Newly
declassified files from the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta confirm the
extent to which American officials supported the killings of hundreds
of thousands of Indonesians in the 1960s, as the U.S. worked to keep
Southeast Asia from falling into Communist control.
The U.S.
supported a narrative pushed by the Indonesian military that blamed
Communists for a failed coup in 1965, targeting the anti-American
President Sukarno.
This
narrative emboldened the Indonesian military, paramilitaries and
others to oversee the killings of 500,000 Indonesians who were
suspected Communists, including students and union members.
“The
U.S. was following what was happening very closely, and if it weren’t
for its support, you could argue that the army would never have felt
the confidence to take power,” said John Roosa, author of the
book Pretext for Mass Murder, about the events, in an interview with
the New York Times.
In a
secret cable sent from the Embassy to Washington, D.C. in November
1965, an official detailed the efforts of provinces to repress
suspected members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and its
executions of prisoners as a means of controlling prison populations.
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