50 years ago...
Indonesian Independence
General Suharto has usurped the 50th anniversary of the declaration of independence to deflect international criticism of his corrupt and authoritarian 30 year old dictatorship. The military clique which rules Indonesia has also tried to supress all honest discussion of two of Indonesia's less glorious anniversaries this year. The 1965 coup which brought Suharto to power cost the lives of an estimated one million supporters of the Indonesian Communist Party. And Indonesia's 20 year occupation of East Timor has claimed the lives of a terrifying one in three of the local population. As international solidarity with East Timor and the Indonesian progressive movements mounts, we look back at the history of the country's workers' and progressive movement in the struggle for independence. The author, Subakat, is an independent specialist on Indonesia
DUTCH COLONIALISM PROPER EVOLVED AFTER ALMOST 200 years of war between the Dutch East India Company and local rulers. By the late 18th century, these Dutch merchants has established a trade hegemony in the Indonesian archipelago. But the effort had bankrupted them. The Kingdom of the Netherlands took over the debt, transforming the company's huge administrative apparatus into the Dutch East Indies territory. The Netherlands itself came close to economic collapse in the following years, forced into military actions in Europe (the Napoleonic wars) and on the island of Java, where the insurrection of Prince Diponegoro in the 1920s almost ousted the Dutch from the territory. Once control was re-established, a ruthless cultuurstelsel (forced cultivation) system was imposed in Java, lasting from 1830-1870. Cash crops like indigo, sugar and coffee brought economic recovery to the Netherlands, but devastation to Java, the political and economic centre of the Indonesian archipelago. The systematic and ruthless exploitation of natural resources and labour ruined the basis of self-sufficiency, impoverished the peasants, and left hundreds of thousands dead in repeated famines. The forced cultivation system was abolished in 1870, when the colonial government launched an ambitious modernisation programme. Dutch administrators hoped to facilitate the modern, imperialist exploitation of the colony through administrative reform and infrastructure development. This modernisation drive coincided with the emergence of regional and international political currents opposed to imperialist domination of the region, including the Chinese reformists, anti-Manchu republicans, panIslamists, Islamic modernists, as well as the anti-colonial movements in the Philippines, and political and economic reforms to resist colonial penetration in independent countries like Siam (now Thailand) and Japan. THE FIRST COMMUNIST PARTY IN ASIA These movements did not fail to make themselves felt in Indonesia.! The first 'modern' organisations were limited to the goal of advancing the situation of particular ethnic groups,? but they were soon joined by the first Muslim mass organisation, Sarekat Islam, the first trade unions, notably the VSTP railway workers' union, and the group of (initially mainly Dutch) socialists, the ISDV, formed just before World War One. This was the milieu from which Asia's first Communist Party was formed in 1920. Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) exercised a significant influence in some trade unions and among radical anti-colonialists in the early 1920s. but it was not able to profit significantly from the decline of Sarekat Islam, nor implant itself firmly in the
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* Indonesia most numerous and strategically most important sectors of the Indonesian working class at that time, the agricultural workers on Java and in the East Sumatran plantation belt. After loosing out to modernist Muslim leaders in the contest to control the declining Sarekat Islam, the PKI took a notinsignificant part of former Sarekat militants into a rival organisation. This assured the party some real influence among peasants, and, to an extent, challenged Sarekat Islam's monopoly on religion. But, by mechanically applying the Comintern's strategic guidelines, and prioritising implantation in trade unions, the PKI dismantled this rival Muslim organisation, and lost almost its entire peasant base, in the pursuit of a strategy quite inappropriate for the Indonesian circumstances. Worse still, this move allowed the modernist, bourgeois Muslim leaders to portray themselves as the champions of the cause of the Muslim masses, and the Communists as adherents of a foreign ideology. As a result, when the Communist Party embarked on an armed insurrection in 1926, there was very limited response from the masses.3 Colonial troops quickly gained the upper hand, launching the Teror Putih Pertama (First White Terror). Thousands of activists were executed, jailed, or sent to rot in the malariainfected swamps of the infamous Boven Digul detention camp in New Guinea. A few clandestine activities continued, which helped to keep the revolutionary tradition alive, at least at a local level. But