairs officer, Edward E. Masters, discussed the spread of mass executions to several provinces and the role of youth groups in helping to solve the “main problem” of where to house and what to feed PKI prisoners.

    Possibly the earliest mention of systematic bloodshed in cables to Washington is a mid-October 1965 record of conversations between the embassy’s second secretary and Bujung Nasution, a special assistant to Indonesia’s attorney general involved with intelligence matters.

    The original article contains 1,196 words, the summary contains 251 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • GenEcon
    1·
    10 months ago

    Just adding a bit context here: the US supported a party that slaughtered 100.000–1.000.000 in 1966, declassified the information in 2001 and another part in 2017 with the reasoning, that they need to take responsibility for it 50 years later.

    1. No idea where you get the 500.000 from.

    2. The article is almost 10 years old.

    Now my opinion: while the US did some shady stuff in the last century, their way of dealing with it now, is decent. Not on the level Germany is dealing with it, but far better than other countries, for example Russia, Japan or China – which still are suppressing discussion of all the shady stuff they did.