http://insideindonesia.org/content/view/1279/47/
Inside Indonesia 99: Jan-Mar 2010
Terror in Tandes
Two villagers from the rural fringe of Surabaya recall the most
frightening night of their lives
Dahlia Gratia Setiyawan
In the days immediately after 1 October 1965, army units and civilians in
Surabaya - a known PKI stronghold - began to move against the Indonesian
Communist Party (PKI). Arrests of suspected members of the party and affiliated
organisations began as early as 2 October but the campaign gained momentum when
hundreds of people attended an anti-communist rally on 16 October near the
towering obelisk built to commemorate the heroism of the people of Surabaya in
the revolution.
Two days later, a military decree was issued demanding that all state
employees with ties to the PKI or PKI affiliates report to local authorities
and on 22 October the PKI and its affiliate organisations were banned in the
city. As the month drew to a close, Surabaya's PKI-backed mayor, Moerachman,
was imprisoned and eventually disappeared after likely having been murdered by
his captors. Lieutenant Colonel Sukotjo from East Java's Brawijaya Division
quickly took his place.
Sukotjo immediately began a wide-reaching and violent campaign to cleanse
the city of communists. One of the neighbourhoods targeted by anti-PKI raiding
parties at this time was Simo Jawar in the sub-district of Tandes on the
outskirts of Surabaya. The story that follows of the anti-communist militia
raid in Tandes towards the end of 1965 is the account of Hadi and Sri, two
teenagers who survived that night of terror, who later married and still live
nearby.
Marked for death
On the night of the raid, anti-PKI militias from other districts gathered
in Tandes to meet a local anti-communist coalition comprised of members of
Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and the Indonesian National Party (PNI). According to
Hadi, the attackers knew who to target when they headed out to cleanse the
district of communists because their co-conspirators provided them with lists
of names and addresses.
The raid unfolded over the neighbourhoods of Tandes. It began in Simo
Jawar before moving to Donowati, Sukomanunggal, Tanjung Sari, and beyond. It
was clear from the precision of the attacks as they fanned out through the
sub-district that the raiders planned not to apprehend but to kill. Hadi, who
was fifteen years old at the time, and the youngest of eleven siblings,
recalls, 'There were trucks full of people, regular people, not army, but I
don't know if they were backed up by the military. They were carrying sickles
and machetes. They stopped at the front of Simo Jawar cemetery. There were
several trucks. Those people got out, ran through the cemetery and entered
through the road that ran along the back of people's homes.'
It was obvious to Hadi and the other villagers upon hearing the story
from eyewitnesses the following day that outsiders who attacked the
neighbourhood belonged to the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI) and NU's youth
organisation, Ansor. The intruders were all dressed in black with coloured
strips of cloth tied around their necks or arms, the PNI's red and Ansor's
green.
It was clear from the precision of the attacks as they fanned out
through the sub-district that the raiders planned not to apprehend but to kill
As those planning the raid expected, on their approach the villagers ran
to the north towards the paddy fields behind their houses, where they thought
they would be safe. The attackers left their footprints in the mud behind the
houses, along with some random items of clothing and even shoes, discarded in
the fray. The next morning, the body of a youth suspected to be a PKI member
was found hacked apart in the paddy fields of Sukomanunggal. In Donowati the
mutilated body of a pedicab driver called Sapon was located in a plot of
bananas where he had tried to hide.
Calling for help
Sri, the girl who was later to become Hadi's wife, came from a family
with no PKI connections who lived on the opposite side of Jalan Raya Simo
Jawar, the single road that passed through the neighbourhood.
When the attack began, Sri's father, a police officer, ordered his family
to stay inside. At around 11 pm, another police officer began shooting at the
house, and yelling at her father, accusing him of supporting the raid. Quickly
changing into his uniform, he grabbed his gun and, with his weapon cocked and
ready to fire, went to open the front door. Terrified that her father would be
killed by his colleague and the rest of the family murdered in their home, Sri
and her mother and brother hid under the bed, crying and clutching onto each
other, and praying for their survival.
Having convinced his friend that he wasn't involved in the violence,
Sri's father agreed to accompany him to the local police station. But as they
passed through the chaotic Tandes streets, he decided instead to run through
the marshes to the regional police headquarters in Kembang Kuning in order to
get help from the mobile brigade special police (BRIMOB). Several hours later,
from her hiding place under the bed, Sri heard a truck approach and then stop
in front of her house. A group of BRIMOB officers descended looking for her
father who had contacted them by telephone from the Kembang Kuning office.
After being informed that he was not at home, they departed through the
neighbourhoods in Tandes, firing warning shots as they went.
The aftermath
The fear that their night of terror would be repeated caused residents to
flee the area. Upon their return around a week later, a shroud of silence fell
over Tandes. No-one said anything even when one of the local NU leaders who had
helped compile the hit-lists provided to the attackers transferred the property
of his former landlord - who had disappeared - into his own name.
Eventually, though, a tentative rebuilding began in the village. Sri's
father continued in his position with the Tandes police. After some years even
survivors who had been held without charge or trial, like the tax collector
Legiman and his brother Sali, made their way home, albeit to live forever
branded as former political prisoners.
Hadi and his family waited anxiously for the return of his brother
Banawi, a mechanic who had worked for the state-owned shipbuilding company in
the Surabaya port of Tanjung Perak. Banawi had been an active member of the PKI
youth wing, Pemuda Rakyat. Due to his affiliation with this organisation, he
had been detained well before the raid, along with others including Legiman and
Sali, in an abandoned building in the Mlaten region of Kedurus, around eight
kilometres from Simo Jawar.
Despite anxious efforts to find him - even risking paying a distant
relative who was a sergeant in the Tandes Military District Command to make
enquiries - Banawi was never found. According to the brothers Legiman and Sali,
he had been reportedly shot in the leg by guards while attempting to escape
from prison. While Hadi suspects that his brother might have been one of the
prisoners taken away by local militias and shot, he will never know for sure.
Today, the terror of that night is a topic that is rarely, if ever,
openly discussed. As a result, the younger generation and newcomers to the
region have no knowledge of the area's tragic history. Many of those who
survived the raid or lost family members to the PKI purge remain fearful to
speak of what they experienced or simply see no purpose in dredging up the
past. Hadi and Sri are also fearful of repercussions. But they felt they must
speak out so that memories of the victims and of the violence in Tandes will
endure in their family and among their community, and so that the events of
that night and of the months before and after it may be acknowledged by the
wider world.
Dahlia Gratia Setiyawan ([email protected] ) is a PhD Candidate at the
University of California, Los Angeles.
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