socialism as an organised force played virtually no role until the end of the Japanese occupation. As a result, bourgeois nationalist leaders of secular and Muslim orientation* were able to establish themselves as the virtually uncontested leaders of the independence movement. Not that these leaders were able to build truly national organisations. One of the most prominent features of the pre-war independence movement was its fragmentation on regional, religious and other non-class lines. To a lesser extent, this fragmentation persisted during the subsequent war of independence. The destruction of the PKI in 1926 meant the disappearance of a nucleus of an organisation able to act with some degree of coherence on a national scale. REVOLUSI 1945 The 1945 revolution, and the war of independence (19451949) were the pivotal point in the 20th century history of Indonesia. They also represented a key event in the global struggle of Asian and African peoples to shake off the yoke of colonialism. The uprising started in mid-August 1945, when news of the capitulation of the Japanese occupation forces spread round the country. Militant youth groups began to mushroom all over the country, clashing with the Japanese occupation forces, which, under the provisions of the capitulation agreement, were supposed to "maintain law and order" until the arrival of allied troops. Underground networks joined with youth groups established and trained by the Japanese as auxiliary forces, and began to push Soekarno and Hatta to finally declare the independence which Japanese propaganda had been promising for some time. The two bourgeois nationalist leaders declared the independence of Indonesia on 17 August 1945. By the time the allied troops landed in late September 1945, armed, radical youth had gained control of major cities like 20 December 1995
Bandung, Yogyakarta and Surabaya. After several weeks of heavy fighting, British troops finally rescued the beleaguered Japanese garrison in Semarang, the NorthCentral Javanese port which had been Indonesia's "socialist capital" in the inter-war period. In North Sumatra, republican and 'spontaneous' military units emerged in October, clashing with British troops and Dutch parachutists. The heroic struggle of the youth of Surabaya, who fought one and a half divisions of seasoned British troops for ten long days in October, demonstrated to the world just how ridiculous were the Dutch claims that the Indonesian Republic was a "fabrication of Japanese fascism". PARTIES SLOW TO FORM The immediate pressure was to detend the fledgling republic against allied troops, and the Dutch military and civil administration set up in their wake. As a result, political parties in the liberated zones formed only slowly. Pre-war allegiances, and loyalties to individual dignities or leaders of the resistance were often more important than programme. Groups nominally adhering to the same party on a national level sometimes followed diametrically opposed lines in different regions of the country. The sheer distance involved, and the war itself, made communications difficult, and effective co-ordination virtually impossible. The major differentiation within the Indonesian camp at this time was about whether to negotiate with the Dutch for anything less than unconditional recognition of 100% Indonesian independence. By late 1945, the Indonesian left had established a number of parties. Groups claiming the PKI name came into existence independently at different times and in different places, led by underground members, leaders released from jail, and cadre returning from exile. In this confused situation, the party lacked anything even remotely resembling a programme able to answer the challenge of the revolutionary situation. Thus, until 1948, the PKI on Java backed the various Soekarno cabinets. These in turn favoured conciliation with the Dutch, and as negotiations dragged on they ceded republican sovereignty piece by piece. Strange as it seems now, the harsh repression of the Javanese PKI groups by the republican authorities did not lead them to question the bourgeois Soekarno-Hatta leadership of the republican and independence movement. In November 1945 the PKI was re-established in Medan, capital of the plantation area in north-east Sumatra, by local pre-war cadre. Many of these comrades were closer to the dissident Tan Malaka faction (which had opposed the 1926 insurrection as an "adventure" and subsequently established its own clandestine network) than the mainstream PKI, centred on Java. The new Medan PKI structure initially wielded considerable influence, and controlled a significant number of armed units within the republican guerrilla. But it subsequently lost out against the established bourgeois forces which had grown up in the post-1926 period. Among the factors which contributed to this decline in party influence were the instability of social formations in the Medan region, the still primarily ethnic allegiances of large parts of the population, a lack of experience in systematic party-building, and the over-reliance of the group itself on a few individual leaders.
