Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has been heavily involved in the 1965 murderous putsch in Indonesia — the guest nation of this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. This was confirmed in secret documents from the Bundestag, the German Parliament. According to BND President at the time, Gerhard Wessel’s manuscript for a talk he delivered to a session of the Bundestag’s “Confidential Committee” in June 1968, the BND did more than merely support the Indonesian military in their blood-soaked “liquidation of the CPI” (Communist Party of Indonesia) — resulting in the murder of hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions — with advisors, equipment and finances. Suharto, who subsequently took power, had even attributed a “large part … of the success” of the operation to the BND. Up to now, mainly the US-American assistance to the putsch has been known. The putsch, and the more than 30 year-long dictatorship that followed — which also had been reliably promoted by West Germany — are important themes being presented by Indonesian writers at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. To this day, the German government has refused to allow an investigation of the BND’s support for the putsch and the Indonesian military’s excessive brutality.
Hundreds of Thousands Dead
The Indonesian putsch, bringing Maj. Gen. Haji Mohamed Suharto to power in Jakarta, began in October 1965 as a reaction to an attempted coup d’état, killing several officers on September 30. Suharto’s dictatorial reign lasted until 1998. The attempted coup was falsely attributed to the Communist Party of Indonesia (CPI). Subsequently, the military launched excessively brutal operations against all genuine and suspected members and sympathizers of the communist party. Hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions, were murdered; millions were imprisoned. The exact number is still unknown. The crimes committed at the time by the military have never really been brought to light.
50 to 100 Victims Each Night
One of the things never brought to light is what support western powers had given to the Suharto putsch. US complicity, having had the best relations to the Indonesian armed forces, has, to some extent, already been exposed. According to experts, for example, by 1965, around 4,000 Indonesian officers had been trained in US military installations as well as high-ranking officers having been trained in counter-insurgency on the basis of US field manuals at Indonesia’s elite military institutes.[1] December 2, 1965, the US ambassador gave his consent to providing financial support to the “Kap-Gestapu” movement, a movement — as he put it — “inspired by the army, even though comprised of civilian action groups,” which “shouldered the task of the ongoing repressive measures against Indonesia’s Communist Party.“[2] The ambassador must have known what this would mean. November 13, his employees had passed on information from the Indonesian police indicating, “between 50 and 100 members of the CPI in Eastern and Central Java were being killed each night.” April 15, the embassy had admitted, “it did not know if the actual number” of murdered CPI activists “was not closer to 100,000 or 1,000,000.” In spite of the mass murder, the US ambassador in Jakarta reported back to Washington (August 10, 1966) that the authorities in Jakarta had been provided a list of the leading CPI members.[3]
“Reliable Friend of Germany”
Agencies of the West German government had also been involved in the putsch. The BND had supported “Indonesia’s military intelligence service’s 1965 defeat of a left-wing putsch in Jakarta, with submachine guns, shortwave radios and money (with a total value of 300,000 DM),” reported “Der Spiegel” in March 1971.[4] Twelve weeks later, the magazine added that “a commando of BND men” had “trained military intelligence service operatives in Indonesia” and “relieved their CIA colleagues, who were under the heavy pressure of anti-American propaganda.“[5] By “supplying Soviet rifles and Finnish ammunition, the BND instructors” were even actually intervening in that “civil war.” If one can believe the BND’s founder, Reinhard Gehlen, Bonn, at the time, had the best contacts to leading military officers. In his “Memoirs,” published in 1971, Gehlen wrote, “two of Germany’s reliable friends” were among the Indonesian officers, murdered September 30, including “the longtime and highly revered military attaché in Bonn, Brig. Gen. Pandjaitan.” During the putsch, the BND was “in the fortunate position of being able to provide the West German government with timely and detailed reports — from excellent sources — … on the progress of those days, which had been so crucial for Indonesia.“[6]
An Excellent Resident
Other indications have emerged from the research published by the expert of intelligence services, Erich Schmidt-Eenboom and the political scientist, Matthias Ritzi. Their findings confirmed that there was close coordination between the BND and CIA. In April 1961, BND headquarters in Pullach had informed the US Central Intelligence Agency that it had “an excellent Chief of Station” in Jakarta, writes Schmidt-Eenboom. The CIA thought the BND was referring to Rudolf Oebsger-Röder, a former colonel of the SS working in the Reich Security Central Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt) in Nazi Germany, who joined West Germany’s Organization Gehlen in 1948 and was later on post in Indonesia, as a correspondent for the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.[7] The BND had maintained Oebsger-Röder on its staff until the mid-‘60s. In mid-January 1964, a high-ranking CIA representative paid Gehlen a visit and asked him how the West Germans were handling the developments in Indonesia, explain Schmidt-Eenboom and Ritzi. Gehlen told him that he is keeping Bonn up-to-date, but does not yet know how the chancellery intends to proceed.
