By
Benedict R Anderson
North Sumatra was a natural zone for successful recruiting by a reborn
PKI, which had been suppressed by the Dutch after the failed uprisings
of 1926-27 and later by the Japanese military. The single most militant
organization there in the 1950s was the Sarekat Buruh Perkebunan
Indonesia, or Sarbupri, a huge union for plantation laborers, whose mass
base lay in the once indentured Javanese labor force, combined with
leadership mostly provided by educated Javanese and Protestant Batak
activists.
It is useful to note that the PKI Politburo, headed from 1951 on by D N
Aidit, had real trouble with Sarbupri's militancy, since the party, having chosen to join the parliamentary system
(at the national and local levels) was worried by unauthorized local
revolutionary activities that could damage its cautious political
strategy. A number of Sarbupri leaders were demoted, kicked out, or
disciplined. Sarbupri also got political support from the smallholder
migrants of the Japanese occupations whom the returning white planters
were eager to kick out or subdue. Strikes in Tandjung Morawa, in the
plantation belt, only 14 kilometers from Medan's city center even
brought down one of the early constitutional-era cabinets.
Medan proved a specially difficult city to handle from Jakarta because
there was no "traditional" social order, to work with, and no ethnic,
party-political, or religious group in a dominant position. It also
contained, proportionately, the highest number of "foreign Asian"
inhabitants. Situated close to Singapore, it was also notorious for its
talented smugglers. In addition, the fractious local military often
created additional problems.
When the revolution of 1945 broke out, the national army was formed in a
very unusual way. The core of its middle- and upper-echelon leaders had
been low-level NCOs and junior officers in Japanese-created auxiliary
forces trained to help the Imperial armies, if and when the Allies
landed, in local guerilla warfare. Since Sumatra and Java were
controlled by different Japanese armies not subordinated one to the
other, the Peta in Java and the much smaller Giyugun in Sumatra had no organic connection.
Almost all recruits to the new national army were in their 20s, no
matter what posts they held, so that it was usual for commanders to be
chosen by their own men, rather than by any higher authorities. In the
1950s therefore, the High Command in Jakarta had great difficulties in
controlling local, and locally popular, military officers, who
frequently refused to carry out orders and sometimes acted like
warlords.
Medan was a striking case. The Protestant Toba Batak commander for the
seven years between 1950 and 1957 was Colonel Simbolon, who controlled
large-scale smuggling operations through Medan's port, and refused to be
transferred. But when he joined the anti-Jakarta coalition that in
February 1958 started the PRRI rebellion, [1] he was quickly toppled by a
counter-coalition of the High Command, leftist local Javanese juniors,
and the clique of his successor, Lieutenant Colonel Djamin Ginting, a
Karo Batak who claimed to speak for Karos oppressed by their distant
Toba cousins.
Once installed, Ginting turned on the leftist Javanese officers. Many
Islamic organizations, mostly controlled by Minangkabau, who also
supported the PRRI, were crippled by its defeat and the ban on the
Masjumi modernist Islamic party on the grounds of rebellion.
The other crucial development came from the mess created by president
Sukarno's rash decision in December 1957 to nationalize all Dutch
enterprises in retaliation for The Hague's constant refusal to settle
diplomatically the conflict over Western Papua, which was supposed to
have been solved early in the 1950s. Takeovers were initiated by unions
affiliated with the PKI's secular rival, the PNI, but the communists
quickly joined in.
Not for long. The Army High Command used its emergency powers to take
control of all the nationalized enterprises, claiming that they were
vital assets for the nation. For the first time in its history, the
military obtained vast economic and financial resources, especially
plantations, mines, trading companies, utilities, banks, and so forth.
Needless to say, strikes were forbidden in all these sectors. Since
these sectors, owned hitherto by foreigners, were those where leftist
and nationalist unions had had the greatest freedom, the military had to
develop an effective corporatist counterforce.
In partial imitation of the PKI's SOBSI, a nationwide federation of its
affiliated unions, the army created SOKSI. Its name indicated the
intentions of its creators. K stood for karyawan, a corporatist
neologism for "functionary". Its membership included everyone -
management, office staff and white-collar workers, as well as labor. One
could think of SOKSI as an agglomeration of "company" unions. Thus the
"B" in SOBSI, standing for buruh (labor), was to be eliminated.
