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Jakarta on edge ahead of rally to mark anti-communist purge

JAKARTA — Indonesian police will deploy as many as 30,000 personnel to guard an anti-communist rally today, as the country’s military chief and Islamist groups stoke fears of a hard left revival in the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo with military chief Gatot Nurmantyo during an exercise on Natuna Islands, Riau Islands province. The military has resisted attempts by rights groups and academics to discuss the 1965 slaughter of at least 500,000 alleged communists. Photo: Reuters

Indonesian President Joko Widodo with military chief Gatot Nurmantyo during an exercise on Natuna Islands, Riau Islands province. The military has resisted attempts by rights groups and academics to discuss the 1965 slaughter of at least 500,000 alleged communists. Photo: Reuters

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JAKARTA — Indonesian police will deploy as many as 30,000 personnel to guard an anti-communist rally today, as the country’s military chief and Islamist groups stoke fears of a hard left revival in the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

Protesters will gather outside Indonesia’s Parliament on the eve of the 52nd anniversary of the murder of six Army generals and a young lieutenant by rebel armed forces personnel, an incident that led to a retaliatory pogrom that killed at least 500,000 alleged communists.

The massacres ushered in more than 30 years of authoritarian rule under Suharto, the former general who led the communist purge.

Tensions over the unsettled anti-communist purge of 1965 resurfaced recently as activists pushed efforts to advocate for the rights of victims and their families. But those doing so have increasingly been accused by nationalists and Islamists of supporting communism.

Islamist groups, which have been gaining ground since late last year, claim that indications of the rise of the banned Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) have been “more and more obvious”.

Among them are “pro-PKI” seminars and workshops that have increasingly been held by human rights activists, said protest leader Slamet Maarif. “And the government appears to be slightly throwing a lifeline to them,” he told reporters in Jakarta.

“If the PKI ban is eventually revoked, for sure they will face the Muslim community,” said Mr Maarif, who is also the spokesman for the hardline Islamic Defenders Front (FPI). “We reject and fight against the awakening of the Indonesian Communist Party.”

The PKI, once one of the world’s largest, remains outlawed, and there appears to be little evidence of a Marxist ideology taking hold in Indonesia.

Instead, said analysts and government advisers, the fomenting of a “red scare” was aimed at Indonesia’s reformist President Joko Widodo (popularly known as Jokowi), long falsely accused of being the descendant of communists.

Indonesia’s growing economic ties with China are also frequently cited by those concerned about rising communist influence in Indonesia.

“I see Jokowi being the factor behind the rise of communism in Indonesia because of the cooperative relationship with China,” said Mr Yudi Syamhudi Suyuti, one of the protest organisers and a failed political candidate for the opposition Gerindra Party, in comments posted online.

The FPI led huge rallies last year that successfully demanded the jailing for blasphemy of Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, Jakarta’s then governor and an ethnic Chinese Christian.

Mr Maarif predicted 50,000 protesters would join today’s rally, which will also urge Parliament to overturn a presidential regulation allowing the government to ban mass organisations deemed a threat to national unity.

Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist group that wants Indonesia to become a caliphate, was disbanded under the regulation in July.

A Jakarta police spokesman, Mr Argo Yuwono, expected only 15,000 people to turn up. “We will deploy 30,000 police personnel,” he said, noting the risk that more could arrive. At an anti-Purnama rally last December, police arrested eight people for treason in an alleged plot for protesters to occupy the Parliament building.

On Wednesday, a national police spokesman Setyo Wasisto, said police would adapt their deployment depending on the number of protesters. “We have prepared for defending Parliament,” he said.

Mr Widodo was the subject of a smear campaign during the 2014 presidential election claiming he was a descendant of communists and had Chinese ancestry. The campaign, mostly prosecuted on social media, coincided with a fall in Mr Widodo’s high approval ratings at the time.

In a sign of the potency and persistence of the rumours, both Mr Widodo and his mother Sujiatmi Notomiharjo have this year publicly denied any communist links.

The military has resisted attempts by rights groups and academics to discuss the 1965 slaughter, one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century. It is not popular with segments of the public, either. Earlier this month, protesters clashed with police as they tried to break up a seminar on the 1965 killings in Jakarta.

Indonesian historian Bonnie Triyana said the country has never fully acknowledged or become reconciled over the anti-communist killings, even after Indonesia became a democracy in 1998. Most Indonesians had little idea of the scale of the pogrom, he said. “Politicians today exploit the collective amnesia of the people,” he said. AGENCIES

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