A couple of PKI groups emerged in western Sumatra at about the same time. This region had not only an impressive record of traditional anti-colonial insurrections, but had also experienced the most intensive participation in the 1926 uprising 6 These new PKI groups? still exhibited one important feature of the pre-war West Sumatran Communist movement: they did not dissociate themselves from Islam. As a result, they could and did contest the dominant position of the modernist and traditionalist religious leaders of the region much more effectively than the explicitly secular-oriented leaders of the central party were able to do. In early 1946, Tan Malaka used his almost legendary reputation in militant nationalist circles to launch the Persatuan Perjuangan (Fighting Front), which united a vast spectrum of the more militant political and guerrilla formations, based on the following common plattorm • Negotiations only AFTER the Dutch recognise complete Indonesian sovereignty and independence. • A people's government as opposed to the formation of governments by the non-elected leaders of the pre-war elite]. • A people's army [as opposed to the bourgeois republican's drive to professionalise the armed forces] • Disarmament of the Japanese. • Conclusion of the issue of the European internees. • Expropriation of enemy property in the plantation sector. • Expropriation of enemy property in the industrial sector. This programme not only united a broad range of proindependence groups, but went much further in its demands than the conditions which the Sjahir cabinet put to the Dutch only two months later.º When even these conditions were not met, Sjahir capitulated further, simply asking the Dutch to recognise republican control over the islands of Java and Sumatral°. The PKI continued to give political and military support to this government and its capitulationist policies. Party leaders were rewarded with cabinet posts and seats in the non-elected parliament the National Committee (KNIP). The Tan Malaka faction, unfortunately, resorted to all kinds of manoeuvring, which eventually made them easy prey for the republican establishment.!! THE TIDE RECEDES The revolutionary tide began to recede. Endless compromises with the Dutch had deprived the republican authority of effective control over large parts of its territory. The Tan Malaka-inspired sections of the left were destroyed. In 1948 the repression began to turn against the PKI and the remaining left-wing military organisations. The Hatta cabinet began an explicitly policy of making the republic acceptable to American imperialism by purging progressive commanders and units in the republican army, using the pretext of "rationalisation". The PKI response was a 180 degree revision of its policy!2 towards "defending the Republic, " including the merging of the party with other left forces. 13 But this turn was too quick, and laid the party open to provocation from right wing government forces, which lured some of the PKI-inspired military units, followed by the political wing, in a short-
Indonesia * lived insurrection against the Soekarno-Hatta government. Liberated areas near Madiun were quickly re-taken by troops loyal to the Hatta government. The subsequent "Second White Terror" (Teror Putih ke-2) cost the lives of almost the entire PKI leadership, killed by government troops in cold blood when the Dutch attacked the capital, Yogyakarta. Tan Malaka was the only leader of some standing to escape the Dutch during this second period of aggression. He tried to revive mass mobilisation on the basis of his 1946 Fighting Front. US imperialism was so alarmed by the prospects of the opening of another zone of prolonged nationalist guerrilla war, which, under the influence of leaders like Tan Malaka, were likely to ripen into social revolution. The US was only too aware of the advancing Chinese revolution, and the upheaval in Vietnam, Malaya, and other parts of the region. To stabilise the situation, the US came to the aid of its chosen disciples: they threatened the Dutch with the termination of the Marshall plan14, which obliged the Netherlands to transfer sovereignty over the entire territory of the Dutch East Indies to the Soekarno-Hatta leadership at THE ADIT LEADERSHIP The Dutch imposed a bogy federal system, comprising the Republic of Indonesia, and a range of Dutch-created puppet states. The inclusion of Western New Guinea into the Indonesian territory was "postponed". The Dutch-made states collapsed within a few months, so that, by 17 August 1950 the Dutch neo-colonial project had clearly failed. In a sense, however, this date also marked the last major crime of Dutch colonialism: discrediting