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US accounts of 1965 may not be accurate: RI
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On the rise: A communist symbol dominates Gelora Bung Karno Stadium, Senayan, in 1965 at a massive Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) rally. (Frank Palmos/File)
T
he Indonesian government is taking with a grain of salt archival United States government accounts of what happened during the last days of former president Sukarno when the Indonesian Army launched a campaign to purge thousands of members of the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).
A trove of US government files containing diplomatic dispatches from its embassy in Jakarta on the 1965-1966 mass killings of the PKI’s cadres and alleged sympathizers were released on Tuesday, providing some new details on what transpired at the time.
Jakarta, however, has downplayed the accounts, saying the documents reflected the “US point of view of the incident” that needed to be fact-checked first.
“The files contain communications that involved the US Embassy in Indonesia at that time, but we need to check the accuracy of the documents,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arrmanatha Nasir told reporters on Wednesday.
Some 30,000 pages of files from the US Embassy in Jakarta reveal US diplomats’ detailed and ongoing knowledge of the political upheaval that swept through Indonesia at the height of the Cold War in 1965.
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In a telegram dated Oct. 12, 1965 sent by then US ambassador to Indonesia Marshall Green to the US secretary of state, Green reported a conversation with the German ambassador to Indonesia, who revealed the possibility of the Army deposing Sukarno.
