Another three were murdered at the Indonesian air force base where they had been taken. Three, including the commander of the army, were killed. They tried to seize seven of the Indonesian army’s most senior generals. O n the night of 30 September leftist officers associated with the movement, under the command of Lt-Col Untung of the presidential guard, supported by a handful of battalions, attempted a pre-emptive strike against the army’s high command.
A secret leftwing group, later called the “30 September movement”, coalesced in Indonesia, convinced, with some justification, that the army was planning to overthrow Sukarno and suppress the PKI. Increasingly Sukarno’s non-aligned nationalism, anti-colonialism and growing ties to China were viewed as a threat, one that would be lessened if the president and his foreign minister Subandrio were removed from their posts and the PKI’s influence in Indonesia diminished – most plausibly through the actions of the largely anti-communist Indonesian army. In Washington the fall of the Indonesia “domino” into the communist camp was seen as a greater threat than the potential loss of Vietnam. The PKI had three million members and was close to Mao’s China. Like its US and Australian allies, Britain feared a communist Indonesia. But the UK’s objectives did not end there. The British were forced to dedicate huge military and intelligence resources to help the emergent Malaysia counter these Konfrontasi intrusions.īritish policy was to bring an end to the conflict. Sukarno, like many Indonesians, including the PKI, believed the creation of a Malaysian federation was unwarranted regional interference by the British to maintain their colonial dominance. Two years earlier, in response to British plans to create an independent state of Malaysia out of its colonial possessions, Indonesia’s left-leaning President Sukarno launched “Konfrontasi”, or Confrontation, an undeclared war that included military incursions over the border into East Malaysia. The outcome of the turmoil was a brutal and corrupt 32-year military dictatorship whose legacy shapes Indonesia to this day.
Photograph: Universal Images Group/Getty Images
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