Blood on the stoles: The role of Catholics in the 1965-66 post-coup
genocide
Duncan Graham*
ABSTRACT
In 2018 Australian academic Dr Jess Melvin proved what had
been long surmised - that the Indonesian military engineered the genocide following
the 1965 ‘coup’.
[1]
The Army wasn’t alone. Less well known
[2] is
that it was backed by elements of the Catholic Church.
Some had links to Australian politicians and
spies.
A key agent provocateur was Dutch
Jesuit Joop Beek who trained cadres to be fervent anti-Communists.
Their role in fomenting political, social and
personal hate cannot be quarantined from the deaths of maybe 500,000 or more real
or imagined Communists.
This is still a
deeply sensitive issue across the nation and particularly on the island of
Flores.
[3]
Around Maumere on the Northeast
coast between 800 and 2,000 Catholics were murdered by their pew neighbours
while only two priests offered last rites.
[4]
Despite earlier promising to open
discussion of the killing times, President Joko Widodo has recanted; it’s
unlikely there’ll be moves towards national healing by his government in its
second five-year term.
[5] [6]
However a truth and
reconciliation commission initiated by the Church, alone or alongside liberals
in other faiths, could start the process of restorative justice.
Through field research including
personal interviews with priests and laity, this paper will examine why some
clergy ‘failed to distinguish between throne and altar’,
[7] betrayed
their beliefs and shattered their congregations. It also asks how society can
prevent similar events recurring.
- Duncan Graham, M Phil (UWA) is an Australian
journalist living in Indonesia.
He has a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission Awards and several
other prizes for his work. For much of this century he’s been writing for
the English-language media in Indonesia. More details: https://www.indonesianow.blogspot.com
Note on style: Single
quotes indicate a written public reference; double quotes are from personal interviews.
Thanks: To my wife Erlinawati in Malang,
Dr Anton Lucas in Adelaide
and Dr John Prior in Maumere for reading early drafts and suggesting
corrections. However the final responsibility lies with me.
IMPORTANT TO SAY …
This paper is by an
Australian. It’s about genocide and a
particularly evil event in Flores where
Catholics slaughtered Catholics while their priests stayed silent.
It’s also about
reconciliation. Some might assume it’s
another prescription from a smug Westerner telling the neighbours what to do
because Australia
has got its past sorted.
If only. The sands of my country are also stained with
blood and only now, after more than a century, is our guilt being slowly
exposed as the truth is revealed. The
Parliament apologised to the First Australians ten years ago but has since done
little. We are still arguing about constitutional recognition. The wrongs remain. Australians are in no position to preach.
So although many individuals are
guilty for what they did – or didn’t – do, this paper is not a general criticism
of Indonesia
or the Church. The issues are universal. Rather it’s a damnation of all nations and
leaders, lay and clerical, who reject moral principles, then refuse to recognize
the wrongs of the past and work to heal the wounds.
It’s also a warning; zealotry,
tolerated to boost a seemingly righteous cause, can lead to the justification
of heinous acts that come to haunt later generations.
Human rights know no borders.
First presented at the Indonesia
Council Open Conference,
ANU Canberra, 19-21 November 2019
A Church corrupted, congregations betrayed
There’s
no power worth defending by bloodshed of the people. Abdurrahman Wahid
[8]
On most days Egenius Pacelly (EP)
da Gomez can be found reading on his verandah just outside Maumere on the road
to Ledalero. If absent he’s likely to be
in the East Flores city’s Nusa Indah bookshop looking for the latest Tempo news magazine or fresh stock.
He’s long been a widower but doesn’t
hang around mourning; the 79-year stays intellectually alert through following
national politics, though his mind often wanders back to a searing moment in
his life – Sunday, 20 February 1966. At the time he was a Catholic Party
activist and called to a meeting of Komop (Komando
Operasi) and local officials.
Attendees were told
‘instructions’ had come from Jakarta,
1,700 km to the west, to ‘secure’ all Communists and their sympathizers, and
that every political party had a quota to fill.
There were then about 2,000 people in Maumere,
[9]
perhaps ten times more in the surrounding Sikka Regency.
Many citizens knew each other if not casually
or as neighbors, then through intermarriage.
A report of the meeting and the
history of the horror that followed was produced eight years later by Anon and
titled
Menjaring Angin (To Reap the
Whirlwind).
Da Gomez, who has long been
a prolific writer and published historian, reluctantly agreed that he’s
the
author, though he says the document was later edited by others.
[10]
Two of the 130 pages are
missing.
The circumstances are mysterious.
The original Gestetner stencils were held by
a priest.
When he died his belongings
were allegedly ransacked and the document damaged.
[11]
The report concerns ‘human
beings, society and their relations with the Creator ... a search for something
that if seen clearly, might be best called meaning.’
