During the demonstrations they wore their yellow Alma Mater jacket. Slowly the anti-PKI demonstrations were turned to an outright demonstration against Sukarno and the PKI. One of the traces of CIA mentioned in this edition of TEMPO was in an article “Jaket Palsu Dari Hawai”
(False yellow jackets from Hawaii). Herein it is told how the yellow Alma Mater jacket of Universitas Indonesia was copied in Hawaii from parachute fabric and flown to Indonesia with a Hercules plane.
These false jackets were distributed to random people who did not study on Universitas Indonesia to make appear a still larger mass of demonstrators and mobilize them for the anti-Sukarno demonstrations.
This action was part of a bigger operation of USA, England, Germany and Australia to chase away president Sukarno as is described in a few other articles in this special TEMPO edition.
This article about false jackets reminded me of an event, that I suddenly had to hand in my yellow U.I. jacket in order to have a number attached to it. In fact I thought this awkward and I resisted because an individual could be identified easier during demonstrations and it looked very much like a prisoner’s suit then. Ultimately I was convinced by a fellow student who was in charge of order monitoring at the demonstrations, that this was against infiltration of adverse elements. So also my jacket got a number.
Let me describe my recollections for this story. But that was not so easy. I knew for sure that I had brought the jacket from Indonesia, but where is it? It took some searching but I found it.
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After the coup of 1965 I took part in several demonstrations. The demonstration which impressed me the most is that one when the “palace guard of Sukarno” started shooting at us.
When running away I was nearly toppled over by a wounded fellow demonstrator. Without thinking I dragged him to the ditch which was then surrounding the Merdeka square. By the dragging and the mud in the ditch my clothes had become very filthy and bloody. When I came home my father reproached me that my clothes were so soiled.
My father was unemployed after 1964, more than a year before the coup, because he was fired as a Civil Servant as he refused to join the Communistic Civil Servants Union. He was fired as a “contra revolutionary”. The result was that our family had no more income, neither funds for servants. In the beginning my mother washed clothes, but with all the stress and poor nutrition, she suffered again of tuberculosis, so more and more often my father was compelled to help and wash clothes etc.
The stress my mother suffered had several causes. Of course the dismission of my father with subsequently the anonymous threats via letters and telephone calls to our family such as “all contra-revolutionaries shall be crushed”( citation from a speech of Sukarno). But also my eldest brother was, already before the dismission of my father, captured and without form of process brought to jail because he had told unfavorable facts about Sukarno at an unsafe place.
Looking back with the knowledge of today we know:
- Those shootings were absolutely not fired by the palace guard of Sukarno, but by troops of general Suharto, who kept president Sukarno prisoner in his own palace.
- This incident was probably initiated to discredit president Sukarno. Perhaps this was a tipping point in president Sukarno’s popularity so that he could be disposed of the presidency easily by the MPRS (Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat Sementara) the temporary parliament. After 1965, this MPRS consisted of the same members as before the coup however without the communist party. Remarkable is that these very same members had announced Sukarno to lifelong president just a few years before.
- I still am astonished about the trajectory of the bullet which hurt a fellow student who was standing behind me.
The yellow jacket became the symbol of the students’ revolt against the communists and Sukarno. After Sukarno was removed, I used to wear the yellow jacket as a sort of protection, as a clear sign that I was anticommunist. The pogroms against the Chinese, which had already begun beginning of October 1965 for those living in the periphery, occurred also in Jakarta in 1967. The pogroms increased especially after an official of Suharto had declared all Chinese citizens automatically to be communist. Therefore suddenly all Chinese in Indonesia were outlawed, including the non-communists. It was possible to be assaulted walking in the street just because you squinted. As a Chinese, your home could be looted or set on fire and the police would not act. Or you could be picked up from home and definitely disappear with unknown destination. From the minarets people were evoked to exterminate the infidel Chinese who were always already suspected. The situation for Chinese looking persons was so dangerous at that time that even Muslim fellow students who had a somewhat Chinese look, wore a yellow jacket for their own safety.
Literature: TEMPO; 5-11 October 2015
Epilogue
Two video documentaries are a good addition to my story of the yellow UI jacket namely:
- "INDONESIA: The troubled victory, NBC News Special" (1967). This is a report of what happened in Indonesia around February 1967 made for the NBC TV USA Nationwide.
- Film "Sedjarah PKI sebernarnya", part 1 till 9. An Australian documentary. www.offstream.tv.
Both videos were accessible for general public on internet, unfortunately the first video can now only be viewed with a special login number.
"INDONESIA: The troubled victory, NBC News Special"
Today we can find a kind of summary in text of this report *).
This first video "INDONESIA: The troubled victory, NBC News Special" is obviously a USA propaganda documentary, but with surprising historical shots. Really a remarkable documentary with historical fragments not seen in any other documentary with many recognizable events.
