On January 27, 2008, an 86-year-old man passed away from systemic organ failure at Petamina Hospital in Jakarta, Indonesia. The death of this person immediately attracted great attention and scramble to be reported by the mainland media.
This old man is Indonesia's second president, Suharto, who was listed as the world's most corrupt by the United Nations and the World Bank on September 17, 2007. His hands were stained with the blood of hundreds of thousands of Chinese, and it was he who single-handedly created the tragic "Red Bowl Incident".
In order to eradicate the opposition, Suharto instructed the Indonesian military to spread rumors that nine elders of the indigenous Indonesian Daya tribe had been killed by the Chinese, maliciously instigating the aborigines of Indonesia to hate the Chinese.
The Daya people thus joined in the massacre of the Chinese.
The reason why it is called the "Red Bowl Incident" is because the Daya people will place a red earthen bowl filled with animal blood in front of the Chinese residence, which means that as long as the Daya people see this red bowl like a sign of revenge, they have the responsibility to exterminate all the Chinese in the residence, which has led to the killing of at least tens of thousands of innocent Chinese.
The "Red Bowl Incident" in 1967 was the second massacre in Indonesia's anti-Chinese incident, and the most shocking thing to the world was the extermination massacre against the Chinese in 1965, which was called "the worst mass murder of the 20th century" by the CIA of United States.
Malicious instigation, the Chinese suffered
Suharto, who was formerly the strategic reserve commander of the Indonesian Army, with the support of Britain and the United States and other countries, took advantage of the coup d'état of Presidential Guard Captain Ondong to initially grasp the military and political power of Indonesia as the top military leader, President Sukarno was placed under house arrest by the military, and the parliament was also dissolved.
At the beginning of his rise to power, Suharto's rule was very unstable, and the discontent and contradictions between various strata of society were very acute.
In order to divert the attention of the Indonesian people, Suharto pointed the finger at the Chinese, who had nothing to do with the military coup.
Suharto declared to the people that the Communist Party of Indonesia was behind the military coup and that Beijing was behind it. The Chinese are all supporters of the Indonesian Communist Party, and they also called on the Indonesian people to "get rid of" these "moths" and "vampires".
During the Dutch colonial period, the intelligent and hard-working Chinese were treated preferentially by the Netherlands colonizers, and were also used as a ruling tool to ease the contradictions between the Netherlands and the indigenous Indonesians, coupled with the long-standing ethnic conflicts in Indonesia, so Indonesians envied and hated the Chinese who were once the ruling class.
Now, with the blatant instigation and support of the government and military, the whole of Indonesia has acquiesced in the "legitimacy" of the massacre of Chinese, led by Suharto's cronies, and a large number of soldiers disguised themselves as civilians to carry out indiscriminate torture and murder of Chinese men, women and children day and night.
With the example of these people, more and more Indonesians joined the ranks of the massacre of the Chinese, and a large-scale genocide against the Chinese began.
Under the cover of armored vehicles, the rioters shouted slogans and frantically smashed and looted Chinese stadiums, burned countless Chinese residences, shops and factories, plundered all their property, killed the male host, and humiliated his wife and daughter, forced to become slaves and concubines.
Thousands of Chinese bodies are piled up in every corner of the streets and alleys, and the river is also blocked with too many corpses.
Compared with the Japanese invasion of China, the Indonesian aborigines have done more than the local Chinese. The brutal massacre of the Chinese by ordinary Indonesians is an indiscriminate attack, and the Indonesian military and police are precise hunts.
Behind the rumors in Indonesian Chinese society is the support of Taiwan's intelligence agencies and pro-Taiwan Indonesian Chinese. They not only financed a large number of weapons and equipment for the Suharto regime, but also used their Chinese status to provide intelligence and pro-communist Chinese lists to the Indonesian military and police.
This is also why after the "9.30 incident", Indonesia quickly turned around and established diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
At that time, only more than 90,000 Chinese and pro-communist overseas Chinese living in Indonesia had taken refuge in Chinese mainland, and some Chinese passport holders had taken refuge in the Chinese embassy.
Those who did not flee in time were inevitably included in the list and screened by the Indonesian authorities one by one.
From late 1965 to early 1966, United States and Australia diplomats submitted reports to the government that the Indonesian military and police, in conjunction with some Muslim organizations, brutally slaughtered at least 1,500 so-called PKI suspects every day by shooting, stabbing and other means.
The massacre, triggered by a military coup, lasted more than a year.
Indonesian officials later counted that about 500,000 Chinese were killed in the massacre, but this is obviously not the real figure.
The United States CIA estimates that 500,000 so-called "leftists" were killed, but another 600,000 were held without trial.
Given the rising anti-Chinese sentiment in Indonesian society at the time, how many people would have died unjustifiably in detention?
Guilty of his crimes, how innocent is the husband
The history of Chinese immigration to Indonesia can be traced back to the end of the Tang Dynasty, and after more than 1,000 years of long migration, the Chinese have long been scattered all over the islands of Indonesia.
Until the 50s of the 20th century, more than 60% of Chinese families have lived in Indonesia for more than three generations.
In the 20th century, Indonesia had nearly 10 million Chinese, making it one of the countries with the largest Chinese population in more than 200 countries in the world.
It stands to reason that the Chinese have long been integrated into the local society, so why was Suharto murdered on such a large scale just because of his words?
- Precisely, it is precisely because the Chinese occupy an important position in the local Indonesian society, which is also indispensable to the handiwork of Western colonizers.