“A Large Part BND”
The manuscript for a talk BND President Gerhard Wessel presented June 21 1968 to the Bundestag’s Confidential Committee provides more details. In the form of notes, Wessel gave “details of BND activities” in support of its Indonesian partner service, explained Schmidt-Eenboom and Ritzi. Explicitly the manuscript explains that “the close ties already in place to the Indonesian strategic ND (intelligence service) by October 1965, had facilitated support (advisors, equipment, money) to Indonesia’s ND and its special military organs during the elimination of the CPI (and Sukarno’s disempowerment — control and support of demonstrations).“[8] The “CPI’s elimination” included the assassination of hundreds of thousands of genuine and suspected members and sympathizers of the Indonesian CP. According to the manuscript, BND President Wessel continued his speech to the Confidential Committee, “in the opinion of Indonesian politicians and military officers ((Suharto, Nasution, Sultan) a large part thanks to the BND.”
Praise from Pullach
Reflecting back, BND founder Gehlen was praising these crimes almost effusively. “The significance of the Indonesian army’s success, which … pursued the elimination of the entire Communist Party with all consequences and severity, cannot — in my opinion — be appraised highly enough,” Gehlen wrote in his 1971 “Memoirs.“[9]
Berlin’s Priorities
The German government is still refusing to shed light on Germany’s participation in these crimes. In a parliamentary interpellation, the government was asked if it has knowledge of “foreign governments, intelligence services or other organizations’ direct or indirect support of the massacres.” In Mai 2014, it responded, “after a thorough assessment, the government concludes that it cannot give an open answer.” It is “imperative” to keep the “requested information” secret. The “protection of sources” is a “principle of primary importance to the work of intelligence services.“[10] For the German government, the Indonesian civil society’s need to have information on foreign support for the immense mass murder is of less importance than its “protection of sources.”
[1] Rainer Werning: Putsch nach “Pütschchen”. junge Welt 01.10.2015.
[2], [3] Rainer Werning: Der Archipel Suharto. In: Konflikte auf Dauer? Osnabrücker Jahrbuch Frieden und Wissenschaft, herausgegeben vom Oberbürgermeister der Stadt Osnabrück und dem Präsidenten der Universität Osnabrück. Osnabrück 2008, S. 183–199.
[4] Hermann Zolling, Heinz Höhne: Pullach intern. Der Spiegel 11/1971.
[5] Hermann Zolling, Heinz Höhne: Pullach intern. Der Spiegel 23/1971.
[6] Reinhard Gehlen: Der Dienst. Erinnerungen 1942–1971. Mainz/Wiesbaden 1971.
[7], [8] Matthias Ritzi, Erich Schmidt-Eenboom: Im Schatten des Dritten Reiches. Der BND und sein Agent Richard Christmann. Berlin 2011. See Review: Im Schatten des Dritten Reiches.
[9] Reinhard Gehlen: Der Dienst. Erinnerungen 1942–1971. Mainz/Wiesbaden 1971.
[10] Antwort der Bundesregierung auf die Kleine Anfrage der Abgeordneten Andrej Hunko, Jan van Aken, Sevim Dağdelen, weiterer Abgeordneter und der Fraktion DIE LINKE. Deutscher Bundestag Drucksache 18/1554, 27.05.2014.
http://spitfirelist.com/news/gehlen-bnd-and-the-1965-indonesian-coup-of-1965/
Related…
Indonesia is a Fascist Paradise
The results are actually too close; it appears that almost half of the active Indonesian voters have endorsed either the Mayor of Jakarta – a former furniture salesman and populist known as ‘Jokowi’ – or a former general of the National Special Forces – Prabowo Subianto.