the idea of federalism, the only way to realise the Indonesian motto, "Unity in Diversity" in a nation of such enormous heterogeneity. By 1950, the revolutionary momentum had ebbed. Indeed, all kinds of reactionary movements began to raise their heads. The short-lived Republic of the South Moluccas reflected a genuine fear of domination from Java. But it has to be seen in the context of an indigenous regional colonial elite trying to secure its privileges, and soliciting support in Dutch neo-colonialist circles. Nevertheless, the centralist arrogance of the government in Java, and the lack of sensitivity of an elite which has consistently confused Javanisation with nation-building would, in the coming decades, ensure that a range of local leaders who played on regionalist sentiment for the sake of enhancing their private interest, benefit from a considerably wider social base than would otherwise have been the case. Regionalist and religious issues were intertwined in the Darul Islam (Islamic State) movement, which wielded considerable strength first in West Java, later among former guerrillas in South Sulawesi (led by Kahar Mazakar) who had been refused integration into the post-independence national army. Darul Islam also won support among the Ibnu Hadjar gangs in South Kalimantan. These movements had already spread terror among the population, and considerably undermined government control in their respective regions. In 1953 they were joined by a rebellion in the North Sumatran province of Aceh, led by the notorious Daud Beureuh.
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* Indonesia The establishment of firm bourgeois rule and stable integration into the imperialist structures of the cold war proved to be very difficult tasks. The political framework corresponded very poorly to the aspirations of the millions who had fought for the republic. For whole sections of the population, these structures appeared more and more alien. This sparked all kinds of regionalist, religious and, sometimes hidden behind these two forms, social upheaval. Soekarno had proposed independence as a "golden bridge" towards a "just and prosperous society". Reality was quite ditterent for Indonesia's small peasants, plantation workers, industrial workers, low-ranking civil servants, and all those urban dwellers depending on the "informal" sector for their income. The cynical imposition of almost the entire debt of the Dutch East Indies, including the enormous cost of the colonial warfare of 1945-1949 left the finances of the Indonesian Republic in a bad shape. This decision of the American "arbiter" in 1949 was one more factor behind the growing, vague teeling that national revolution was insufficient, and would have to be completed by social revolution. The ruling elite itself was deeply divided. None of the parties had any electoral legitimacy. And the bickering for power and personal influence between civilian secular and civilian Muslim parties, their respective supporters in the army, and President Soekarno himself, did much to erode the system from within. This erosion was highlighted from time to time by events like the coup attempt of 17 October 1952. Army circles linked to the "Right Wing Socialists" of the Indonesian Socialist Party (PSI).15 They were outmanoeuvred by Soekarno, who aptly played on the population's longing for unity, just as he had done before, to curb support for the PKI insurrection at Madiun. On the international scene, the Dutch effectively blocked Indonesia's full integration into the imperialist camp (this was the period of cold war) by persistently refusing to make any commitment to the New Guinea ("Irian") issue. Indonesian governments, like the Sukiman cabinet in 1951, had tried to please the United States by large-scale arrests of left-wing politicians and activists under the most absurd accusations. But the continuous confrontation with the Dutch kept alive a basic anti-imperialist sentiment. The truce in Korea and the Vietnamese victory at Dien Bien Phu suggested that there was a certain margin of manoeuvre. Korea was the first example, since the Ruso-Japanese war of 1905, where an Asian nation resisted a Western power in an all-out military confrontation. Soekarno began looking for ways of evading outright cooperation with either camp in the cold war. This idea would guide the Bandung conference. In the 1960s it was reformulated as the concept of New Emerging Forces (NEFOs) as opposed to OLDEFOs (Old Established Forces). This was, in broad terms, the theatre in which a new generation of PKI leaders tried to rebuild the party in the first half of the 1950s, based on the scraps of the Madiun movement. PKI Chairman