The Pol Pot forces called the part of Cambodia that they controlled Democratic Kampuchea (DK), and their party the Party of Democratic Kampuchea. Justus van der Kroef wrote in 1991, “Pol Pot (Saloth Sar), whose exact whereabouts rarely are reported, continues to be… principal military strategist and chairman of the DK’s obscure ‘ Institute of Military History.’… There is considerable evidence that the top command structure remains in the hands of an inner circle. … This group consists of Ieng Sary, a onetime senior Politburo member of the Khmer Rouge or Kampuchean Communist Party (KCP) and the DK’s latest interior minister.”[724]
In 1996, the Khmer Rouge suffered a severe setback. According to Geoffrey Hainsworth, “Threats from Khmer Rouge guerrillas were dramatically reduced in 1996 with the defection on August 8, of Ieng Sary, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot’s close associate and former brother-in-law. Ieng Sary was followed by two division commanders… who brought with them at least 1,000 troops. … And after long and intricate negotiations, an agreement in principle was reached to merge the disaffected troops into the national Army.”[725]
In June 1997, it was reported that Son Sen, who had been Pol Pot’s Minister of Defense during the period in which the Khmer Rouge had controlled Cambodia, had been assassinated, together with ten members of his family, on orders of Pol Pot. At the same time, three other members of the “inner circle” around Pol Pot were reported to have been taken as “hostages,” including the titular leader of the Khmer Rouge, Khieu Samphan, who had allegedly been negotiating to surrender to Cambodian government military forces.[726]
Indonesian Maoism
In 1965 the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI or CPI) was the largest Communist Party in any country in which the Communists were not the ruling party. It had grown from 7,910 members in 1951 to 2.5 million by early 1963. By the latter year, it controlled apparently powerful mass organizations. According to the then Secretary-General of the CPI, D. N. Aidit: “The progressive organizations of the revolutionary masses have also grown rapidly. Of the 4 million organized workers, 1.2 million joined the All-Indonesian Central Organization of Trade Unions (SOBSI). … The peasant movement has made very encouraging progress. In the short period of one year, the membership of the Indonesian Peasant Front has risen from 4.6 million to 6.3 million. The People’s Youth and the Indonesian Women’s Movement each has 1.5 million members. Other progressive organizations-of artists, writers, scientists and university students—have also expanded rapidly.”[727] The total population of Indonesia at that time was about 100 million.
In spite of its apparent potency, the Communist Party of Indonesia was almost totally destroyed in October 1965, after the Indonesian Army, following a frustrated left-wing revolt of some relatively junior officers backed by the Communists, launched one of the most ruthless anticommunist purges ever carried out anywhere. Subsequently, President Ahmed Sukarno admitted that 87,000 people had been killed; other estimates were as high as 500,000 fatalities.[728] Hundreds of thousands were arrested and kept in jail for many years, and late in 1966 it was estimated that there were 350,000 political prisoners in Indonesia, victims of the military’s anticommunist persecution.[729] Most of the party’s leaders were among those killed.
After this horrendous catastrophe, what remained of the Indonesian Communist Party split into pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese factions. In order to understand that split, it is necessary to sketch the nature of the PKI line during the decade and a half preceding October 1965.
The PKI—Sukarno Alliance
The rather meteoric rise in the membership and political strength of the Communist Party of Indonesia had come about largely through the formation of an alliance between President Ahmed Sukarno, who had been head of the Indonesian Republic since its proclamation in August 1945, upon the surrender of the Japanese at the end of World War II, and the PKI. This alliance followed a period in which the Communists had been anything but friendly to the president.
Although the first cabinet of President Sukarno had been headed by a Communist, Amir Sjarifudin, it was soon maneuvered out of office by forces in the Indonesian Republican government that opposed the Communists.[730] Then, although the Communists continued to lead some of the guerrilla groups that were fighting against the Dutch, who were struggling to regain the former Dutch East Indies, a struggle that continued for about four years, they had no part in the national administration.
This period culminated in an attempted Communist uprising against the Indonesian Republican government. Bernard Kalb said, “In September 1948, the PKI leader Musso returned from a 20-year exile in Moscow and led the Party into the disastrous Meduan uprising. There are different versions of the uprising’s origin; it may well be that the attempt to disarm a Communist unit led to a revolt that the PKI felt it had to support. In any case, the consequence was a half-decade of relative impotence for the Party, until new leadership plus a turn of the political wheel gave the PKI an opportunity for new growth.”[731]
The PKI suffered considerably at the hands of the Indonesian regime following the Meduan uprising. It experienced another wave of persecution in 1951 under a cabinet headed by a conservative Muslim Prime Minister, Sukiman.[732]
Also in 1951 a new leadership emerged in the PKI, headed by D. N. Aidit, a man in his thirties.[733] He brought with him several people about his own age. They remained in control of the PKI until the disaster of October 1965.
The Aidit group formed the alliance with President Sukarno. This began in 1953, when Communist members of Parliament gave “unqualified support” to the new Prime Minister, Ali Sastroamidjojo, a member of Sukarno’s Nationalist Party, providing him the majority needed against the opposition Masjumi and Socialist parties. Tillman Durdin wrote in the New York Times in December 1954, “The Communists formerly denounced President Sukarno as an ‘imperialist tool,’ but during the last year have had good things to say about him. Lately the Peiping radio has lauded the President.”[734] In 1957, President Sukarno included some Communists in a new “national council” that he established.[735]
In 1959 the Communists supported President Sukarno’s suspension of the constitution, suppressing of Parliament, and launching of “guided democracy.” A month after this event, Sukarno made a speech that came to be known as the Political Manifesto. Subsequently, this speech was adopted by an appointed Provisional People’s Consultative Conference as “the Outline of State Policy.” In 1963, D. N. Aidit said of this document, “This was an important event in the Indonesian people’s revolutionary struggle for it meant that the concept of the basic questions of the Indonesian revolution had been accepted, and embodied in an official document of the state.”[736] Aidit also argued that “we can draw the conclusion that resolute implementation of the Political Manifesto is tantamount to implementing the Programme of the CPI. The Indonesian Communists, therefore, must resolutely carry out the Political Manifesto and set an example in doing so.”[737]
724
Justus van der Kroef, in
725
Geoffrey B. Hainsworth, in
727
D. N. Aidit,
728
729
Ernest Mandel, in
731
732
Justus van der Kroef,