Most Western colonizers preferred to adopt a "divide and rule" policy when they ruled their colonies. Since you need to find a representative to divide and conquer, the Chinese known locally as "Chinese" have become the best choice for Netherlands.
The Netherlands colonists believed that the Chinese were smart and hardworking, quite business-minded and had good management skills, which was incomparable to the Indonesian aborigines, so the Netherlands colonists chose to let the Chinese become their "guests", and all the projects that made money were handed over to the Chinese.
After a period of accumulation, the Chinese life became more and more affluent, the living conditions were far better than those of the Indonesian aborigines, and in the 16th century, there was a Chinese monopoly on the Indonesian economic industry, which made the Indonesians who were the object of exploitation by the colonizers extremely dissatisfied.
The preferential treatment of the Chinese by the colonizers was actually sugar-coated shells, a means for them to maintain colonial rule. Under the deliberate instigation of the colonizers, the Indonesian aborigines increasingly believed that the Chinese had snatched the rights that should belong to them, so they were extremely disgusted with the Chinese.
Strong anti-Chinese and anti-Chinese sentiments spread in Indonesia, and the whole society is like a powder keg, which can explode at any time, which is also the reason why after the "Red Creek Massacre" in 1740, there have been many large-scale massacres and persecution of Chinese people in Indonesia.
Among these large and small anti-Chinese tragedies, the "9.30 Incident" in 1965 was unprecedentedly cruel. If Suharto was the one who fanned the flames, then it was President Sukarno who arranged the lead.
was entrusted with a heavy task and became the target of public criticism
Sukarno, who was born into an indigenous aristocratic family, has been actively involved in the patriotic movement since his university days, and later devoted himself to the struggle against Netherlands colonial rule for a long time, although he was repeatedly arrested, but this did not affect his high status in the hearts of Indonesians, and he was respected as the "father of the Indonesian nation".
On August 17, 1945, Indonesia declared independence and Sukarno became its first president. Faced with a country that experienced Japanese invasion and had to resist colonial intervention by United Kingdom, Netherlands and other countries, Sukarno's road to the presidency can be described as full of thorns.
Like most countries that experienced World War II, post-war Indonesia was in ruins, but Soekarno did not realize the importance of economic construction, resulting in a very slow recovery of domestic industry and agricultural production, let alone development.
Indonesians are living in no better poverty than they were during the war, and the country is in financial difficulties, but the fatal mistake of Sukarno's rule was not to neglect the economy, but to fail to seize military power.
After the war, Indonesia suffered from internal and external troubles, and the Sukarno regime was in turmoil in the power struggle of various forces, among which the pressure from the military was the greatest, and such a political rift did not benefit the stability and development of the whole country at all.
In order to achieve political balance, the frustrated Sukarno chose to cooperate with the Indonesian Communist Party. At that time, the PKI had about 3 million members and 20 million supporters, and although there were fierce conflicts with the military and Muslim groups, its supporters were all from workers' and peasants', women's and youth organizations with huge influence, and it was a rare and important force.
The CPI advocates the establishment of a fair society, the nationalization of land, and the construction of socialism, which in turn represents the interests of the proletariat, and does not divide the enemy into enemies based on geography and ethnicity, still less endangers national unity and territorial integrity.
The CPI's political advocacy of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism externally and its commitment to building a united front internally are more in line with Soekarno's.
Sukarno also hoped to maintain the stability and unity of the country by working with the CPI to achieve the trinity of nationalism, communism and religion.
It is a pity that the cooperation between Sukarno and the PKI is not in the interests of the Indonesian military, especially the opposition of the ultra-anti-communist military clique and right-wing forces.
In the eyes of ordinary Indonesians, the Chinese who robbed them of their jobs not only received preferential treatment from the Netherlands, but even the most respected father of the nation favored the Chinese-majority PKI.
This allowed Suharto, who was extremely hateful to China since he was a child because he was ridiculed as an illegitimate child of a Chinese, to find an opportunity.
Initially, Suharto joined the army only to change the fate of poor people, and like most Indonesian soldiers at that time, he did not have much national consciousness, so he could seamlessly transition from "Netherlands dog" to "Japanese dog", and then return to his homeland without changing his face.
When the Netherlands returned, Suharto heroically led his troops to attack his old club. With his outstanding military achievements, he rose from company commander to commander of the military region in just a few years, which was appreciated by Sukarno, and in 1965 he was promoted to commander of the army's strategic reserve.
Suharto, who was in power, was not satisfied, and the opportunity to seize more power was delivered to him by Weng Dong himself a few months later.
Suharto, who had long been backed by the United States and Britain, had conspired to start the incident on October 5, 1965, but Weng Dong acted one step ahead of him, allowing Suharto to naturally pour all the dirty water on the PKI, and then purge the PKI as a dissident in the name of suppressing the coup.
In the final analysis, the hundreds of thousands of Chinese who died tragically in 1965 were just smoke screens for Suharto to eradicate dissidents, victims of political struggle. After all, the CPI, as one of the largest political parties in Indonesia at the time, did not have enough reason to convince the public.
Resources:
1. CNKI: The Wave of Chinese Exclusion in Indonesia and the Fluctuation of Sino-Indonesian Relations from 1959 to 1961
2. CNKI: The Wave of Chinese Exclusion in Indonesia and the Fluctuation of Sino-Indonesian Relations from 1959 to 1961