D.N. Aidit and his chief aides Lukman and Njoto undertook a drastic reorientation and reorganisation of the party. Their strategic guideline was to integrate the PKI firmly into the nationalist camp, to present the party as the staunchest defenders of the Republic and, at the same time, build a mass base through the BTI peasant front and the SOBSI trade union federation. These 22 December 1995 organisations had not been discredited, as they had not backed the Madiun insurrection. The new turn also qualified the party's former defiant stance towards Soekarno and Hatta, now trying to build an alliance with the former against the latter. By the time the first post-independence elections were held, in 1955, this strategy appeared to have paid off. The PKI won about 16% of the vote, scoring considerably higher in certain regions of Central and East Java. This put the party firmly into the "big four", alongside the nationalist PNI, and the two big Muslim parties, NU and Masjumi. But this strategy was not without pitfalls. The line between anti-communists and those bourgeois nationalists and "patriotic" traditionalist Muslims prepared to co-operate with Soekarno was blurred. And Soekarno's numerous enemies blamed the PKI for the shortcomings of the regime. This problem was became particularly severe in the economic crisis of the early 1960s. [to be continued] Notes 1. The anti-colonial movement began to use this name to refer to the "Dutch East Indies" soon after World War One. 2. Like the Overseas Chinese Tiong Hoa Hwe Koan, the Javanese Boedi Oetomo, and a large number of regional youth organisations. 3. It should not be forgotten that this insurrection came barely two decades after the last resistance wars against the Dutch by local rulers like the Kingdom of Klungkong in Bali, or the Sultanate of Aceh in North Sumatra. 4. Including men like Soekarno, Hatta, Sjahrir and Haji Agus Salim. 5. As the Japanese advanced at the beginning of World War Two, the Dutch colonial administration deported a number of detainees from the Boven Digul camp to Australia. 6. In early 1927, the local PKI sustained a two week military campaign against Dutch colonial troops. This struggle was much more intensive than the earlier PKI insurrection in Java. 7. Like the PKI Baso and KI Loka Islamy groups. 8. A leading member of the party until his exile in 1922, Tan Malaka worked as a Comintern envoye for Southeast and East Asia for several years, also trying to establish an underground network in Indonesia. At the 4th Congress of the Comintern in 1922, he opposed the Comintern line on Pan-Islamism vigorously, but without success. Tan Malaka was perhaps the only left leader who preserved and, until 1945, deepened a strategic understanding of the relationship between social revolution, national liberation and Islam in Indonesia. He retumed to Indonesia in secret in around 1944 and worked underground until the outbreak of the revolution. 9. Recognition of the sovereignty of the Republic of Indonesia over the whole territory of the former Dutch East Indies. The Republic would then guarantee the rights of minority groups and commit itself to an open-door policy for foreign capital. The Republic would also recognise and take over all debts which the Dutch East Indies incurred before March 1942 [date of the Japanese occupation]. The Republic of Indonesia would then participate in a federation with the kingdom of the Netherlands, with 'shared responsibility for foreign relations and defence. 10. In the 1950s, this group came to be called Soska (from sosialis kanan, Right-wing Socialists). 11. Tan Malaka's heterogeneous group of pre-1926 cadre became very disenchanted with the PKI leadership, among other reasons being the behaviour of certain cadre during intemment in Boven Digul, and during the period of collaboration with the Dutch and allied war against the Japanese, in line with the Soviet Union's anti-fascist line. Some of the Tan Malaka faction's youth leaders never developed any sense of systematic party work. 12. The architect of this tum was Musso, one of the pre-1926 leaders, subsequently in exile in Moscow. He commanded considerable prestige as the organiser of illegal KI cells during the 1930s, when he travelled clandestinely in Indonesia. 13. Including the left-wing of the Socialist Party, and the Labour Party. 14. A US-funded package of aid and loans to rebuild the western European capitalist countries. 15. Partai Sosialis Indonesia. A bourgeois pro-imperialist formation headed by Sjahir, the first prime minister after the revolution. Members of this party, like Professor Sumitro, are also among the architects of the present fascist Suharto regime's economic policy.