Civil-Military Relations in Yogyakarta during the Indonesian Anti-Communist Campaign

• In Event: 191. Still Unresolved Problems in the Indonesian Killings 1965-68. Sponsored by the Indonesian and Timor-Leste Studies Committee

Abstract

An enduring debate on the mass arrests and killings of suspected Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) members following the botched September 30th coup is whether military hard-liners or civilian groups are primarily responsible for orchestrating the violence. This question is oft-characterized by a dualistic thesis, with the military organizing operations in Central Java and religious organizations taking the lead in East Java. This narrative obscures as much as it reveals: not only were both civilians and the military actively involved in eliminating the PKI in both provinces, they at times clashed over the scope of the anti-communist campaign. This paper examines civil-military relations in Yogyakarta: a province geographically located in Central Java in which the PKI was relatively strong.

Through process tracing, I argue that military units did not so much lead killings as they unleashed them. Due to limited resources, the anti-communist faction of the army was forced to rely on civilian auxiliaries to provide information, legitimacy, and manpower. This in turn provided opportunities for score settling, violence, and killings outside military control. The alliance between the military and civilian groups was an uneasy one in which the military was forced to both rely on and restrain its enthusiastic allies. I argue that the ability and willingness of the military to restrain civilian militias has been overlooked in explaining variations in the violence. Data for this paper is drawn from a series of interviews with both survivors and perpetrators, as well as military publications on the anti-PKI campaign.

Author

• Mark Winward, University of Toronto