Indonesia's killing fields

It was one of the bloodiest massacres of the 20th century, well hidden from the outside world - the systematic killing of communists or alleged communists in Indonesia in 1965 and 1966. Researchers estimate that between one and three million people died.

After the military accused the PKI of being behind the murder of the seven military men, PKI members all over Indonesia were hunted down, put in prison without trial, tortured or killed. Civilians and students from religious boarding schools were used as executioners. And the military released some of the most violent criminals from prisons and ordered them to carry out executions. Hundreds of dead bodies were found floating in rivers every day.

Ndoren is an old man who does not know his real age. He has only two teeth left, but smiles a lot. He told us he was an executioner. We went with him to Luweng Tikus, or the Rat hole as local people call it - the location where soldiers forced him to kill more than 40 people, some of whom he knew personally. In front of the 42 metre deep hole he told us his story, continuously warning us not to go any closer. The alleged communists were brought in by the military after walking in the dark for hours, with their hands tied. They were lined up in front of the hole. Then, one by one, Ndoren hit each of them on the back of the head with a crowbar and threw them into the hole. He said they hardly struggled, as if they had already accepted that they were going to die. The stench from the hole was so bad that villagers far away could not bear it. The hole was covered until 2002 when human rights activists opened it up and found human bones and skulls inside.

The Indonesian killings of 1965–1966 were an anti-communistm purge following a failed coup in Indonesia. The most widely accepted estimates are that more than 500,000 people were killed. The purge was a pivotal event in the transition to the "New Order"; the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) was eliminated as a political force, and the upheavals led to the downfall of president Sukarno and the commencement of Suharto's thirty-year presidency. The failed coup released pent-up communal hatreds which were fanned by the Indonesian Army, which quickly blamed the PKI. Communists were purged from political, social, and military life, and the PKI itself was banned. The massacres began in October 1965, in the weeks following the coup attempt, and reached their peak over the remainder of the year before subsiding in the early months of 1966. They started in the capital, Jakarta, and spread to Central and East Java and, later, Bali. Thousands of local vigilantes and army units killed actual and alleged PKI members. Although killings occurred across Indonesia, the worst were in the PKI strongholds of Central Java, East Java, Bali, and northern Sumatra. It is possible that over one million people were imprisoned at one time or another.