Between October 1965 and March 1966, somewhere between half a million and one million people were killed across Indonesia, Countercurrents reported, in massacres that followed a failed coup attempt by junior military officers. The killings targeted members of the Communist Party of Indonesia and their supporters, but also trade unionists, progressive women’s groups, ethnic minorities, transgender people, and inclusive Muslim communities such as the Abangan of Java.
In the early hours of October 1, 1965, the junior officers killed six senior army officers and announced the move was preemptive, meant to stop a wider coup they said was being planned with CIA assistance to oust President Sukarno. The army overpowered the plotters within days, then spread rumors that the killers had acted for the communists and had mutilated the bodies of the officers they killed.
Sukarno’s Bandung Conference and the Cold War Squeeze
Sukarno led Indonesia to independence from Dutch colonial rule in the 1940s and became the country’s first president, holding office formally from 1945 to 1967 though retaining real power only until 1965. In 1955 he organized the Bandung Conference of newly independent countries, which laid groundwork for the non-aligned movement and emphasized neutrality over the anti-communist alignments promoted by the United States. He nationalized foreign companies, particularly Dutch-owned ones, and maintained contacts with China and the Soviet Union while the Communist Party of Indonesia, or PKI, grew along a legal, peaceful path and became the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union. The CIA heavily funded a Muslim party in the 1955 elections, but could not disturb the support base of Sukarno’s Indonesian National Party or the PKI.
CIA-Backed Colonels Plot Against Sukarno
By the mid-to-late 1950s, U.S. officials decided on a more aggressive approach against Sukarno and the PKI, seeking greater control over Indonesia’s resources and a more supportive Cold War partner. The CIA involved army officers opposed to Sukarno in a plot in 1957-58. Joseph Burkholder Smith, who headed the CIA’s Indonesian desk, later wrote in “Portrait of a Cold Warrior” that “we planned to spring the suggestion that we should support the colonels’ plans to reduce Sukarno’s power.” U.S. Ambassador John Allison resisted the covert work and was replaced by Howard Jones, whom the local CIA staff preferred. Tens of thousands of rebels were armed, weapons were air-dropped, and B-26 bombers carried out attacks. In April 1958 a plane bombed a ship in the harbor of Ambon, hitting a nearby church and causing about 700 casualties. When a pilot of a shot-down plane was captured with full identity papers, CIA and U.S. involvement was exposed, and the regime-change effort was quietly phased out.
Allies Plot Sukarno’s Removal via Covert Operations
After the exposure, Sukarno moved to reduce his vulnerability, curtailing some democratic norms while deepening reliance on the communists as the PKI gained recognition and government roles. The United States, Britain, and Australia stepped up determination to remove him. A 1975 interim report by the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities stated it had “received some evidence of CIA involvement in plans to assassinate President Sukarno of Indonesia,” with planning advanced enough to identify an agent. Contacts between U.S. and Indonesian military officers grew through training programs: Roger Hilsman, who worked for both the CIA and the State Department, noted that by 1963 “one-third of the Indonesian general staff had had some sort of training from Americans and almost half of the officer corps,” and a 1971 House Committee on Foreign Affairs report found that by late 1965 more than 1,200 Indonesian officers, including senior figures, had been trained in the United States. The Ford Foundation, working with U.S. universities and Soumitro Djojobadi, ran programs that trained Indonesian economists at Berkeley who later took power; Ford’s John Howard said the foundation felt it was “training the guys who could be leading the country when Sukarno got out.” Some participants quit on conscience: Berkeley team member Ralph Anspeck said he felt he was part of “this American policy of empire,” and senior academic Len Doyle said the university should not be involved in “what essentially was becoming a rebellion against the government.”
October 1965: Rumors, Mobs, and Mass Killings
After the six officers were killed on October 1, 1965, army units and religious fanatic mobs, sometimes allied with political parties and youth groups, began massacres that spread even to remote villages. The violence ran mainly from October 1965 to March 1966, and after a stage the gangs also killed for looting and personal enmities. Methods were widely described as extremely cruel. Most estimates put the dead between half a million and one million, not counting those killed in the 1957-58 violence. A journal article published on ResearchGate classifies the 1965-66 killings within Indonesia’s broader pattern of social violence from 1965 to 1999, which included communal, separatist, state-community, industrial, and political violence driven by ethnic, religious, ideological, and economic motives.
The Truth Still Unresolved
The full truth of the October 1, 1965 events may never be known: the junior officers claimed a preemptive strike against a CIA-backed coup, while the army that crushed them spread the rumors that justified the massacres. What is documented is the scale of the killing, the training and arming networks that preceded it, and the Senate evidence of assassination planning against Sukarno. Who ordered each stage of the violence, and the exact final death toll, remain open questions.
Massacre Tolls and Targeted Groups Identified
How many people were killed in Indonesia in 1965-66? The most common estimates put the death toll between half a million and one million people killed mainly between October 1965 and March 1966, according to Countercurrents. This does not include those who died in the earlier 1957-58 violence.
Who was targeted in the massacres? Members of the PKI and their supporters were the most targeted, but victims also included trade unionists, members of progressive women’s groups, ethnic minorities, transgender people, and inclusive Muslim communities such as the Abangan of Java, Countercurrents reported.
What role did the United States play? By late 1965 more than 1,200 Indonesian officers had been trained in the U.S., a 1971 House committee report found, and a 1975 Senate report said it had received some evidence of CIA involvement in plans to assassinate Sukarno. The CIA also armed rebels and bombed targets in the failed 1957-58 effort, Countercurrents reported.
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