Indonesia's Revolutionary Justice

...The prosecution's most convincing points were speeches Subandrio made both before and after the coup indicating that he, like the President, took a decidedly "revolutionary" view of Indonesia's immediate future...

...You must fight terror with counter-terror," Subandrio was quoted as having told a group of pro-Communist students in February, just at the time of Sukarno's vain attempt to consolidate power against Suharto and Nasution...

...It was sufficient for the prosecution to present a mass of circumstantial evidence, which the judges accepted as proof enough even though it did not show any direct complicity between Subandrio and the Communists...

...This was evident when they crossed out the word "scapegoat" in a story I wrote about Subandrio's conviction on charges of supporting the Communists...

...After finally admitting his one-time authority over the unit, Subandrio then denied that the Bureau could have had any connections with the Communists because it was involved only in intelligence functions abroad...

...The censors can no longer deny conflicts between those two men...

...Subandrio's explanation- no doubt not without some shred of truth-was that he assumed Sukarno knew more about all things than he did, and that he was "embarrassed" to report mere "rumors" of Communist plans to the President...

...The next month, in February 1965, he told staffers of a Moslem newspaper that they should not be surprised "if some of our former friends fall...

...This year, 1965, is a year of crystallization," he told staff members of Antara, the official Indonesia press agency, nine months before the coup...

...The dumo description was echoed by the chief judge, Lieutenant Colonel Ali Said, who declared Subandrio a "hypocrite" who "likes to pretend...

...To Indonesians, the "old order" is President Sukarno's government before Subandrio was arrested along with 17 other Cabinet ministers last March and a new Cabinet was installed several weeks later...

...Western observers in Jakarta, particularly diplomats who are just as glad to see their former proCommunist foe eliminated, have taken a broadminded view...

...The irony is that the leaders of the Armed Forces prided themselves on holding the trial in public and regarded it as indication of the new regime's "legal" approach...

...The prosecution, alleging that Subandrio had later burned the letter, never pursued the issue to the point of implying that Sukarno and Aidit had conspired together, or even that they knew each other intimately...

...They claim Indonesians function under "a different system of justice" and one must understand such a case "from the Indonesian point of view...

...A year ago they crossed out references to conflicts between General Abdul Haris Nasution, then defense minister, and Doctor Subandrio, then foreign minister and President Sukarno's foremost ally...

...The rest of the evidence against Subandrio was equally tenuous...

...Since the Communists, in attempting their coup, charged a plot by a "Council of Generals" to take over the government, military authorities viewed the reference as a sinister attempt to turn public opinion against Indonesia's top generals...

...In a body with such authority as may lead me to the grave, I object," he said...

...Apparently holding Subandrio's futile struggle for survival in court against him, Colonel Said accused the defendant of having "a very strong memory when testimony was in his favor but forgetting when it was unfavorable...

...The most ludicrous aspect of the Subandrio trial was that the military men who rigged the whole show (all nine judges were officers of the Armed Forces, as were the prosecutor and his assistants) honestly seemed to want to demonstrate Subandrio's guilt while leaving Sukarno out of it...

...A frail figure in an ill-fitting grey suit, noticeably thinner than when I had seen him shortly after the coup, Subandrio hardly appeared to fit the role into which the military prosecutors had cast him...

...I am too small a man, I would like to become a great man, but I cannot," Subandrio pleaded in response to Durmawel's remarks...

...Besides concealing rumors of Communist plans to seize power, his accusers said that as intelligence chief he did not sufficiently check the authenticity of a letter, purportedly written by Sir Andrew Gilchrist, former British ambassador to Indonesia, which allegedly implied that Britain and America were planning a joint attack on Indonesia...

...Certain knowledgeable observers in Jakarta have claimed privately that military authorities have evidence to show Sukarno collaborated in the coup with the Communists, and that he and Subandrio actually transferred money from the Indonesian treasury to Communist party coffers...

...There are no conflicts in our government," was the censors' flagrantly dishonest explanation for the deletions...

...Since no election is planned for two years and students want to force Sukarno out of office by the end of the year, Machmud's speeches have the effect of defending the President against his most violent opponents...

...In the second session, for instance, Subandrio tried to deny that he was the real head of the Central Intelligence Bureau, since Sukarno himself headed "all agencies of the government...

...The speech was a clear-cut demand for pro-Communists to rally against militant antiCommunist students, who at that time were first openly calling for Subandrio's arrest and execution...

...The letter, in fact, was a palpable forgery, planted by Subandrio among "nonaligned" governments abroad to keep the British "puppet," Malaysia, from attending the second Afro-Asian Conference, that finally foundered in Algiers more than a year ago...

...Its discussion at the trial, while revealing to some extent Subandrio's role in supporting Sukarno's policy, had no bearing on Communist plans for a coup, just as Subandrio's shrugging off "rumors" about the plans failed to prove his own involvement...

...THE CASE OF THE MISSING DEFENDANT Indonesia's Revolutionary Justice By Donald Kirk Jakarta Indonesia's military censors, under the over-all supervision of Major General Amir Machmud, a heavy-handed, obtuse administrator who has managed to stay on good terms with both President Sukarno and General Suharto, have a knack for eliminating the relevant word from correspondents' stories...

...What is more, he also has the limited support of a number of highranking military and civilian figures, such as General Machmud, who has lectured political leaders and students on the necessity for bringing about changes "within the framework of the Constitution...

...As for evidence that might injure the President, the prosecution read into the record a letter to Sukarno from D. N. Aidit, Indonesia's Communist party chairman, slain by soldiers shortly after the coup, in which he pleaded for tranquility while Sukarno worked out his own solution to the national crisis...