[12]
It’s also one of the few
surviving papers giving a background to the murder of maybe up to 2,000
citizens by their fellow Catholics from February through Easter to May 1966 in
Maumere and surrounding villages.
No trials were held.
The men were usually hacked to death in
public, their friends and relatives forced to watch, the bodies kicked into
graves which are still unmarked.
[13] While
this was underway the clergy betrayed their calling by offering only last
rites.
Families still grieve and even
now fear repercussions from the Army if they speak out.
To understand how this tragedy
occurred, it’s useful to check the months in Jakarta leading to the ‘coup’
[14],
and what was happening within the Catholic Church.
To set the scene here’s The Atlantic contributor John
Hughes succinctly reporting in 1967:
This attempted coup, on the night of September
30-October 1, 1965, touched off a dramatic series of events. The Army struck
back, grinding the Indonesian Communist Party into oblivion with ruthless
efficiency. Many thousands of Indonesians were slaughtered in a nation-wide
bloodbath.
An obscure general named Soeharto was catapulted
into prominence. Indonesia
was wrenched back from a headlong leftward slide in both domestic and foreign
policy. And eventually Soekarno, the man who had cast his magic political spell
across Indonesia
for so long, was exposed, discredited, toppled.
[15]
This was at the height of the
Vietnam War when US and Australian troops were fighting a losing battle to stop
a Communist take-over of the south.
The
‘Domino Theory’ was driving foreign policy.
This imagined ferocious hordes knocking down weak states as they hurtled
towards the largely empty and resource-rich Great South
Land.
[16]
The Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) was then the largest in the
world outside the USSR and China, with an
estimated three million members.
Western governments weren’t the
only ones terrified of the Red wave turning into a tsunami. The Catholic Church had become obsessed with the
reach of Communism at the expense of its holy ministry, so set out to demonise
the party and its supporters. The
repercussions of this crusade have led to terrible wrongs done to individuals,
their families, communities, societies, the nation and the Church.
In Indonesia the most aggressive and
influential anti-Communist operator in the Church was the Dutch-born Jesuit
Josephus Gerardus (Joop) Beek (1917 – 1983).
He was sent to Yogyakarta
in 1938 and imprisoned by the Japanese after the 1942 invasion.
[17] He later became an Indonesian citizen.
In the early 1960s he was in Jakarta running
leadership training courses called
Kaderisasi
Sebulan (KASBUL - Regeneration Month) rousing students against Communism.
[18]
A Dutch journalist reported that Beek, who was teaching at
the University of
Indonesia:
… had already for years maneuvered
important people towards key positions within society and had collected wiz
kids around him with whom he had created
[19]student
cells.
These grew into a major
influential power.’
[20]
Film producer Joop van Wijk wrote in a promotion for his
proposed film Imitatio Ignacio that
Beek was:
…the brain behind the 1965 coup in Indonesia,
leading to his fingers being tainted with the blood of hundreds of thousands of
adversaries of dictator Soeharto. We find out how he with his ever-growing
network of followers may be regarded as the man who was by far the
best-informed man of Indonesia
in the turbulent 1960’s.
And how Joop Beek became crucially
important for western secret service organizations such as the CIA, MI5 and
ASIS in their undercover operations to support Suharto against the first
president of Indonesia Sukarno who was ever further sliding to the left.
[21]
It’s possible hardships endured during his years in a
Japanese prison camp affected the priest’s thinking. Even so he could have
justified his fanaticism by referencing the Vatican’s 1949
Decree against Communism [22]
which declared members should be excommunicated. That meant card-carrying Reds
could be excluded from participating in the sacraments and services.
It did not mean imprisonment, torture and
execution.
[23]
Beek is reported to have favoured the slogan ‘kill or be
killed’, when confronting Communism, a phrase also used by others in recalling
their experiences in 1965.
[24] How all this fitted with Christ’s teachings of
passivity, tolerance and forgiveness is unclear.
Beek was regularly talking with
Western security agencies and was close to the Australian Catholic political
activist
Bartholomew Augustine (BA) Santamaria (1915 –1998). [25] His Church and business associates funded anti-Communist
movements in Australia and Southeast Asia, and supplied Western governments with
information and advice.
Prominent among Beek’s coterie
was Jusuf Wanandi, born Lim Bian Kie.
[26]
He’s now a major businessman, political commentator and Jakarta legend.
[27] He’s
also a complex character, harboring secrets, skirting issues, masking a
troubled conscience with regrets.
These
appear sincere, though fall short; he won’t open all the cupboards, instead
claiming the shelves and drawers are empty.
They are not.
At 82 Wanandi is spry,
articulate and a ripping commentator on the doings of Indonesia’s
political
haut monde. He’ll talk
openly on almost everything – except his guru – Joop Beek. Curiously the priest
doesn’t feature in Wanandi’s autobiography
Shades
of Grey which is otherwise filled with names and details of the author’s life
and influences.
