We post this article by Ray Bergman that explains the story behind the Oscar winning film THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY. The film was based on a novel (1978) written by Christopher J. Koch. Editor 12 March 2026.
From October 1965 to March 1966, a series of large-scale killings and civil unrest primarily targeting members and supposed sympathizers of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) took place in Indonesia. Other affected groups included alleged communist sympathisers, Gerwani women, trade unionists, ethnic Javanese Abangan, ethnic Chinese, atheists and other non-Muslims, and leftists in general. According to the most widely published estimates, at least 500,000 to 1 million people were killed. Some of the higher estimates reach figures as much as 2 to 3 million.
The killings began as an anti-communist purge following an attempted coup d’état by the 30 September Movement, and were instigated by the Indonesian Army under President Suharto. Research and declassified documents demonstrate the Indonesian authorities received support from foreign countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Separately, Britain had reasons for seeking Sukarno’s removal, as his non-communist government was involved in an undeclared war with neighbouring Malaysia, a Commonwealth federation of former British colonies.
Thousands of local vigilantes and army units killed actual and alleged PKI members, as well as members of other marginalized groups. Killings occurred across the country, with the most intense in the PKI strongholds of Central Java, East Java, Bali, and northern Sumatra. The upheavals led to the fall of Sukarno, who had been granted the title “President for life”, and ushering in Suharto’s three decades of pro-West authoritarian militaristic presidency. Vigilance and stigma against a perceived communist threat remained a hallmark of Suharto’s doctrine, and it is still in force even today.
Despite a consensus at the highest levels of the U.S. and British governments that it would be necessary “to liquidate Sukarno”, as related in a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) memorandum from 1962, and the existence of extensive contacts between anti-communist army officers and the U.S. military establishment – including the training of over 1,200 officers, “including senior military figures”, and providing weapons and economic assistance – the CIA denied active involvement in the killings. Declassified U.S. documents in 2017 revealed that the U.S. government had detailed knowledge of the mass killings from the beginning and was supportive of the actions of the Indonesian Army. U.S. complicity in the killings, which included providing extensive lists of PKI officials to Indonesian death squads, has been established by historians and journalists.
Sukarno hosted the Bandung Conference in 1955 (in Bandung, Indonesia). It was a conference of mostly former colonised countries throughout Asia and Africa (including China, North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). The conference was the predecessor to the Non-Aligned Movement and was not a communist convention. However, this was enough for the U.S. to be very suspicious of Sukarno and suspect him of deep communist sympathies.
As early as 1958, Western powers—in particular, the U.S. and the U.K.—pushed for policies that would encourage the Indonesian Army to forcefully act against the PKI and the Left, policies which included a covert propaganda campaign which was designed to damage the reputation of Sukarno and the PKI, and secret assurances along with military and financial support to anti-communist leaders within the Army.
On the evening of 30 September 1965, a group of militants, known as the 30 September Movement, captured and executed six of Indonesia’s top military generals. The movement proclaimed itself as Sukarno’s protectors, issuing a pre-emptive strike to prevent a possible coup by the “anti-Sukarno”, pro-Western Council of Generals.
Following the execution, the movement’s forces occupied Merdeka Square in Jakarta and the presidential palace. Shortly afterwards, however, President Sukarno refused to commit to the movement, for it had captured and assassinated many of his top generals. A military propaganda campaign to link the coup attempt with the PKI, masterminded by Suharto and the military, began to sweep the country on 5 October (the Armed Forces Day and the day of the six generals’ state funeral). Even though the 30 September Movement killed 12 people, Suharto ultimately presented it as a nationwide conspiracy to commit mass murder. Millions of people associated with the PKI, even illiterate peasants from remote villages, were presented as murderers and accomplices of the movement.
Suharto’s Army began the anti-communist campaign well after the 30 September Movement had collapsed. Between the moment that the movement ended and the moment that the Army’s mass arrests began, three weeks had elapsed in which no violence or trace of civil war occurred, even according to the Army itself. Sukarno constantly protested the purge, stating that the Army was “burning down a house to kill a rat”, but he was powerless as Suharto commanded a firm hold on the armed forces.
Slowly, the parliament and cabinet were purged of Sukarno loyalists and those linked to the PKI were stripped of their positions. Leading PKI members were immediately arrested, some summarily executed. Army leaders organised demonstrations in Jakarta during which on 8 October, the PKI Jakarta headquarters was burned down. In Jakarta and West Java, over 10,000 PKI activists and leaders were arrested, including famed novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer.
As the Sukarno presidency began to unravel and as Suharto began to assert his control following the coup attempt, the PKI’s top national leadership was hunted down and arrested, and some were summarily executed. In early October, PKI chairman D. N. Aidit had flown to Central Java, where the coup attempt had been supported by leftist armed forces and police officers in Yogyakarta and in Salatiga and Semarang in Central Java. Fellow senior PKI leader Njoto was shot around 6 November, Aidit was shot on 22 November, and First Deputy PKI Chairman M. H. Lukman was killed shortly afterward.
The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta supplied the Indonesian military with lists of up to 5,000 suspected communists. Most of the victims were not major political figures and were mostly among the poor and the lower middle-class such as farmers, plantation labourers, factory workers, students, teachers, artists, and civil servants. They were often targeted because they or someone they knew, such as a friend or family member, had joined the PKI or an affiliated organisation. Local Chinese Indonesians were killed in some areas, and their properties looted and burned as a result of anti-Chinese racism, on the excuse that D. N. Aidit had brought the PKI closer to China. Between December 1965 and early 1966, an estimated 80,000 Balinese were killed, roughly 5% of the island’s population at the time, and proportionally more than anywhere else in Indonesia. Ethnic Balinese and Javanese made up the vast majority of people who were massacred.
The Supersemar decree of 11 March 1966 transferred much of Sukarno’s power over the parliament and Army to Suharto, ostensibly allowing Suharto to do whatever was needed to restore order. On 12 March 1967, Sukarno was stripped of his remaining power by Indonesia’s provisional parliament, and Suharto named acting president. On 21 March 1968, the same parliament formally elected Suharto as president.
By late 1968, Suharto government’s economic program had welcomed foreign capital back to Indonesia and about 25 American and European firms recovered control of mines, estates, and other enterprises that had been nationalized under Sukarno. Substantial foreign investment was in relatively untapped resources of nickel, copper, bauxite, timber and oil.
The killings served as a direct precedent for the genocidal invasion and occupation of East Timor. The same generals oversaw the killing in both situations and encouraged equally brutal methods—with impunity. The killings in Indonesia were so effective and enjoyed such prestige among Western powers that they inspired similar anti-communist purges in countries such as Chile and Brazil.
News of the massacre was carefully controlled by Western intelligence agencies. Journalists, prevented from entering Indonesia, relied on the official statements from Western embassies. The British embassy in Jakarta advised intelligence headquarters in Singapore on how the news should be presented. Within the United States, Robert F. Kennedy was one of the few prominent individuals to condemn the massacres.
Ray Bergman
12 March 2026