...The real tragedy is that the new Indonesian government, in attempting to justify its position, should have acted so unjustly in court toward one of the leaders of the "old order" while letting President Sukarno, the selfstyled "great leader" himself, remain in office...

...The speeches no doubt indicated deep differences within the government, possibly between Sukarno and his generals...

...Subandrio's weak explanation for the speech was that he was only warning of the consequences of terrorist acts, but the prosecutor pointed out that pro-Communist students attacked some anti-Communists the next day...

...Sadly, though, the ordeal of Subandrio, like other cases of those supposedly involved in the coup, was only a travesty on justice-a typical show trial in which new leaders rationalize their reasons for wanting to put their predecessors to death...

...The tragedy of the Subandrio case is not really personal, for it is hard to sympathize very much with the man who collaborated with President Sukarno in distorting Indonesia's foreign policy and debasing the country's impoverished economy by a reckless course of military "confrontation" against a neighboring power...

...For months the newspapers-bragging about their "freedom" after Subandrio and his allies were arrested, but actually pursuing precisely the policy of Indonesia's new leaders-had called Subandrio a dumo, the name of an evil priest in a Javanese shadow play who gave bad advice to a king...

...but they scarcely "proved" that Subandrio participated in the Communist plot months later...

...Subandrio in his defense plea admitted that such invidious descriptions were "risks that a politician must take,' but he saw no reason for the prosecutor also to describe him in those terms...

...The only portion of the letter that could have conceivably indicated the Communists' plans was an allusion to "our local Army friends," whom the letter indicated would support the Anglo-American force...

...Architect of the old order," was the favorite phrase used by the prosecutor, Lieutenant Colonel Durmawel Achmad, to describe the accused during his trial...

...The folly of the Subandrio trial was that the military authorities-it may be assumed that General Suharto himself approved the verdict in advance-apparently thought they did not really need "proof" to convict Subandrio...

...But what was the prosecution trying to prove...

...Unless Indonesia settles down to some semblance of rational rule and justice, it is altogether possible that they too will some day be the defendants after a new uprising, and that like Subandrio they will be sentenced to die as "architects of the old order...

...Even the timing of the Subandrio trial was prejudicial...

...His evasive reply was somewhat foolish, for the Bureau was known to have branches in every important city in the country...

...The prosecution's proof of Subandrio's attempts to impede the military campaign against the Communists after the coup was also entirely circumstantial...

...The only plausible explanation for why such evidence was not presented, if it really does exist, is that the authorities continue to fear the consequences of serious clashes between factions opposing and supporting the President...

...But the censors still have a talent for denying the obvious...

...Such hypocrisy, opportunism and cowardice bode ill for the futures of General Suharto and his chief lieutenants...

...Subandrio in his heyday, remember, had joined Sukarno in advocating "revolutionary courts,' which eliminated all trials and entitled the government to arrest undesirables, often pro-Western "liberals," on behalf of "the people...

...Indonesia's Constitution, which the Armed Forces make a pretense of following to the letter, holds that the People's Consultative Congress, the country's highest policy-making body, must elect both the President and Vice President...

...The first session of the case was on October 1, a year to the day after the coup, and it followed a series of observances mourning the death of the six Army generals slain by Communist conspirators...

...Despite all the efforts of the Armed Forces, who appear to be turning Indonesia into the military dictatorship the Communists feared, Sukarno still retains popular support in Central and Eastern Java...

...The plain fact, however, is that Subandrio had been found guilty months ago in the court of prevailing Indonesian public opinion, official and otherwise, and that the case was as good as decided before it began...

...Nasution, after all, is something of a hero-even if General Suharto has never given him back the defense ministry from which Sukarno dismissed him last January-and Subandrio sits in an unknown Jakarta prison awaiting execution of the death sentence...

...Military authorities presented more "evidence" of this sort to clarify Subandrio's point of view, and they seemed to think it sufficed to support their case...

...Subandrio's efforts at avoiding direct answers to the prosecutor's questions were so elementary as to hardly warrant mention in the findings of any dignified court of law...

...The letter, which also asked Sukarno to call off the Armed Forces' attack on Communists and return the control of internal security to the national police, was clearly an attempt to win Sukarno's support, as Aidit had successfully done before the coup...

...Shocking the pundits who had predicted that the military regime in Jakarta would use the trial as a gimmick for implicating Sukarno directly in the coup, the prosecution devoted much of its case to attempting to prove that Subandrio had hidden valuable information about the plot from Sukarno...

...Everyone knew Subandrio had headed an agency that had become a notorious instrument for Sukarno's own near-dictatorial rule by prying into the lives of thousands of Indonesians...

...General Nasution, in a speech to students during the trial, noted that Sukarno had obliged to the extent of calling for a "period of calm" before he could announce a "solution" to the problem...

...That Subandrio was indeed the scapegoat was perhaps the most clear-cut conclusion to emerge from the 17 sessions of the military tribunal hearing his case in Jakarta...

...Forgery or not, the letter illustrated Sukarno's policy against the so-called necolim-neo-colonial, colonial and imperialist-powers...

...The prosecution charged that the speech was aimed at creating "unrest and disunity" and sabotaging General Suharto's efforts to restore order and peace...

...Don't be surprised if at a certain time we leave behind those who were our comrades-in-arms because they don't understand the revolution and have become counter-revolutionary...

...Donald Kirk, a frequent contributor to these pages, is a freelance writer now based in Jakarta...

...Then, in perhaps the only truly relevant statement of the entire trial, he declared, "All the Cabinet ministers functioned as assistants to President Sukarno...

...He is not a scapegoat," was all the censor would say, insisting I change the copy to read that Subandrio had merely been "blamed" for Indonesia's problems both before and after the attempted Communist coup d'etat of October 1, 1965...