[28]
In personal discussions two prominent Jesuits (the late Father Adolf Heuken (right) and Franz Magnis Suseno) have
confirmed that Beek and Wanandi lived close to each other in the Jakarta suburb of Menteng
in the mid 1960s, and were meeting almost daily.
[29]
Santamaria gets one sentence in Wanandi’s book:
‘Through a group led by Bob Santamaria I got
to know some influential people in Manila’.
Asked to expand Wanandi would only say: “The
efforts of Bob Santamaria had been sporadic and therefore with no lasting
effect.”
[30]
Australian
journalist Frank Mount was employed by Santamaria to work in the region; he had
close links with Beek and Wanandi who supported the bloody Indonesian take over
of East Timor, though Wanandi now has regrets.
[31]
In his autobiography
Wrestling with Asia, Mount
claims Beek set up a network of anti-Communist Catholics in Indonesia, as Santamaria had done in Australia.
[32]
In 1965 the network heard through a spy in the PKI that
Soekarno was sick so assumed dramatic action was likely by the Party.
[33]
Beek passed the information on to Australia’s security organisations.
[34]
Wanandi’s present Central Jakarta
office is in the
Centre for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS).
The 1971
founders were Wanandi and his younger brother Sofjan, backed by Chinese and
mainly Catholic entrepreneurs.
They were
persuaded to donate
[35]
by Wanandi’s friend, General Ali Moertopo (1924 – 1984).
How that persuasion was exercised is not
known.
[36]
Today the organisation has an image of independent
professionalism, a non-profit think tank covering social, international,
political and economic issues, referenced by academics and journalists.
That wasn’t the case during Soeharto’ early years in the
palace: The CSIS was then not a lobby for human rights or a centre of impartial
research, but a propaganda arm for Soeharto’s
Orde Baru (New Order) government.
[37]
Wanandi got the CSIS into Western boardrooms, ministries
and high-level conferences through his skills as an amusing, knowledgeable, cosmopolitan
English-speaking inner-circle unofficial diplomat and ethnic Chinese Catholic –
the congenial face of a ruthless dictatorship run by dark men in khaki.
[38]
This is ironical as Wanandi later helped set up the
Kompas daily, now the most trustworthy
Indonesian language newspaper in the Republic – though originally established to
counter Red propaganda.
[39] [40]
Today the CSIS seems to have lost much of its early Catholicism.
[41] Some
female staff wear
jilbab, the Islamic headscarf. Open ties with the
military have also been cut. Said Wanandi with some vigor: “Never trust the
Army.”
[42] Yet
that’s what he was doing through his links with Moertopo.
Mount wrote:
Over the years, the more capable and energetic
members of Beek’s network gradually moved into political, commercial, academic
and government posts and many of them have now risen to positions of great
national and international importance and influence.’
[43]
Unfortunately Mount would not respond to questions about
Beek.
Snuggling up to Soeharto’s ruthless regime in its early
days has done the business interests of the Wanandi brothers no harm.
In 2007
Forbes
magazine said Jusuf Wanandi was worth US $307 million. Sofjan started the
Gemala (now Santini) Group which operates factories around the world.
[44]
Wanandi’s admiration for the Muslim Moertopo is not shared
by Western academics. Australian academic Dr Richard Tanter dubbed Wanandi a
‘former Opsus (
Operasi Khusus, Special Operations group) associate.’
[45] Opsus
was run by Moertopo and was its ‘intellectual core, which provided intellectual
cover and academic legitimation’.
The late US-Indonesia expert Dr Benedict Anderson wrote
that Moertopo's specialties
included ‘black
intelligence
operations,
deployment
of agents
provocateurs, behind-the-scenes
political
manipulations,
and
the
sophisticated
cultivation
of influential
politicians,
businessmen,
and
academics
overseas.’
[46]
Canadian professor John Roosa was more direct, writing that
Wanandi:
… laboured for years on the dark side,
helping the Soeharto dictatorship commit a variety of crimes, and he remains
proud of his work as the protégé of one of its most loathsome dirty-tricks
intelligence officers, Ali Moertopo. His insider accounts of the
decision-making behind various massacres are often self-serving and inaccurate.
[47]
Moertopo continued to have Soeharto’s ear until the soldier
reportedly died of a stroke
[48] while
taking a nap at the CSIS where a room is dedicated to his memory. The general
was Wanandi’s conduit to Soeharto and is admired “for keeping his cool”
following the coup.
[49]
Wanandi is not one of the grandees that fill the Indonesian
oligarchy. At times he can be self-effacing which helps him steer awkward
inquiries into safer streets. Like telling when he was caught by soldiers in
1965 driving a Jeep at 3 am in Jakarta
with a pistol and two Sten sub-machine guns in the vehicle.
[50]
His contacts in high places and silver tongue prevailed; he
kept driving and kept the guns, though later claimed they didn’t work.
