Indonesia: Silent Settlement

In Djakarta last week, President Sukarno continued to resist the demands of military leaders that the Communist Party be outlawed for its sponsorship of the Sept. 30 coup attempt. Meanwhile, outside the capital in the hundreds of islands that form the Indonesian archipelago, individual army units and bands of violently anti-Communist Moslems were reportedly working to make the argument academic.

According to accounts brought out of Indonesia by Western diplomats and independent travelers, Communists, Red sympathizers and their families are being massacred by the thousands. Backlands army units are reported to have executed thousands of Communists after interrogation in remote rural jails. Moslems, whose political influence had waned as the Communists gained favor with Sukarno, had begun a “holy war” in East Java against Indonesian Reds even before the abortive September coup. Armed with wide-bladed knives called parangs, Moslem bands crept at night into the homes of Communists, killing entire families and burying the bodies in shallow graves.

Resentment against Communists that swept the country after the coup attempt heightened the Moslems’ fervor and persuaded the army to turn its head as the holy war spread quickly to western Borneo and Sumatra. In Central Java the army even gave military training to Moslem youths. The murder campaign became so brazen in parts of rural East Java that Moslem bands placed the heads of victims on poles and paraded them through villages.

The killings have been on such a scale that the disposal of the corpses has created a serious sanitation problem in East Java and northern Suma tra, where the humid air bears the reek of decaying flesh. Travelers from those areas tell of small rivers and streams that have been literally clogged with bodies; river transportation has at places been impeded.