ABSTRACT
Between 1965 and 1968, the Indonesian army, together with civilian vigilantes, perpetrated a brutal attack on members of the Indonesian Communist Party and members of closely aligned organizations. Approximately 500,000 people were murdered, and up to a million were imprisoned without trial. Despite some claims that “the world” was largely complacent, if not jubilant, about the rise of the Suharto-led military regime, and thus silent about the violence against the Indonesian Left, this elite level of analysis misses the small-scale, transnational “communities of resistance” to the violence. This chapter explores protests originating from members of the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organisation, which included some Indonesian leftists trapped in exile after the onset of the 1965 violence. It then focuses on protests launched by the largest post-war women's organization, the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF). Here in particular the role of Dutch socialist women, who had strong connections to imprisoned Indonesian women through the WIDF, comes to the fore. The chapter asks how in each case activists tried to raise the alarm over the violent mass repression in Indonesia and the obstacles they encountered in generating sympathy at the height of the Cold War.