These jolly Boy’s Own
adventures cut no ice with Roosa. In a
review of Shades of Grey published in the Australian quarterly Inside
Indonesia he wrote:
Wanandi’s account shows how closely the student movement worked
with the Army. The students knew in early October that they were in no danger.
The PKI put up no resistance as they rampaged through the streets, ransacking
and burning houses, offices, and schools.
But still they pretended as if they were brave heroes at
war risking their lives. Wanandi notes in passing, without an expression of
regret, that the students of the Indonesian Student Action Front (KAMI) forced
people to join their demonstrations.
[51]
When invited to respond Wanandi commented in writing: “I
have not read the review of Roosa’s (sic) and (I’m) not interested in his
opinion.”
[52]
Well into the 21st century it’s difficult to understand the
depth of hatred towards Communism in the 1960s – not just from the capitalist
US and its allies including Australia,
but from the Catholics and their Church with its ambiguous approach to human
rights and support for despots like Soeharto.
In his autobiography Wanandi calls the genocide ‘the most
abominable episode in our country’s history’.
[53]
However he’s less than frank about the role he and his colleagues played,
raising the question: Did the Catholics go too far in promoting hate?
Do they have blood on their hands?
Wanandi:
President Soekarno bore the first
responsibility ... because he was still full president then ... we were
activists during that period and heard about the killings, but because of the
political uncertainties we did not react to those barbaric acts.
Do you ever look back - do you think because Catholics were
so opposed to the PKI that you were in any way responsible for the bloodbath?
=That’s not so, because we warned
Soekarno ... on the 14 November (a deputation) went to Soekarno and
informed
him that he had to do something
... we knew some parts of it (the genocide) but we had no inkling of the
intensity in East Java, and Central Java and Bali till afterwards.
[54]
Yet declassified files
from that period released by the US Government in 2017 show the killings were
widely known. [55] The hierarchy of the Church was also aware. Letters have come to light dated 6 November
1965 and 6 January 1966, weeks before the Flores massacre, forbidding Catholics
from being involved with the Army Para Commando
Regiment which was carrying out the killings in Java and Bali.
[56]
What more could Wanandi and his students have done to stop
the slaughter? As Catholics, where was their moral responsibility? Wanandi:
We were the first targets of the PKI. It
was kill or be killed. We were more anti-PKI than anyone else, always the first
ones ... Muslims came later.
Only the Army
opposed.
[57]
The sensitivity now of human rights was then
of a different intensity.
Who cared
about human rights at that time?
It (the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights) was not adopted by the UN until 1948.
[58] We
were not responsible for the bloodbath.
Soekarno and Soeharto share (responsibility for that).. . lacuna of
authority.
[59]
Wanandi and other conservative Catholic leaders in Jakarta would have been
aware of the awful events in Maumere involving the clergy and their
congregations. The slaughter started in February 1966 after the killings had almost
petered out elsewhere, yet no mention in Shades
of Grey.
It took time for the sins to be recognized and the remorse
to mature.
In his autobiography Wanandi
calls for a
Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, like the South African restorative justice process
last century following the destruction of apartheid.
[60]
So far little has happened.
While running for the presidency in 2014 Joko
Widodo appeared to support an inquiry, but recanted once in office
[61] as retired generals claimed that
Communists were organizing a comeback, vigilance must be intensified and the
defence budget boosted.
[62]
The scares began to get traction,
spooking Widodo who was also subject to smears alleging he’d been a Communist.
[63] To
blunt these attacks he appeared on television watching the ghastly 1984
agitprop
Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI (Communist
treachery of 30 September).
This crude piece of cinema has been compulsory
viewing for schoolchildren every year on the anniversary of the ‘coup’. The President even suggested the film be
updated. [64]
Unless they’re well read and in a family of liberals,
today’s youngsters remain historically illiterate about their nation’s recent past
which has been largely researched by Western academics working overseas; their
books are usually expensive, difficult to obtain, and in English. [65]
An exception is Dr John Prior, a
British-born priest with the Society of the Divine Word. He came to Eastern Indonesia in 1973 and is now in Maumere.
He’s written scholarly papers and co-edited a
collection of essays in Indonesian on the events in East
Flores.
[66]
He’s tried to analyse why the priests
went along with the Army’s slaughter and concludes the clergy had become snared
by power, enjoying the prestige of being close to the government through its
purge of Communists: ‘The Church ran adrift from the concerns of the
surrounding society.’
[67]
The 2003 Catholic Bishops’
Conference in Jakarta referred to ‘the decoupling of faith from daily life’
[68] This
began much earlier when the Church became obsessed with fighting Communism and
forgot that its mission was to guide and protect its flock.
The hate was not exclusive to Indonesia.
[69]
Priests allowed themselves to be lured
from their responsibilities to ordinary parishioners through playing with State
power, and financially benefiting from siding with killers. They’d been indoctrinated through strident
Catholic political propaganda, largely driven by foreign priests like Beek.