In the Medan area, and in the face of SOBSI's well-established presence,
the military needed substantial manpower outside its own active ranks
to impose its will on the huge plantation belt. It so happened that an
instrument was at hand.
In 1952, the army chief of staff, the Mandailing Batak A H Nasution,
was suspended for his role in a failed mini-coup in Jakarta. Still young
and ambitious, he decided to form an electoral organization of his own,
which he called IPKI, Ikatan Pendukung Kemerdekaan, or League of
Supporters of Indonesian Independence, described as a movement opposed
to the existing major parties, especially the PKI. In the 1955
elections, it won only four seats, but it was evident that the strongest
of its bases lay in Medan.
In that year, Nasution was reinstated as army chief of staff by prime
minister Burhanuddin Harahap, scion of a clan of Southern Bataks
(Angkola) well connected to the Nasution clan - but he kept control of
IPKI. After the crushing of the PRRI, but with martial law in solid
place, IPKI developed a "youth wing", parallel to those of the major
legal parties, which came to be called Pemuda Pantjasila, nominally
composed of retired soldiers and civilian veterans of the revolution.
The key figure in this Pemuda Pantjasila was another Mandailing Batak, a
serious Medan gangster and ex-boxer called Effendy Nasution. [2] These
gangsters had had their own clashes with the PKI youth organization,
Pemuda Rakjat, over "turf" as well as ideology, and were ferociously
anti-communist. But as members of a "national organization" sponsored by
the top army officer, they had excellent protection, also for their
protection rackets.
Over the six years between 1959 and 1965, the military and the Medan
gangsters collaborated more and more closely with each other. The PP
significantly helped SOKSI to control the plantation belt against
formidable SOBSI/Sarbupri resistance. Thus when Suharto decided to
inaugurate the massacre of communists, the Medan underworld, dressed up
as Pemuda Pantjasila, was ready to "help" and accustomed to carry out
"confidential" army directives.
The contrast with the huge Javanese plantation belt is striking. We have
seen how in this zone the army could rely on the Nahdlatul Ulama's
huge, and legal, mass-organizations, as well as the authority of the
mainly Javanese territorial civilian bureaucracy, manned heavily by
conservative elements in the PNI. In Medan, the NU presence was minimal,
the PNI was factionalized, while the once-powerful modernist Muslim
party Masjumi had been banned in 1959. No united civil bureaucracy
existed in such an ethnically complex melting pot. This is why, when the
massacres drew to an end, NU and Ansor members in Java generally
returned to "normal" religious life (and soon came into conflict with
the military), while Medan's gangsters returned to another "normal
life", of extortion, blackmail, "protection", gambling dens, brothels
and so on, while staying close to the military.
But with new patrons, as time passed. General Nasution, now retired,
gradually faded away. Eventually, in 1980, the PP's leadership went to
Yapto Soerjosoemarno, the Eurasian son of a Surakartan aristocrat and
general, and a Jewish-Dutch mother. Yapto, ice-cold mercenary killer,
and big-game hunter had long been close to the Medan gangsters, but he
was also a relative of Mrs Suharto. Officially, PP was an independent
organization, but it always supported Suharto and his policies, and
helped to enforce the steady series of electoral victories by Golkar,
the regime's nonparty party-of-the-regime. It remained loyal to its
patron right up to his abdication. (Since then, it has found no steady
patron, and its power and unity have visibly declined). Meantime, the
NU, a national party, tried its best to compete with Golkar in
elections, and for a time was the most significant component of the
impotent legal opposition.
Petrus
It is instructive to note what happened when Suharto decided, in 1983,
to liquidate substantial numbers of petty gangsters. (In the press the
killers were initially termed
penembak-penembak misterieus, ie
mysterious shooters, quickly and sardonically given the acronym
"Petrus," that is, Saint Peter, since the operational mastermind was
Catholic Eurasian Lieutenant-General Benny Murdani).
