http://insideindonesia.org/content/view/1276/47/
Inside Indonesia 99: Jan-Mar 2010
Survival through slavery
Suspected communists who survived the killings of 1965-66 in South
Sulawesi spent the next 20 years working for the military in an isolated jungle
camp
Taufik Ahmad
Prisoners gathered after finishing work, not long
before their release
Anwar Abbas
The Moncongloe rehabilitation camp was located on the isolated
border of the Maros and Gowa districts in South Sulawesi. Surrounded by barbed
wire and guarded by surveillance posts, the camp consisted of five barracks -
one for women - a mosque and a church, a clinic, a cooperative and an airfield.
It was here that suspected communists who survived the killings of 1965-66
spent the best part of their adult lives, working as slaves for the military in
the jungle.
Killing and capture
In South Sulawesi, the killings began in the capital Makassar when
Dr Soenarso, a medical practitioner who provided services to the city's poor,
was attacked at his practice on 5 October 1965. Over the next five days, a
campaign of looting and destruction was waged against the local Chinese and
Javanese populations who were associated with the Indonesian Communist Party
(PKI). The campaign was conducted by members of a number of groups including
Pemuda Ansor, Pemuda Pancasila, Muhammadiyah, Masyumi and the United Indonesian
Muslim Party which was the direct descendant of the old Muslim Association of
colonial times. The violence continued into November and December, when mobs
attacked and looted Chinese shops.
Thousands of members of the PKI and its affiliated organisations
like the labour union SOBSI, the cultural group LEKRA and the Peasants' Front -
along with many others simply accused of being communists - were killed in
district of Bone and in other places like Luwu and Wajo. In Bone, at the end of
1965, an angry mob killed the head of the communist labour organisation SOBSI,
then attacked the school building where members of the PKI were being held,
murdering those inside. They then proceeded to the prison and the police
station where other PKI members had sought shelter. Among the victims at the
prison were the provincial party head, Andi Mappa, and the secretary general,
Igo Garnida Heri Erianto. In early November, the US Embassy reported that
Muslim mobs broke into a detention camp and killed 200 PKI prisoners. Around
100 Javanese were also killed at the prison at Watampone, most of them workers
from the Arasoe sugar factory who had been billeted at the prison because their
barracks had yet to be constructed. Their bodies were later interred in a mass
grave in Kampung Kajolo. Many more were kidnapped and never seen again.
In Bantaeng, the head of the local PKI branch M. Ali Yusuf was
forced from his prison cell by members of Muhammadiyah, led by Usman Maesa and
Suaib Naba M. Ali Yusuf. He was taken to the mosque and killed. Later that
evening, the same group murdered Abdul Rahman Holi, the owner of an abbatoir
who had provided financial support for PKI activities, in his home. Not long
after, at the market, the head of the local labour union was stabbed repeatedly
until he died. The head of the communist youth wing, H. Amran, died the same
way in a police cell at the hands of Pemuda Ansor. Another member of the youth
wing called Dusung, who had managed to stay hidden in his village, was killed
around the same time.
There were also mass killings on the borders of Wajo and Sidrap
districts, this time of local farmers, many of whom were registered as members
of the Indonesian Farmers' Front (BTI). The farmers tried to save themselves by
hiding in their relatives' houses or fleeing from the district, leaving all
their possessions at home. A Javanese transmigrant settlement in Luwu was also
targeted. The military responded to the violence by rounding up anyone
suspected of being a communist, ostensibly for their own safety. Some of those
arrested had positions in the PKI or its associated organisations. But others
had no PKI connections.
By the end of October 1965, the Kodim 1408 office in Makassar was
filled with political prisoners. Cells six metres long and four metres wide
were used to house 19 people, and still the numbers continued to grow. By early
March 1966, there were 9,765 people being held in shocking conditions at local
military and police posts throughout the province before they were eventually
transferred to actual prisons.
Military slaves
At the end of 1969 - over four years after the initial arrests -
the camp at Moncongloe was completed and some 859 men and 52 women had been
brought there from prisons all over South and Southeast Sulawesi. 846 of the
prisoners lived in the camp itself while others were distributed among members
of the military, working as live-in domestic servants for no pay, ostensibly in
return for personal 'guidance' from their masters.
Those who lived in the camp itself were each allocated a hectare of
virgin forest land which they were forced to cultivate. Few of the prisoners
had any farming experience, as they were mostly white-collar professionals but
in just one year they transformed 460 hectares of forest into productive
farmland where they grew cassava and maize. Three years later, when Moncongloe
was officially reclassified as a rehabilitation camp, prisoners were forced to
hand over three quarters of the land they had cultivated to the military
officers in charge of the camp. They were also forced to form corvee labour
teams to work the officers' land, to harvest bamboo and timber, which they
processed to make posts and plywood and other building materials, and to
collect rocks for construction.
Prisoners were forced to form corvee labour teams
With the advent of the corvee teams came new and harsh forms of
regimentation. The prisoners were forced to assemble at six every morning,
where they were inspected and counted before collecting their equipment and
leaving for work. Apart from a short break for lunch at mid-day, they worked
without stopping until six in the evening. They then had to reassemble at seven
to be inspected and counted again. In addition to agricultural tasks, they were
forced to build military housing and offices and to work on military and
development projects far from the camp, including the 15 kilometres of highway
between Daya and Moncongloe. The teams worked six days a week, leaving only one
out of seven days to till the land they were allowed to cultivate for their own
subsistence.
At times the only way that prisoners could survive was by getting
close to particular officials, giving them gifts from the forest and learning
about their hobbies and anticipating their needs. But at other times, prisoners
exercised their limited powers of resistence. The easiest way to do this was to
go slow at work or to surreptitiously damage the farmland or livestock
belonging to the officers. A common form of covert resistance was to kill baby
livestock that the political prisoners would otherwise have to tend. One of the
former prisoners I talked to, called Anwar Abbas, worked with another prisoner
who had veterinary qualifications to do this without being detected. Anwar
would kill the baby goats and then Untung the veterinarian would fake their
cause of death. Other prisoners stole pumpkins from the gardens of officers who
were particularly disliked when the officers left the camp for recreation leave
in Makassar. Such actions carried great risks, and were generally restricted to
former PKI activists, who found that the skills they had learned in their party
work were very valuable in planning them. But the level of surveillance and
control meant that direct resistance was impossible even for the most militant.
Freed but not free
All but 42 of the prisoners were released by 1978, after almost a
decade of forced labour in the Moncongloe camp. The 42 'ideological cadres' who
were taken to Nanga-Nanga, near Kendari in Southeast Sulawesi, were released a
year later. Many of the former internees were chronically ill with malaria,
bronchitis or liver problems, or suffering physical disability. One of them
developed a serious mental illness after being released from the camp. While
the military no longer controlled their daily lives, they were required to
report to local authorities every week.
The social stigma the former prisoners endured meant they were no
longer able to live freely in their own communities. Instead, they were forced
to live in isolation on the edge of the forest, to change their identities or
start anew somewhere else. As they were banned from government positions and
most private sector jobs, most ended up finding employment as construction
workers and manual labourers, moving from place to place. Many moved to
Makassar because they couldn't return to their hometowns. Many of the former
prisoners were already old. They had to begin again with nothing, as their
belongings had been confiscated. They lived in rented houses or rooms, with no
guarantees for their future, forever marginalised by the stigma of being
'people from an unhealthy environment'.
Taufik Ahmad ([email protected]) is a graduate the History
Masters program at Hasanuddin University.
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