They argued that Communism was so
satanic killings were justified even though this ran counter to their
consciences and all Church teachings. This moral code would have been known by
every novice.
They didn’t differentiate between
Communist ideology, open to challenge through better ideas, and those who liked
some of the party’s policies such as land reform though were not card-carrying
members. It was easier to kill than
change minds.
What has to change to avoid a
repetition? Wrote Prior:
Their (the
clergy’s) mission to save souls was buttressed by a spirituality that
encouraged people to endure the trials of this world while patiently trusting
in God’s mercy in the next … they failed to distinguish between throne and altar
…
We need to
untangle the pastoral strategies of the Church community from the
unevangelical, self interested, repressive, patriarchal policies of the
governing elite.
[70]
Does the Church have blood on its
hands?
Prior did not hesitate:
“Yes.”
[71] And
da Gomez who features at the start of this paper?
“We need reconciliation.
The initiative must come from the Church. The
children must be educated.
To stop this
happening again all Indonesians must know the true history of their country.”
[72]
CONCLUSION
The past is never where you
think you left it. Katherine Anne Porter [73]
The ‘coup’ occurred two decades
after the end of World War 11 when the Nazi party converted a largely Christian
country into a nation of hate against the Jewish minority.
According to one historian Nazism
sought to ‘transform the subjective consciousness of the German people—their
attitudes, values and mentalities—into a single-minded, obedient ‘national
community’.
[74] This was the process engineered in Indonesia in
1965.
Zealotry is dangerous, doubly so
when faith-based. The common view is
that religious fundamentalists are simpletons driven by monochrome assumptions,
mindlessly led by smarter demagogues indifferent to the consequences of their
actions.
Yet the Jakarta Catholics
associated with the ‘coup’ aftermath were well-educated, intelligent
individuals. They knew European history.
How could they have been so influenced by Beek and the villainy of his ideas that
they abandoned their personal moral values taught by their church.
One answer is distasteful: Some had
other agendas, aware that if they picked the winners in the chaos then they’d
benefit financially and personally – if they didn’t they’d be in mortal peril.
Choose wisely or perish.
[75] [76]
The Catholics were in a minority,
about two per cent of the national population.
The Chinese constantly suffered discrimination and knew they’d not
survive without powerful patrons. The regrets being expressed today might carry
more weight if those pleading for understanding were remorseful thugs realizing
their earlier errors. They weren’t.
Western governments were also
culpable. They were aware of the
massacres through reports by journalists and diplomats, but chose to ignore the
genocide because it halted the spread of Communism through the archipelago. No-one comes out of this story unscathed,
though one priest can still stand tall.
Near Maumere Father Frederikus
Pede da Lopez challenged the military’s orders and demanded his congregation in
Wolokoli be released.
So the Army
contacted his bishop and da Lopez was moved to a seminary.
[77]Although
his protest failed he didn’t die for his defiance.
[78]
This showed the cowardice of his colleagues who used the
defence of ‘we’ll be killed if we don’t cooperate’. Sainthood was available,
but declined. Commented Prior: “They were all Simon Peters.”
The survivors’ counter argument
runs: ‘You don’t understand what it was
like – you weren’t there. Easy to sermonise now.’ True enough; none of us know
how we’d respond when suddenly faced with great moral dilemmas while fearing
for our lives.
In this case the story is not
about a few weak individuals, but almost all members of an institution built on
the principles of sacrifice and love for humanity.
[79] Where were the dissenters?
According to two historians:
A strong stand
by the Church might well have halted or at least diminished the slaughter …
most clergy stood aside as silent bystanders.
The population was cowered for over twenty years; voices for justice
remained mute.
[80]
There seems no excuse for priests
who’d taken holy orders and were supposed to have been drawn to their calling
by Christ’s offering of himself for crucifixion.
They knew what was happening and that it was absolutely
wrong. When they donned the cassocks, stoles and crucifix they took on a special
responsibility to their congregations.
[81]
Prior quotes Martin Luther King Jr:
The ultimate measure of a man is
not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands
at times of challenge and controversy.
[82]
Should such evil times return
we’ll all need to recognize and repel the seducer - hate. This can come, as it
did in Indonesia
in 1965 – 66, in the guise of a forked-tongue government claiming its motives
were altruistic, and an amoral Church compliant in the genocide.
The government’s failure to
initiate reconciliation leaves the way open for the Church to start the process
– and help wash itself of sin.
German Jesuit Karl Rahner wrote:
‘The number one cause of atheism is Christians. Those who proclaim Him with
their mouths and deny Him with their actions is what an unbelieving world finds
unbelievable.’
[83]
[2] There
are no references in Melvin’s book.
[3] The
people of Flores pay great respect to the
dead.
Many have graves in the yards and
gardens of their houses.
