The PKI – Indonesian Communist Party: Indonesia

Although it is not spoken off these days in Indonesia, at one time twenty-five years ago the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) was the largest aspiring revolutionary party in the world. It had a membership of around three and a half million and lasted a mere six months having been effectively destroyed resulting in over a million people being killed. The PKI came and went and finally it was crushed for good in a tragic manner with the events occurring on September 30th 1965.

I was reading an absolutely hilarious article but somewhat thought provoking article by Anissa S. Febrina on what’s in a name. Have a read for yourself:

The Hammer and the Sickle or Sticks and Stones?

What is in a (bad) name? From the front seat of a public minivan, I found out that a bad name lasts forever, especially when it involves a “brilliant” brainwashing regime and the three letters P, K and I.

It was a hot day — which seemed to have made everyone cranky — when I overheard a skinny old man who had just finished filling in a pothole with crushed bricks ask a minivan driver for money.

“C’mon, just give me Rp 500,” said the man shoving a black plastic bucket right under the driver’s nose.

“Later, lah. I just started my shift,” said the driver, giving the old man a look that said “I did not ask you to fix the road, so do not ask for money“.

OK, so there was nothing special about the conversation, at least until the old man called out “F@#*@, PKI!“, a worse curse than raising your middle finger and shouting “Commie!”

Wait a minute, was the old man referring to the stingy driver as a member of the PKI, the defamed and defunct Indonesian Communist Party?

Was there a picture of a hammer and sickle on the side of his minivan?

Now, I am puzzled.

As part of a generation born in the early 1980s, I am among those who cannot erase the image from their minds of members of independent women’s group Gerwani, which was supposedly affiliated with the PKI, slashing Army generals with razor blades.

OK, it was only a movie aired on state station TVRI every year, but back then I was a child for whom there was a blurred dividing line between horror images and reality.

Later, in my early teens, my mother told me how her Gerwani neighbor had already dug graves in her backyard for a host of Army officials “from 1965”.

And my grandfather’s name was among those on the list.
You’d think I would have developed a terrifying image of the PKI, Communists, leftists or whatever it is you want to call them.
Mostly, thanks to the systemic brainwashing created by whoever has been in authority since 1966.

The result is not only the difficulties that Indonesians in general have had in separating the G30S or the September 30th movement with the acronym PKI, but also the perspective that everything negative can be attributed to the PKI and its arms.

Or is it the other way around? I am still puzzled.

I am not the only one who has had this experience.

A friend told me that one day, not long after the 1998 student and civil society movement that toppled Soeharto, a crowd, including several college students, gathered at the Bandung Institute of Technology campus to watch footage of soldiers beating student protesters.

“PKI! PKI!” shouted the crowd.

Who were they calling PKI? The student protesters or the soldiers?

Another friend said her classmates had labeled their “mean” female math teacher a Gerwani member.

Such name calling, done intentionally or otherwise, shows how in our subconsciousness, the PKI and communists are always the bad guys.

And that label is currently applied to anything deemed to be a public enemy.

An attack carried out last week by “religious” thugs from the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) and the Betawi Brotherhood Forum (FBR) against members of new political party the United National Liberation Party (Papernas) is another example of the subconscious, or is it fully conscious, use of the label.

Previously, during the registration of the party, attackers from the same groups rallied with banners saying

“Papernas=PKI=Communist” and “Communism has no place in our country“.

I am in no position to discuss political ideologies, but surely someone has taken advantage of the PKI’s bad name and our phobia to discuss what actually happened during Indonesia’s two bloodbaths involving communism.

Communism itself is not a perfect system. Its failure comes from the fact that it denies the very human trait, that each individual wants wealth and freedom.

Honestly, I would want to visit Cuba for a month or two, but I would not want to live there for the rest of my life.

Indonesia’s decision not to talk about communism does not help cure the phobia.

The result is both blind opposers and blind supporters of the ideology.

Students now eagerly read Pramoedya‘s works, Guevara’s biography and Indonesian book Left is Sexy and even download translations of the Communist Manifesto from the internet.

Some do it out of pure curiosity, some just because it is trendy.
Some can explain to you the attributes and flaws of communism, some can only reply with “it sounds cool“.

But, one thing is for sure, witnessing the abuse of the terms PKI and communism, we need to be able to talk openly about it.

About our country’s deepest phobia — which has been preserved by the authority’s reluctance to let the public freely discuss what is wrong with our history records from 1948 to 1965.

People did not oppose a recent state ban on history books that fail to mention the PKI in defense of communism. They want our country to get its history straight and admit that innocents have suffered because of the PKI label.

Whatever their ideology is, the ones in power and those who have held power for too long tend to be oppressors. But the more educated and better informed a society is, the less risk we are at of being oppressed and being toyed with.

Adults are people who can cool-headedly discuss their different ideologies. Name-calling is for children.

Anissa S. Febrina