A lot of killing

NPR has an interesting story up:

Declassified Files Lay Bare U.S. Knowledge Of Mass Murders In Indonesia

which is all about the ruthless killing in the mid 60's of communists/ communist supporters by the Indonesian Army under Sukarno (and then Suharto?):

At the time these memos were sent, from the closing months of 1965 through the opening months of 1966, the Indonesian military was engaged in a brutal crackdown on its communist party and suspected supporters. Prompted by an alleged coup attempt, the military collaborated with Muslim militias in the systematic murder of at least 500,000 people and the imprisonment of even more.

I wonder which side the modern wingnut wants to take, given the choice between Muslim militia and communists.   Anyway, more detail:

The CIA would later describe the atrocities as "one of the worst mass murders of the twentieth century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murders during the Second World War, and the Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s."

And while it's been known for some time the U.S. was aware — and was reportedly at times even an active supporter — of the crackdown as it unfolded, scholar Brad Simpson tells NPR the newly available documents "show in even greater detail how the U.S. Embassy was receiving a stream of updates and intelligence information about the scope and extent of the killing from the very start."

Simpson, director of the National Security Archive's Indonesia/East Timor Documentation Project, says the U.S. maintained a policy of public silence, even as he says Washington quietly began supporting Indonesia "in the form of financial assets and communications equipment" in late October 1965. This was around the same time one Indonesian official told embassy staff "that the Army had already executed many communists but that this fact must be very closely held."

One month later, another declassified consular dispatch from the city of Surabaya reported the scene there: 25 bodies spotted floating in a river by a missionary, 29 more spotted in the river by another, at least five railway stations closed, with employees afraid to come to work "since some of them have been murdered."

One of the missionaries "heard largest slaughter had taken place at Tulungagung where reportedly 15000 Communists killed," according to the cable.

Late in December, less than a month later, the embassy told the State Department of the "striking Army success" in consolidating power: Despite Indonesian President Sukarno's protests against the military's "jolts" against the PKI, those jolts had continued, resulting "in an estimated 100,000 deaths."

At least the killings were being carried out "evidently on lesser scale and in more discreet manner," the U.S. consul in Surabaya observed at the end of the month. "Generally victims are taken out of populous areas before being killed and bodies are being buried rather than thrown into river."

 It's easy to forget how much mayhem there was in South East Asia in that period, even without considering Cambodia and Vietnam...