Incompetent according to some, populist if you listen to others, or fierce ‘reformer’ for quite a substantial group of his supporters, not long ago Mr. Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo appeared to be running almost unopposed. But then the state, intelligence and corporate apparatus went into gear and the gap ‘miraculously’ closed.
The ‘military camp’ deployed nationalist speeches, insults, and flag waving…
And now it is almost even …
Both candidates have declared victory.
Propaganda and ‘manipulations’ cannot be blamed for everything. There could hardly be any excuse for the great part of the nation being poisoned by racism, a nation submissive to anybody who wears a uniform, who has some power; a nation submissive to market fundamentalism.
Without any doubt, Prabowo Subianto is all that the Indonesian public that desires the continuation of fascist rule can dream of. He is a perfect 21st century Nazi.
He served in the Indonesian National Army Special Force Kopassus (ascommander of Group 1 Komando Pasukan Sandhi Yudha (Kopassandha)) during the brutal 1976 occupation, and the genocide that Indonesia committed in East Timor. In that ruthless sadistic orgy of killing and rape, a third of the local population of the tiny nation vanished.
As a reward from his handlers, Mr. Prabowo was later trained (in the 80’s) at Fort Benning, in the United States, the country that he is really serving.
And to show his zeal, he was then involved in yet another (and ongoing) genocide, that in Papua.
But even that did not wear him out. In 1998, according to Adam Schwartz, (A Nation in Waiting) in a private conversation with Sofyan Wanandi, Prabowo said he was willing “to drive all the Chinese out of the country even if that sets the economy back twenty or thirty years.” That’s the spirit of a good Indonesian racist!
In the same year – 1998 – troops under his command were busy kidnapping and torturing opposition figures. Countless Chinese women were publicly gang raped.
Prabowo never went to jail.
Those that yearn for fascist continuity in this confused nation can now truly rejoice, by studying their candidate’s biography. Prabowo’s clan is all about that ‘continuity’.
His grandfather was a founder of Bank Negara Indonesia, his father was a cabinet minister in Suharto’s government, and as an exemplary son of a… dictatorship, Prabowo himself managed to wed one of Suharto’s daughters.
Not that his history is all that different from the biography of the present President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), who was also a general under the Suharto regime, got his ‘education’ in Fort Benning, USA, in 1976 became a platoon commander in ravaged East Timor, and married the eldest daughter of retired General Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, the very same Indonesian ‘hero’ who was unable to stop bragging that his military managed to butcher 3 million people during the massacres (or call it again, a genocide) of 1965/66.
Mr. Prabowo and the present Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, also studied at the same military academy, in the city of Magelang, as have many other Indonesian leaders. They, most likely, studied the same things, at home and abroad.
***
Many Indonesians are fond of acts of murder and mass murder in general (the homicide rate in Indonesia is twice that of the United States, per capita) and those committed in the 1965/66 in particular, as was clearly shown in the recent documentary film “Act of killing”, directed by Joshua Oppenheimer.
After these 2014 elections, Anwar Congo, jagal (“Butcher”), one of the main protagonists of the Act of Killing, is most likely rejoicing.
In the film, he admitted, looking straight at the television cameras in one of the major Indonesian television studios, that he murdered 1,000 people with his own hands.
As a reward, he received loud applause from the audience, and an admiring grin from the lady moderator.
For sure, Kopassus murdered many more people and managed to gain even greater respect…
War criminals and mass murderers are, of course, all over the place, in all national and local Indonesian elections.
To make it ‘diverse’ (‘Unity in Diversity’, is a national motto, after all), for instance, General Wiranto is one of the strongest backers of ‘Jokowi’; and Wiranto is the same general who on February 24, 2003 was indicted for Crimes against Humanity by a joint UN-East Timorese court.
According to John M. Miller from the “East Timor and Indonesia Action Network”:
“Others in the ‘Jokowi’ campaign team are also accused of serious violations of human rights. General AM Hendropriyono has been implicated in the 1989 massacre of civilians of Central Lampung, in the assassination of human rights lawyer Munir while head of Indonesia’s intelligence agency (BIN), and in the forced deportation of over 250,000 people from East to West Timor in 1999. Former BIN deputy chief retired Major General Muchdi Purwoprandjono also stands accused of the murder of Munir. A U.S. Department of State cable described Muchdi, a career Kopassus officer, as “one of Indonesia’s most vindictive public figures to justice” and placed him “at the heart of one of the nation’s human rights tragedies–the 1998-99 abductions of student and pro-democracy activists.