Not knowing
where the remains of their fathers, husbands, sons and brothers lie is a never-ending
trauma for the families. Maumere has memorials to the 2,500 who died in the
December 1992 earthquake and tsunami, but nothing to remember the pogrom.
The figure of 500,000 killed in the pogrom is clearly a
rough guess.
One estimate given to Soekarno
was 78,000 – later it had another zero added. Commander Sarwo Edhie
(father-in-law of sixth President SBY) is alleged to have said the number was
three million.
See:
Kolektif
Info Coup d'etat 65 :. - Dokumen
If correct that represents three per cent of the population at the time.
[4]
Aritonang, Jan Sihar, & Steenbrink, Karel:
A history of Christianity in Indonesia,
2008, Brill.
pp 253-255.
See section:
The tragic betrayal of 1966.
[6] See below for an account of Human Rights activist
Soe Tjen Marching questioning the
President: ‘He stated that he still did not really understand what happened, and
that this kind of thing took time. In
short, he answered my question without actually answering it. It strikes me as
pathetic that a president who is supposed to be ‘reformist’, claims that he
does not know much about one of the biggest genocides the world has seen, that
happened in his country. The deputy head of Komnas HAM told CNN that Komnas HAM
had sent its report and recommendations on the matter to Jokowi on 10 December
2014. Yet, Jokowi told me he had not seen it.https://www.insideindonesia.org/interview-with-an-activist-soe-tjen-marching
[7] Prior,
John:
The Silent Scream of a Silenced History. Part Two; Church responses. Exchange 40,
2011.
[8] Gus Dur
on quitting the presidency in 2001.
[9] Van
Klinken, Gerry:
Postcolonial Citizenship in Provincial Indonesia, 2019, Palgrave
Macmillan.
[10] The
document has not been published and only a few photocopies are available.
[11]
Conversation with da Gomez, Maumere, May 2019.
[12]
Translation by Dr John Prior SVD.
[14] I use
quotes around the word ‘coup’ because it’s still unclear whether this was a
clumsy attempted takeover by the PKI, or staged by elements in the military to
trigger a purge of Communists.
These
questions are important but not part of this paper.
[17] He was
also interred for some months by the Indonesian revolutionaries distrustful of
the Dutch..
[18] He
seems to have been Indonesia’s
version of the US Red witch-hunter Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) minus
the political authority.
[19] Beek
was involved and important but this claim is too wide.
The main actors were the PKI and the
Army.
See John Roosa in
Inside Indonesia, 24 Jan 2010.
[20] Dutch
TV-reporter Aad van den Heuvel
worked for KRO Brandpunt news and
says he met Beek in Indonesia
several times. His novel
Stenen Tijdperk
(Stone Age) has a character based on Beek. At one visit, van den Heuvel recalls
speaking with the Jesuit late in the sixties about a speech Soeharto would be
giving later, and asked Beek if he knew what it would be about. 'I don't know,
I'm still writing it', Beek replied.
Source:
https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Joop_Beek
A Dutch film about Beek was proposed.
The blurb reads:
IMITATIO IGNACIO –
CONFESSIONS OF A JESUIT PRIEST
In the second half of the last century an impoverished boy from Amsterdam becomes a
traumatized Jesuit priest. As a true Rasputin he grows into being one of the
most powerful men in postcolonial Indonesia. Driven by his obsessive
religious zeal he is the brain behind the blood stained coup of 1965 in Indonesia and
its legacy of massacres and terror.
On his deathbed Joop Beek looks in a feverish dream back on his life and the
consequences of his actions. A quest for answers to the impossible question of
‘why?’
http://in-soo.com/category/in-production/
[22]
Excommunication did not apply to all who voted for Communists or supported the
party, only to people who held the materialistic and atheistic doctrines of
Communism.
See
The Tablet, 6 August, 1949. ($)
[24]
‘
…in light of the PKI’s evil plans, there was no choice but to kill or be
killed.’ It is hard to believe that such language—especially coming from people
in positions of authority—would not have incited or at least given licence to
real acts of violence, including killing. Indeed, most accounts of the killings
by perpetrators emphasize … they had no choice but to crush the PKI.’ Robinson, Geoffrey: Journal of
Genocide Research Volume 19, 2017 - Issue 4.
[25] A determined anti-Communist Catholic,
Santamaria founded the National
Civic Council and the Democratic Labor Party in 1955. Known as The
Split, it kept the Australian Labor Party out of office till 1972. His Asian venture was called the Pacific
Community.
[26] Within a year of seizing power in 1965 the
ever-suspicious Soeharto ordered ethnic Chinese to change their names, implying
they were non-pribumi (not
nationalists) suggesting they were closet Communists; Wanandi says he did so
voluntary in a bid for recognition and assimilation, but in fact he and his
colleagues had no choice. Wanandi went
even further. He and his younger brother
Sofjan (Lim Bian Khoen) left the Catholic Party and later joined the Golkar
Party, as member of the non-democratic vehicle for keeping Soeharto in power.
