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Politics
Volume 2 | Issue 4 | May 2008 | 











 
Suharto the killer!
Editor

 

“They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that’s not all bad. Here is a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment”.

Suharto the killer!
Shame upon those western leaders and the media that began to hint the fact that Suharto was a dictator and killer only when his position became untenable, with his people in open revolt. The west not only backed Suharto throughout the 32 years of his ignominious regime of repression and bloodbath that he launched in 1965 to wipe out Communists. He annihilated not only communists, but also other political rivals. Yes, His was a democratic genocide!
Just for an example we reproduce here an article by Kathy Kadane describing how the CIA supplied Suharto with death lists.

CIA supplied Suharto with death lists.

The US Govt played a significant role in one of the worst massacres of the century by supplying the names of thousands of communist party leaders to the Indonesian army, which hunted down the leftists and killed them, former US diplomats say. For the first time US officials acknowledge that in 1965 they systematically compiled comprehensive lists of communist operatives, from top echelons down to village cadres. As many as five thousand names were furnished to the Indonesian army, and the Americans later checked off the names of those who had been killed or captured, according to the US officials.

The Killings were part of a massive bloodletting that took an estimated 2, 50,000 lives (Tally of the massacre varies from author to author and from observer to observer. Many believe that a total of 5.5 lakhs were killed in the spree- Editor- www.thanalonline.com).

The purge of the Partai Kommunis Indonesia (PKI- Indonesian Communist Party- editor) was part of a US drive to ensure that communists ddid not come to power in the largest country in S. E. Asia where the United States was fighting an undeclared war in Vietnam.

Silent for a quarter of a century, former senior US diplomats and CIA officers declared in lengthy interviews how they aided former Indonesian President Suharto , then army leader, in the attacks on the PKI.

A BIG HELP TO THE ARMY
‘It really was a big help to the army’, said Robert J Martens , a former member of the United States Embassy’s political section who is now a consultant to the state department. “They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that’s not all bad. Here is a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment”. Martens, an experienced analyst of communist affairs, headed an embassy group of State Department and CIA offices that spent two years compiling lists. He later delivered them to an army intermediary.

People named in the lists were captured in overwhelming numbers, Martens said, adding, ‘It’s a big part of the reason the PKI has never come back’.

In 1968, the Washington Post published an estimate that 500,000 were killed in the purge and the brief civil war it triggered. In a 1968 report, the CIA estimated there had been 250,000 deaths, and called the carnage ‘one of the worst murders of the 20th century’.

The lists were a detailed who’s who of the leadership of the party of 3 million members, and leaders of the ‘mass organizations’ such as the PKI national labour federation, women’s and youth groups.

‘I know we had a lot of information’ about the PKI, than the Indonesians (sic) themselves’, the former Ambassador Marshall Green said. Martens told me’ on a number of occasions….. That the govt did not have very good information on the communist set-up, and he gave me the impression that this information was superior to anything they had’.
The lists were turned over piecemeal, Martens said, beginning at the top of the Communist Organization. Martens supplied thousands of names to an Indonesian emissary over a number of months, he said. The emissary was an aide to Adam Malik, an Indonesian Minister who was an ally of Suharto in the attack on the communists.
Interviewed in Jakarta, the aide, Tirta Kentjana(‘Kim”) Adhyatman, confirmed he had met with Martens and received lists of thousands of names, which he in turn gave to Adam Malik. Malik passed them on to Suharto’s Head Quarters, he said.

Embassy officials carefully recorded the subsequent destruction of the PKI organization. Using Martens lists as a guide, they checked off the names of the captured and assassinated PKI leaders , tracking the steady dismantling of the party apparatus, former US officials said.

Information about who had been captured and killed came from Suharto’s Head Quarters, according to Joseph Lazarsky , deputy CIA station chief in Jakarta in 1965. Suharto’s Jakarta Hq was the central collection point for military reports from around the country detailing the capture and killing of PKI leaders, Lazarsky said.
“We were getting a good account in Jakarta of who was being picked up”, Lazarsky said. “ The army had a shooting list’ of about 4000 or 5000 people.

Detention centres were set up to hold those who were not killed immediately. ‘ They did n’t have enough goon squads to zap them all, and some individuals were valuable for interrogation’, Lazarsky said. ‘ The infrastructure was zapped almost immediately. We knew what they were doing. We knew they would keep a few and save them fro Kangaroo courts, but Suharto and his advisors said, “ if you keep them alive, you have to feed them”.

Kathy Kadane is a former investigator with the foreign affairs committee in the US Congress.


Post Script:- The recent attacks in Delhi and Poona on the Communist party offices and the attacks on the person of the communist cadre successively organized by Fascist goons in different parts of the country, including Kannur, Palakkad, Thrissur and other places in Kerala, and the array of incidents arising out from Nandigram give us a hint that the international anti-communist junta has decided upon annihilating the communist party of India( Marxist). Beware, lest the dog should bite. PKI was annihilated when it was rendering support to Dr. Sukarno Regime. It must speak volumes to the communist leaders of India. After the Chinese Party the CPI (M) is the largest Communist movement in the world.

Editor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 
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