Former Jakarta Military Commander Lieutenant General Sutiyoso is accused of torture in Timor-Leste. In 2007, an attempt by Australian investigators to question him about the October 1975 murder of five Australia-based journalists in Balibo, Timor-Leste, caused a diplomatic incident. Sutiyoso was Jakarta’s military commander when thugs backed by troops and police attacked the headquarters of the Indonesian Democratic Party in 1996. Retired General Ryamizard Ryacudu is a hardliner known for his xenophobic remarks and criticism of rights activists. As Army Chief of Staff, he oversaw the implementation of Martial Law in Aceh beginning in May 2003.”
***
And at this point, I have to ask one simple if maybe a rhetorical question:
Would many of my readers consider going on vacation, or for work, to Germany, in 1961, just 16 years after ‘Adolf Hitler was made to step down’? Would they go there if half of the German folks would have cheerfully cast their ballots in favor of a Nazi candidate, who had been, on top of it, married to a daughter of Hitler (if Hitler had one)? And if that candidate had been a general, or a Sturmbannführer of the SS or SA forces, responsible for murdering, torturing and raping civilians somewhere in Ukraine or the former Yugoslavia, or “disappearing” the opposition in his own city, Berlin?
Would that be even thinkable?
Would they close their eyes and ears to the fact that anyone who did not look German and dared to just walk down the street, would be called names (at least in the capital city’s suburbs and in all major cities even in the center), had fingers pointed at them… blacks, Chinese, Papuans, even whites?
In Indonesia, everything is being tolerated, because Indonesia is just a myth – a grotesque product of the Western media, while the local media is trained to repeat exactly the same lies, only on a much more primitive level.
‘A democracy, a tolerant nation.’
In mythological Indonesian ‘democracy’, the mainly uneducated population (the Indonesian education system is a disaster) votes for parties that do not represent the majority and belong to the same corporate, feudal and military clique.
Its economic growth is a myth, too. What has grown is the plunder of raw materials, while the country produces close to nothing. Now it even imports rice from abroad. And its official poverty rate is one grand myth – if international norms were to apply, well over 80% of population would be defined as poor.
In this fictional country, in 1965/66, the top Indonesian military brass is true hero! In reality, it committed treason and triggered the killing of 2-3 million of its own people, mainly Left-wing intellectuals, the Chinese minority and atheists, on the explicit orders of the West. Suharto and the others around him were always just the lackeys.
Of course, the religious cadres, Muslim, Hindu and even Christian, had settled their scores with the moderate and constitutional Communists (PKI), simply because they were advocating for social justice and land reforms (religious cadres in Indonesia double as latifundistas, historically).
How do I know? I was told by my friend; the former Indonesian President, Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur), who also happened to be a progressive Muslim cleric, and the head of the biggest Muslim organization in the country (NU). Gus Dur was not a ‘fictional figure’ for a change; he was real! He was also a closet socialist and the only person with great vision, although he was almost blind. Therefore, the elites and the military got rid of him, in a well orchestrated coup.
***
I have covered Indonesia for 15 years. I have written books about this country including “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”). A book about this nation, with sub-Sahara African social indicators, but with the inflated pride of a well fed and protected lion. I have made films. I have written countless reports, essays and studies. I also co-authored the last book written by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, the greatest Southeast Asian novelist of all times, “The Exile”; the book in which Ananta Toer openly calls Indonesia a fascist state, a collapsed and immoral nation, and a shame.
Pramoedya Ananta Toer was the only Indonesian who ever came close to receiving the Nobel Prize… for anything. Year after year, this former “prisoner of conscience” in the Buru concentration camp was nominated, but the academy would never give the prize to this ‘Indonesian Solzhenitsyn’, who rotted for years in a horrid pro-Western gulag. When he died, his family gave him a Muslim funeral, although he was an atheist. His comrades sang, like beggars, the International, at the curb. Make-believe place!