[28]
Wanandi e-mailed me 16 November 2018: “Father Beek has been
the … Chaplain of the Catholic students in Yogyakarta and Jakarta later also for Catholic
scholars. He was the director of documentation Bureau of the Council of
Bishop’s of Indonesia.
As such his ideas were influential to those groups.”
[29] Father
Franz Magnis-Suseno SJ and Father Adolf Heuken SJ.
Personal interviews in October 2018. Neither
is mentioned in
Shades of Grey.
[31] Roosa,
John.
Inside Indonesia,
May 2003: ‘He (Wanandi) led the international PR campaign justifying the 1975
invasion of East Timor but then lamented the
Army’s brutal counter insurgency tactics.’
[32] Mount,
Frank:
Wrestling with Asia, Connor Court
2012.
Mount pours on his admiration for
Beek ‘a man of the people with powerful intellect … I was in thrall from the
first moment I met him.’ (P 253).
[33]
Soekarno was ill and died in 1970 of kidney failure aged 69.
[34] Wanandi
said his contacts knew Soekarno was sick and that doctors had been brought in
from China
to conduct treatment.
This news
heightened the expectation that something was about to happen.
[35] In
Shades of Grey (P111) Wanandi writes
that Moertopo ‘just called up a few
cukong
(patrons) and said ‘
tolong bantu
(please help) and that was all that was needed.’
[37] For almost two decades after the coup Wanandi and his
friends claimed they were palace whisperers, advising Soeharto. The relationship collapsed in the mid 1980s
when they suggested he step down. Their
position was taken by the Minister for Technology and Research (later to become
Vice President) Bacharuddin Jusuf (BJ) Habibie’s Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim
Indonesia, (ICMI) Indonesian Association of Muslim
Intellectuals. It was supposedly set up
to fight poverty and improve education, but was more likely a device to counter
the CSIS influence.
[38] The CSIS was so well funded that it ran a prolonged PR
campaign across the US
to try and convince government officials and academics that Soeharto’s
oppressive government was legitimate and progressive.
[39] The paper was started in June 1965 by the Catholic
Party to offset Communist propaganda, and at the behest of the Army. The name was suggested by Soekarno. Wits dubbed it Komando Pastor because of
the Catholic connections.
[40] The
organisation also advocated against independence for East Timor and was
involved in preparing the ‘Act of Free Choice’ Indonesian takeover of West Papua.
[41] Wanandi
told me he had ceased to attend Catholic services following the findings of the
2013 – 2017 Australian
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses
to Child Sexual Abuse, and clerical pedophilia revealed in the US,
Canada and elsewhere.
He said he now
worships with the Lutheran
Church.
[42]
Personal interview 19 October 2018.
[43]
Mount: Wrestling
with Asia. Although he details countless
meetings with Wanandi and Beek, Mount gets no mention in Shades of Grey. Three requests to interview Mount made through his
Australian publisher got no response.
[44] An Oxfam report claims: In the past
two decades, the gap between the richest and the rest in Indonesia has grown faster than in any other
country in Southeast Asia. It is now the sixth
country of greatest wealth inequality in the world. Today, the four richest men
in Indonesia
have more wealth than the combined total of the poorest 100 million
people. https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/towards-more-equal-indonesia
[45] Tanter,
Richard:
Intelligence Agencies and Third World Militarism.
PhD thesis, Monash University,
1981.
[46] Anderson, Benedict: Scholarship on Indonesia
and Raison d'Etat: Personal Experience.
Indonesia
62, 1996
[48] Another
version has him succumbing to cancer.
[49]
Personal interview 19 October 2018.
[50]
At the time Stens were the
weapon of choice for insurgents. “They’d been put there by someone else. I
didn’t even know how to use them,” Wanandi said.
[51] Roosa,
John:
Pretext for Mass Murder: the September 30th Movement and Soeharto's
Coup d'état in Indonesia
University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.
[52] E-mail
correspondence 16 November 2018.
[53]
Wanandi, Jusuf:
Shades of Grey, Equinox, 2012.
[54]
Personal interview, 19 October 2018.
[56] Two
one-page letters have recently come to light thanks to Yogyakarta
lecturer Dr Baskara Wardaya SJ at Santa Dharma University. The one dated 6
November 1965, allegedly from C Carri SJ, the Vicar
General
of the Archdiocese of Semarang (Central Java)
reads: Priests and clerics are not
allowed to be part of the Panitia Pemeriksa
/ Penjelidik jang akan dibentuk oleh R.P.K.A.D.
(Resimen Para Komando Angkatan
Darat – Army Para Commando Regiment. This was the command involved in the killings
in Java and Bali. The second, dated 6 January 1966, apparently came from Justinus Darmojuwono 1914-1994 (who later became a Cardinal)
[57] Dr
Frank Palmos was one of the few Western journalists in Jakarta at the time.
