From Petrus to Ninja: Death Squads in Indonesia

Abstract

Since the declaration of independence in 1945, Indonesia has had much experience of political violence. In addition to the war of independence, fought against the Dutch from 1945 to 1949, Indonesia has experienced civil wars, secessionist rebellions, pogroms, a bloody annexationist war, and state repression in various forms. A fundamentalist Muslim movement, Darul Islam, fought the Indonesian Republic in many regions from 1948 until the early 1960s; a conservative anticommunist rebellion in the late 1950s used several of the outer islands of the archipelago as a base for attempting to force a new government on Jakarta. Armed secessionist movements have been active in the provinces of Maluku, Aceh, and Irian Jaya (West New Guinea), while in 1965–66 anticommunist forces launched a massacre of leftists in which perhaps half a million people died. In 1975, moreover, Indonesia occupied the former Portuguese colony of East Timor and suppressed the local nationalist movement in a series of brutal campaigns. No reliable figures exist on the death toll from this occupation, but the figure for the fifteen years 1975–90 seems likely to exceed 60,000, or 10 percent of the Timorese population.