***
For 15 years I have listened to farmers in dozens of god-forsaken villages, and even to a bunch of Indonesian businessmen.
One tycoon told me, in Sumatra: “We need Adolf Hitler! In order to fully restore law and order.” He loved Adolf… Many in Indonesia do.
For all those years I could not stop writing and researching! Despite all those trolls deployed by the Indonesian regime and the West, to discredit me and anybody who dares to shout that the ‘emperor has no clothes.’
To write about Indonesia is a totally ungrateful job. They spit at you there and abroad, if you dare to write the truth. That is why almost nobody does.
But I kept writing, as a warning to the world (an example of what happens to a country fully abandoned to a perverse bunch of looters, and to Western neo-colonialism; a concept of extreme brutality) because what I have seen, witnessed and heard, was bordering on the ‘impossible’. I kept thinking: “a country like this cannot really exist on this planet. And if it does, it cannot really get away with it, can it?”
But it really exists and it gets away with everything. Especially the elites do! Local elites – that perfect Nazi, racist (now all ethnicities belonging to that gang have become hopelessly racist), brainwashed gang, consisting of angry serfs, full of arrogance but also of inferiority complexes. More insecure, more brutal and murderous…
This gang kills people, poisons rivers, conducts full deforestation, poisons the air, robs cities of parks and sidewalks, as well as of any cultural institutions… It privatizes all public assets and throws the nation to an absolute dark nihilism, insecurity, ignorance and indefinable fear.
And it rules the country. And it gets elected!
And for the poor, the great majority of Indonesians, what is left? It is the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) slammed onto the extreme of Southeast Asia. Similar, but with luxury hotels and malls, and with corrupt leaders, with the local and foreign media (and the Australian National University next door, with its ‘Indonesian lobby’ and shameful lies that Indonesia is a ‘normal country’, like Brazil…) covering the entire insanity of it all, presenting it as a ‘normal country’ to its own people and to the world.
My Ugandan colleague who proofreads my essays, always comments: “It is like Uganda; damn, exactly, exactly like home!”
Uganda is, of course, yet another horrid and Fascist client state of the West, which is devouring its own people, and alongside Rwanda, murdering millions in the neighboring DRC.
It is all so similar. It is exactly the same. Indonesia devoured between 1 and 3 million of its own citizens in the 1965/66 cleansing period, and then committed two monstrous genocides in the neighboring countries that it shamelessly occupied – East Timor and Papua. Papua is an on-going genocide, committed in full view of the world, and totally under-reported, for obvious reasons…
Any sanctions against Indonesia, for the genocide? …For the third genocide in just half of century? No?
As I was writing this, my friend, a leading Australian historian and Professor Emeritus at Nagasaki University, told me over a coffee:
“The question is; what is the United States doing right now, in Jakarta? What is it doing, inside those 300 rooms they have inside the embassy – the CIA, the Pentagon, the economists? There are huge interests at stake there, right now! What protagonist would fit the best to their interests? Is Washington favoring old military elites dating to Suharto, or an unknown populist? All we know is that Washington and Canberra revoked visa restrictions on Prabowo. They prepared for his Presidency, in case it happens… We all know how closely he is linked to the US, through Kopassus…”
Identically, like the Rwandan leadership and the ongoing genocide in DRC it is committing, the Indonesian military is covered, immunized by the West, because it is killing and plundering (Papuans and others, now and in the past) on behalf of Washington, London and Canberra.
You cannot touch the Indonesian elites, and you cannot touch the Rwandan ones. You cannot touch them; and you cannot cover them or expose them, fully, in the mainstream.
Therefore, mass murderers are ruling with no fear in Jakarta, Kigali and Kampala.
So back to the original question: would my readers consider going on vacation to a country where half of the people had just expressed their support for the Nazis?
Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. The result is his latest book: “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. ‘Pluto’ published his discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. His critically acclaimed political novel Point of No Return is re-edited and available. Oceania is his book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about post-Suharto Indonesia and the market-fundamentalist model is called “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. His feature documentary, “Rwanda Gambit” is about Rwandan history and the plunder of DR Congo. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/11/indonesia-a-proudly-nazi-nation/
RIELPOLITIK 
Reblogged this on OCCUPY AMERICA and commented:
More American War Crimes.