In Java, several thousands were brutally murdered, in the dead of night,
by army commandos in mufti. In Medan, their opposite numbers went
untouched. The reason for the difference is clear. In 1980, Central Java
was unexpectedly rocked by a coordinated wave of violence against local
Chinese, in which petty gangsters played a visible role. Many of these
people had worked as electoral enforcers for Suharto's eminence grise,
Major-General Ali Murtopo, who also headed Suharto's private political
intelligence apparatus (Opsus). For an always-suspicious tyrant, it
looked as if his once-trusted accomplice might be flexing his own
political muscles, to show what his shady apparatus might do before and
during the next elections.
The unexpected and unauthorized anti-Chinese violence hit Suharto's
nerves in another way. Twentieth-century Java had a long history of
popular Sinophobic movements, which could spread alarmingly fast if the
circumstances were suitable. Furthermore, the successes of Suharto's New
Order "development" economy depended heavily on the energies of the
country's Chinese, whose safety and prosperity were excellent signs of
stability in the eyes of foreign investors. Thus the liquidation of
Murtopo's gangster network can be understood both as reassurance to the
Chinese, and as depriving Murtopo himself of any independent political
power. Not long afterward, he was exiled as ambassador in Kuala Lumpur
where he succumbed to a heart attack.
Nothing like this happened in distant Medan, since the gangsters were
reliable allies of the local military, not dangerous minions of a key
figure in Suharto's own Jakarta entourage. If, as periodically happened,
they were behind anti-Chinese violence, the main motive was not
Sinophobia, but a raising of the level of protection payments. [3]
It is instructive, in passing, that in his bizarre semi-ghosted memoir,
Otobiografi: Pikiran, Ucapan dan Tindakan Saya (Autobiography:
My Thoughts, Statements and Actions) Suharto boastfully took
responsibility for these extrajudicial killings, in the following
dishonest manner:
The real problem is that these events
[Petrus] were preceded by fear and anxiety among the people. Threats
from criminals, murders, and so on all happened. Stability was shaken.
It was as though the country no longer had any stability. There was only
fear. Criminals went beyond human limits. They not only broke the law,
but they stepped beyond the limits of humanity. For instance, old people
were robbed of whatever they had and were then killed.
Isn't that inhumane? If you are going to take something, well, take it,
but don't murder. There were women whose wealth was stolen and other
people's wives were even raped by these criminals and in front of their
husbands. Isn't that going too far? Doesn't that demand action? [...]
Naturally, we had to give them the treatment [original in English],
strong measures. And what sort of measures? Yes, with real firmness. But
that firmness did not mean shooting, bang! Bang! Just like that. … But
those who resisted, yes, like it or not, had to be shot. … So the
corpses were left where they were, just like that. This was for shock
therapy [original in English] so the masses would understand that, faced
with criminals, there were still some people who would act and would
control them.
But the dictator never boasted about his masterminding the massacres of 1965.
With this comparative background in mind, it becomes easier to
understand the peculiar impunity exhibited by Joshua's collaborators.
They had been professional criminals all their adult lives, and if some
of the leaders had political ambitions these were essentially local or
provincial, aiming no higher than the governorship of North Sumatra,
and far removed from Jakarta. In power, they pursued traditional
gangsters' interests, money, respect (fear), immunity from the law, and
some political positions.
They were not associated with any nationally important political or
religious organizations beyond Suharto's own Golkar, which they served
obediently. They had worked with the military from well before the
massacres, and carried out the killings of communists with savage
efficiency. They did not organize serious Sinophobic violence after
1966, nor did they put the squeeze on local foreign investors. One could
say that, in an odd way, they even regarded themselves as a sort of
half-hidden left hand of the New Order Leviathan: uncivil servants. [4]
Best of all, when Suharto turned on gangsters in Java, the "boys" were
left untouched. Not surprisingly, there was no question of Abdurrahman
Wahid's plea for forgiveness.
SANGGATTA – Setelah dua hari yang lalu sukses melancarkan
serbuan Amfibi, TNI kembali mengerahkan puluhan kapal perang TNI AL yang
tergabung dalam unsur Komando Tugas Gabungan Pendarat Administrasi
(Kogasgabratmin) dalam Latihan Gabungan (Latgab) TNI Tingkat Divisi
tahun 2013, untuk mendaratkan pasukan beserta seluruh material berupa
perlengkapan tempur dan logistik lainnya, di dermaga Lubuk Tutung,
Sangatta, Kalimantan Timur, Sabtu (11/5/2013).