The purpose of this documentary is clearly USA propaganda during the cold war and the Vietnam war. The emphasis is anti Sukarno and glorification and justification of the acts of violence of general Suharto. The role of CIA is ignored. The documentary begins with a lie that this coup did not cost America one dollar. From documents which are now open to public after fifty years, it appears that a large amount of money, weapons and material was shipped to Indonesia (Suharto). The afore mentioned action of those false yellow jackets (where neither cost nor effort was spared) had as a result that the focus of demonstrations was shifted from solely against the Communists to a direct anti Sukarno line. But when looking through it one sees special events.
The shots of the student demonstration before the palace for me were the most thrilling. You could see what I described in this story about the yellow jacket as if it was live. Especially that wounded KAMI reporter on the ground who asked for a doctor. Only the comments did not fit. The students were wounded by bullets and not by bayonets, as the palace guard was equipped with AK-47 sort of automatic guns and these were without a bayonet. The purpose appeared (later on) to discredit president Sukarno.
Also the scenes where moslim youth stickered shops of Chinese of Indonesian nationality with pamflets with RRT (Peoples Republic China) and daubed walls with headings like “Bunuh Tjina” – “murder Chinese” and “Chinese get out “ were a clear illustration of the threatening situation for the Chinese in this story. There is an analogue with “Kristalnacht”. In the clip on the genocide on Bali the murdering of Communists in the opening scene is shortly mentioned when we see the image of a Chinese woman on bicycle who is presented as a genocide widow. There was however no linking to the genocide and murdering of innocent non communistic Chinese. Also no attention is paid to the fact that these murders were committed because all Chinese had been labelled communist or at least communist sympathetic. Also the correspondent of NBC smoothed this with a standard remark that 80% of commerce is Chinese and that the Indonesian people suffered by that.
After PP10 of 1960 (the law of Sukarno to forbid commerce by Chinese in small cities) there were no Chinese merchants anymore in the smaller cities, so this argument is invalid.
Interesting is that the correspondent showed the distribution of a rice ration for civil servants at the Bureau for Statistics in Jakarta. When my father was dismissed in 1964 we very much missed these rice rations and therefore the fact of his dismission was so devastating.
Interesting also was the clip with “patrolling by students”. Me too had to patrol in the dessas of West Java every Saturday, after a military crash course by the Corps Commando during 3 months. Students first and only then the military. Fortunately I did not encounter any nasty situations like the students in Middle Java and East Java. We students were equipped with old Lee Enfield guns while the military had modern automatic weapons.
Remarkable was the shot about Mochtar Lubis. This writer was slandered by a jealous Pramudia Anantatur in the begin of the 60’s. As he had no real fast results himself he managed as chairman of LEKRA (The Communist Writers Union) to imprison Mochtar Lubis, the same prison were my brother was imprisoned at that moment. In the Netherlands Pramudia Anantatur is the figurehead of the poor innocent communist imprisoned by general Suharto. They ignore all the sorrow he introduced as chairman of LEKRA.
Also astonishing was the comment of the reporter at the palace party, one day after the bloody student demonstration, that the greatest opponent of president Sukarno, Adam Malik, was present. Why was Adam Malik named the greatest opponent of president Sukarno? In 1967 Adam Malik was one of the main ministers in Sukarno’s cabinet, so just one of Sukarno’s trustees? Was it at that time in the USA known that Adam Malik was a CIA Agent? In the TEMPO number of October the 4 2015, about 50 years anniversary of the coup of 1965, he indeed was unmasked as CIA agent. This was not known in Indonesia in 1967. In the TEMPO article his role as disclosure informant from the CIA to Suharto is mentioned of a list of communists that according to the USA should be killed.
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"Sedjarah PKI sebernarnya", part 1 till 9, Australian documentairy, www.offstream.tv, 31 March 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auH7am9URh0
This video is a good complementary to the first video. This video was uploaded on internet to encounter the propaganda film of the Suharto regime. Several lies were unmasked. For example in the propaganda film of Suharto it was stated that the captured generals were mutilated and tortured by communist women. From autopsy reports it was proven that this is not the truth. Moreover general Jani was already shot dead during his capture.
An aspect that was not yet highlighted in this story was the fact that I managed to become a student at a state University after all. Especially the first state university “Universitas Indonesia”. Since officially it was very difficult or even impossible for a Chinese citizen to be admitted at a state university. It was just my choice to study Physics, which was regarded as one of the most difficult studies, that gave me the chance to circumvent the racial censorship as there were very few candidates for it.
My sister with her choice for the popular Architecture study, was refused admission at several state universities. At the admission form you had to fill out an á la “Arier testimony” not only the name of your parents but also the names of your grandparents of both father and mother side. |
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