He recalled that Jakarta in 1965 was "pregnant with
danger". "It is hard to exaggerate the dangers for Europeans,"
he said. The PKI made gruesome signboards depicting foreigners being bayoneted.
China
and the PKI were urging president Sukarno to allow workers and peasants to
carry arms and become a fifth force. "It was a very tense time … it was
very violent. Civil war was certain."
Sydney Morning Herald, 3 Oct,
2015
[58] This was 17
years before the Indonesian ‘coup’. In
1950 Indonesia
joined the UN and was theoretically bound by its human rights provisions.
[59]
Personal interview, 19 October 2018.
[60] Shades of Grey, P 80.
[62] No
credible evidence was ever published to support the claims.
[63] The President was four when the ‘coup’ occurred and
the party banned.
[65] In
early 2019 Dutch academic Gerry van Klinken published on Maumere.
See endnote 6.
In personal communications (May 2019) he said
there were plans to translate into Indonesian, though these may take months to
eventuate..
[66] Prior, John:, & Madung, Otto Gusti, eds: Berani, Berhenti, Berbohong (Dare to
stop lying). Penerbit Ledalero, 2015.
[67] Prior,
John: T
he Silent Scream of a Silenced
History Part Two; Church responses. Exchange 40, 2011.
[69]
‘Communism was never popular in America,
and no American group was more fervently anti-Communist than the Catholics. The
American bishops, like the Vatican,
had condemned Marxism before 1900 for its atheism, its violation of natural law
principles, and its theory of inevitable class conflict. They condemned the
Russian Revolution of 1917 that brought Lenin and the Bolsheviks to power. They
condemned American Communism in the 1930s for its adherence to the Moscow party line, its
frequent about-turns of policy, and its support of the anti-Catholic
Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.’
Source: Patrick Allitt,
Catholic
anti-Communism https://www.catholicity.com/commentary/allitt/05744.html
[71]
Personal communication, May 2019, Maumere.
[73] US journalist
and author 1890 - 1980
[74] Kershaw, Ian; The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and
Perspectives of Interpretation; Oxford
University Press, 2000;
pp. 173–74. The Indonesian military
coined the term Gestapu for the
‘coup’ knowing its similarity to Gestapo.
[75] Wanandi
helped set up Soeharto’s Golkar Party which became an enemy of democracy.
He also became a Golkar politician and
enjoyed the president’s patronage till the mid 1980s.
[76] Melbourne University
academic Dr Justin Wejak said Pemuda
Katolik (Catholic Youth) in Flores and the surrounding
islands, like Pemuda Pancasila elsewhere in Indonesia, were involved in the
killing of local suspected communists. My father was also forced by the local
Army (KOMOP) in Lembata to become the algojo (executioner), an
involuntary involvement that he silently regretted. His PhD thesis was: Secular, religious and
supernatural: an Eastern Indonesian Catholic experience of fear
(autoethnographic) reflections on the reading of a New Order-era propaganda text.
Personal correspondence, 18 May 2019.
[77] The
Ritapirit (sometimes spelt Ritapiret) Seminary and then Ndona parish, 150 km
from Maumere.
[78] Details:
Aritonang, Jan Sihar, & Steenbrink,
Karel:
A history of Christianity in Indonesia, 2008, Brill.
pp 253-255.
[79] Two
one-page letters have recently come to light thanks to Yogyakarta
lecturer Dr Baskara Wardaya SJ at Santa Dharma University. The one dated
6 November 1965, allegedly from C Carri SJ,
the Vicar
General of the Archdiocese of Semarang (Central Java) reads:
Priests and clerics are not allowed to be part of the Panitia Pemeriksa / Penjelidik jang akan
dibentuk oleh R.P.K.A.D. (Resimen Para Komando Angkatan Darat –
Army Para Commando Regiment. This was the command involved in the killings
in Java and Bali.
The second, dated 6 January 1966, apparently came from Justinus Darmojuwono 1914-1994 (who later became a Cardinal)F
[80]
Aritonang, Jan Sihar, & Steenbrink, Karel:
A history of Christianity in Indonesia,
2008, Brill.
pp 253-255.
[81]
The
Societas Verbi
Divini (SVD - Divine Word Society) through its Sekolah Tinggi Filsafat Katolik
(College of Catholic
philosophy) at Ledalero, just outside Maumere in East
Flores, claims it is now the world’s largest trainer of SVD
missionary priests. On its website is a
quote from the German Jesuit Karl Rahner (1904-84) saying: ‘The number one
cause of atheism is Christians. Those who proclaim Him with their mouths and
deny Him with their actions is what an unbelieving world finds unbelievable.’
[82] Sermon
at Ebenezer Baptist
Church, Atlanta, 30 April 1967.
