Interpreting the Harian Rakjat editorial

The edition of the PKI’s newspaper published on Saturday, October 2, 1965, carried a headline that stretched across the width of the paper: “Lt. Col. Untung, the Commander of the Palace Guard, Saves the President and the Republic of Indonesia from the Council of Generals’ Coup.” A smaller headline directly underneath read: “The September 30th Movement Is a Movement Completely Internal to the Army.” From the headlines alone it was apparent that the PKI leaders were supporting the movement while distancing themselves from it. A brief twenty-line editorial tucked away near the lower left corner of the ﬁrst page, just below an inconsequential report about a press conference held by the Chinese foreign minister in Beijing, reiterated the message of the headlines, that the movement was a laudable effort to save the president and was an internal army matter: “We the people fully understand what was asserted by Lt. Col. Untung in carrying out his patriotic movement. But, whatever the case may be, this matter is an internal army matter. But we the people who are aware of the politics and tasks of the revolution are certain of the correctness of the action taken by the Sep- tember 30th Movement to safeguard the revolution and the people.”

The awkward language of the editorial—two “buts” in a row and an extraneous “whatever the case may be”—suggest the writer was striving to emphasize that the Communist Party’s support for the movement did not mean that the party was involved in it. Along the bottom of the front page ran the customary Saturday feature, seven cartoon panels depicting

Aidit, the PKI, and the Movement t 171

7. This cartoon appeared on the bottom of the front page of the Harian Rakjat newspaper on Saturday, October 2, 1965. The movement, upholding the national interest (RI is the Republic of Indonesia), punches the Council of Generals, which is propped up by the U.S. government. Indonesian currency notes are in the general’s pocket and a dollar sign is on his epaulette. His afﬁliation with the CIA is revealed as his hat ﬂies off. The caption reads: “Lieutenant Colonel Untung and a battalion of the palace guard safeguard the president and the Republic of Indonesia from a coup by the Council of Generals.”

the day-by-day progress of the left during the past week. The combined panel for Thursday and Friday (September 30 and October 1) showed the ﬁst of the September 30th Movement smashing into the face of the Council of Generals. The cartoon in the next panel for Saturday was a gorier scene: the generals, with U.S. dollars and CIA receipts falling out of their pockets, were being hurled by a burly soldier onto a sea of spikes.

The oddity of this Harian Rakjat front page was its publication after the movement in Jakarta had already been defeated. Major General Umar Wirahadikusumah had issued an order at 6 p.m. on October 1 that banned all papers, except the two army-owned papers, from publishing. Suharto’s troops had retaken the radio station at about 7 p.m. and broad- cast a denunciation of the movement around 8:45 p.m. Why did the editors of Harian Rakjat defy the army’s ban, only to publish a statement in support of a failed action? The ofﬁce was located in the neighborhood

172 t Aidit, the PKI, and the Movement

8. The caption along the bottom reads: “This week’s film,” which alludes to the popular Indonesian custom of watching films on Saturday. This film is a grisly one: a soldier smiles triumphantly while watching two CIA-funded generals fall onto spikes. Within the panel the title of the film, “De Over Val,” which is Dutch for “surprise attack” (over- val), has been changed to “De Generals Val,” which is a double entendre that means both “the generals’ trap” and “the generals’ fall.” The parenthetic phrase translates the latter meaning into Indonesian: “the generals’ fall.”

of Pintu Besar Selatan, about half a mile from Merdeka Square. The re- porters on the paper must have been following the events of the day and must have known that the movement in Jakarta had collapsed.

Benedict Anderson and Ruth McVey thought that the army must have seized the Harian Rakjat ofﬁce on Friday night. The army had already suspected by then that the Communist Party had some sort of

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role in the movement (given that the militiamen arrested at the tele- communications building were from Pemuda Rakjat). For the Saturday edition to appear, either it must have been printed and distributed before the army arrived or it was printed and distributed while the army officers were occupying the office. Anderson and McVey leaned toward the former possibility since the Saturday edition of Harian Rakjat was probably printed on Friday afternoon. In most offices at that time em- ployees worked only a half-day on Fridays. The Cornell scholars specu- lated that the October 2 edition came out before the editors were certain that the movement had failed. 71

What happened that night of October 1 at the Harian Rakjat ofﬁce?

A former journalist on the paper, Martin Aleida, recalls a conversation that he had with an editor who was at the ofﬁce that night. 72 Aleida

himself was out of town. He had been sent to study at a PKI school in Semarang about two months earlier. He managed to survive the 1965–

66 massacres and several years in prison. Once out of prison, he ran into one of his former colleagues, Wahyudi, who had been a senior editor on the paper in 1965. According to Wahyudi’s account, a group of army personnel arrived at the ofﬁce at about 11 p.m. and demanded that the paper shut down. Wahyudi and another editor refused, insisting that they would close the paper only if they were presented with a written order. The army personnel did not occupy the premises, forcibly evict the staff, or interfere with the publication of the paper. The ofﬁce con- tinued working as normal.

Wahyudi stated, according to Aleida, that the editorial supporting the movement had been delivered to the paper’s ofﬁce at about 9 p.m. by the usual courier. Wahyudi did not know who wrote the editorial, but

he suspected that it was Dahono, the paper’s reporter who usually spent his days at the Central Committee Secretariat (on Jalan Kramat), ob- taining the party’s ofﬁcial positions on various issues. Dahono was not a very good writer. He had been appointed to the Harian Rakjat staff by the Central Committee for his enthusiastic loyalty to the party and bonhomie, not for his journalistic skills. Thus the language of the editorial may have been so awkward because Dahono wrote it.

Aleida was not told whether the paper was printed before or after the army arrived. He remembers that the usual deadline for submission of articles was around 11 p.m. and that the paper usually came off the press around 1 to 2 a.m. If the paper followed the usual pattern on that Friday night, the army would have arrived just as the Saturday edition was being edited and typeset.

174 t Aidit, the PKI, and the Movement The question concerning the party’s decision to publish a statement

of support for a failed military action remains open. Perhaps it was not clear on Friday night that the movement had actually failed. The troops and militiamen in Merdeka Square had been cleared out, but the leaders of the action were still together at Halim. Untung had not been cap- tured. The actions in Central Java were still underway. In laying out the front page, the editors did not emphasize the party’s support for the movement. The editorial was very brief, cautiously worded, and placed toward the bottom of the page. The lead stories reported on Untung’s action in a matter-of-fact manner and emphasized that it was an internal army matter. It is difﬁcult to believe that the editors or their superi- ors at the Central Committee thought they were putting themselves at risk by going ahead with the edition. They could not have predicted that the movement would collapse so quickly, the army would attack the PKI so suddenly and ruthlessly, and that the Harian Rakjat would never

be given a chance to revise its position in light of subsequent events. They could not have understood that the entire Sukarno-centered po- litical system to which they had become accustomed was being funda- mentally transformed on that night of October 1.

Interpreting the Harian Rakjat editorial