Vol. 4, No. 25 August 12, 1966
DEATH BY STARVATION IN INDONESIA'S PRISONS
LAP correspondent T. Jeff Williams filed a dispatch from Klaten, Indonesia, that does not appear to have been widely reproduced in the Western press. It offers new facts about the horrible anti-Communist purge that began in Djakarta last October. More importantly, the article indicates that the slaughter is still going on, although in a quieter way. The Johnson administration is anxious to get on with the business of knitting relations with the new regime so as to help consolidate its ferocious dictatorship. But for publicity purposes on the home front, Johnson prefers the anti-Communist generals to appear with clean hands and not dripping with fresh blood. Perhaps that is why the dispatch was not considered fit to print in the major papers of the USA. The text below is from the July 17 issue of the Japan Times which is published in Tokyo. ]
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The long lines of prisoners, three abreast and wearing tattered sarongs, shuffled down the dusty road toward the river.
A sleepy-eyed soldier, his rifle carried loosely in the crook of his arm, ambled beside the 200 or more men he was guarding. They were going for their bath in this Central Java town.
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No one attempted to escape, although any of them easily could have. If one ran, 10 would be shot.
They were Communists -- or at least arrested on such charges. But most of them, eager to talk and even more eager for a cigarette, claimed they didn't know why they were arrested.
But in some ways they could consider themselves lucky. They at least didn't have their throats cut during the massive anti- Communist bloodbath that swept this emerald archipelago in the fall of last year.
The killings began a few weeks after a Communist-—backed coup d'état was attempted in Djakarta on Oct. 1. [It has not at all been proved that the attempted coup was "Communist-backed."] Six top generals were brutally murdered before the band of rebels was overthrown.
The act seemed to snap something in the minds of Indonesians from Sumatra to Bali. [It was not that mystic. The top command of the army initiated the purge.] The time had come, they said, to cleanse Indonesia of Communists. Until the coup attempt, the Indonesian Communist Party was at the peak of its powers here, third largest in the world.
Then came the nights of the long knives, the nights of terror in the jungle-darkened.kampongs and the ill-lit city streets. Heads began to roll. How many were actually killed may never be known. Some officials in Western embassies in Djakarta put the figure at 300,000 within three to four months. Some say more but there is increasing evidence that the figure is considerably lower. (The AP correspondent fails to mention what the "increasing evidence" con- ~ sists or. The latest estimates put the number of killed at around 500 ,000
The killing hasn't ‘stopped yet. And the brutality continues. In Indonesia, a Communist is something below a snake or a rat. To kill him or her is considered a national obligation, not murder.
In this quiet farming town, a prison director talked openly of how the Communists were being treated in his domain.
He laughed with mild embarrassment as he discussed without emotion how one or more Communist prisoners died in his prison every day from sheer starvation. The Communists there were given 200 grams [about seven ounces] of cornmeal each day on which to live. Unless fed by friends or relatives who bring food from outside, they can't survive, the director said.
In this particular prison, the Communists are kept 400 to a cell block which is 50 meters long and 25 meters wide. They still ~ wear the same unwashed rags of clothes they were wearing when arrested months ago.
Behind the dirty white walls of the prison, 4,000 men were
kept. There was only space. for 1,000, the director said, again with a little laugh. He said 8,000 Communists were originally arrested in Klaten but he was vague as to what happened to the 4,000 not in prison. Some died in other areas when they were thrown from the prisons to waiting crowds who beat and ripped them to death, the director said.
.... There appeared little future for the Communist prisoners. If left in the jail, many appeared destined to die from starvation. One would hope. to be taken to a large penal island off the South Java coast where thousands more Communists are kept.
_, But until then, they kept their mouths shut. The director. a laughingly explained that the guards had the authority to open fire with submachine guns into the.cell blocks if the prisoners became a unruly. The cells had rung to the chatter of gunfire and the screams |. of the dying several times, he admitted. Now they had learned to aa keep quiet.
The prisoners, such as those in Central Java prisons, were the.survivors. Those who died by the thousands were killed by normally mild.mannered farmers. and shopowners during the weeks of violence that began last November or December.
‘Details of the killings came from all levels of the people -shopowners in North Sumatra, coconut farmers in Central Java, an optical worker in Bali, rice farmers and youths.
In the East Java town of Blitar, in. the shadow of rumbling Mt. Kelud volcano, a destitute farmer whose crops were destroyed by a recent volcanic eruption, told his story. Rachman, 25, and the father of two children with another on the way, said the killings around his village began in December. He was part of an execution squad trained by Ansor, a Moslem youth wing. They sought their victims in the still of the night. A frail house::was surrounded, then the door was kicked.open. By the flickering light of a kerosene lamp, four men eld: the struggling victim. Rachman sawed at the throat.
But for Rachman, one killing was enough. It turned his stomach and he never took part again, he said. Others took pride in theiz> work, such as Mohammed, a-Moslem youth organizer living in Bali.. At» 27, Mohammed worked in an optical shop and his fat bulk indicated he at least ate well.
Mohammed's spree began on Dec. 16 and: ran until the end of January, as did most of the killings on the island of the gods. But ;.. if the gods of Bali:minded the bloodshed, they gave no sign. Mohan-.: -.... med killed 72 by his own count. His underfed companion bragged of killing 50.
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