Posted on 10/17/2017 4:57:19 PM PDT by Ennis85
The US knew people were being "delivered for slaughter" during a political purge in Indonesia during the 1960s, declassified documents reveal. At least 500,000 people were killed between 1965 and 1966, after the army and local Muslim militia went on a rampage following an attempted coup. It was one of the worst massacres of the 20th century, but, at the time, Washington remained silent. But these newly released memos reveal they had detailed knowledge of events.
The documents show US staff describing them in telegrams as "slaughter" and at times "indiscriminate killings", exposing an intimate knowledge of the Indonesian army's operations to "completely clean up" the Communist Party and leftist groups. It is thought as many as three million could have lost their lives within a year.
The violence - which was a taboo topic in Indonesia for almost 50 years and remains extremely sensitive even today - was unleashed after communists were accused of killing six generals at the end of September 1965, Rebecca Henschke reports from Jakarta. It was the peak of the Cold War, and the struggle for power between the Communists, the military and Islamist groups was in full swing.
Five decades later, the contents of the US telegrams are chilling. According to one from US embassy staff in East Java, dated 28 December 1965, "victims are taken out of populous areas before being killed and bodies are buried rather than thrown in river" as they had been previously. The telegram says prisoners suspected of being communists are also "being delivered to civilians for slaughter". Another document compiled by the US embassy's first secretary, dated 17 December 1965, was a detailed list of the communist leaders across the country and whether they had been arrested or killed.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Most if not all of it was something like Rwanda, communal killing, as in Tutsi-Hutu.
Wasn’t a lot of the killing in Cambodia in the so-called killing fields targeted toward ethnic Chinese?
Perhaps complex, but ANY TIME that I hear of commies being dealt with, I CELEBRATE!!!
It was no secret, reported at the time without editorial condemnation. I remember reading about it as it happened and was reported.
It wasn’t any kind of secret then. I described it during an oral presentation in high school while it was going on.
So did I.
It was both. Indonesian communists were heavily Chinese. Plus a lot of it on both sides was local score-settling and opportunistic murders as part of stealing property.
Gosh, they should make a movie about it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Year_of_Living_Dangerously_(film)
I disagree. It started when the Communists attempted a coup against the Indonesian Army and lost. The Army then began massacring the Communists. Given that the Communists were disproportionately Chinese, this then escalated into into a much broader attack by Javanese Muslims against the predominantly Chinese merchant class, particularly to eliminate debts by eliminating Chinese creditors.
Makes sense.
I thought the enemedia dragged out all of these stories when Comrade Obama was in office (glossing over the evils of communism while condemning our role in suppressing it).
The first movie with a trans dwarf? Mel Gibson and Linda Hunt were far ahead of their time.
Obama’s mother was clearly a left-wing activist with a yearning for “exotic” third world men. Her Indonesian husband was an oil executive with Indonesian state oil corporation Pertamina, he was based in the US but was called back by the Suharto government.
He then rose up the ranks of Pertamina, and given that the oil company was a slush fund for Suharto, his family and cronies, this shows that they must have trusted him and he was not a commie.
Meanwhile his American wife, whom he had married assuming he would be getting into the western lifestyle, disappeared for months on end into the villages of Java to live as a peasant, while he raised his family in a comfortable suburb of Jakarta as befitted a rising young oil executive.
Needless to say the marriage did not last.
Given the numbers killed you can be certain that while many Chinese were targetted it was far and away mostly “pribumi” Indonesians who were killed, in Java, Sumatra and Bali.
That’s the damn thing, Vietnam was an utterly pointless war to fight after 1965, the Communist threat to SE Asia had been all but eliminated after the Indonesian army defeated them.
The reason the US fought in Vietnam was the “domino theory”, ie if one SE Asia country fell they would all do so. And of course the biggest domino was Indonesia, it didn’t matter if Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia fell to the Communists (as they eventually did anyway) what was important was stopping the massive nation of Indonesia falling.
With the wipe out of the Communists in Indonesia (and the earlier defeat by the Brits in Malaya) there was no goddamned reason to fight in Vietnam, the threat had been neutralised, but instead the US fought on for another disastrous six years fighting a war that was utterly pointless.
Suharto had already saved SE Asia.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.