There was regime change in Indonesia in the mid-1960s. And there was regime change in Chile in the early 1970s. Those were times before the term ‘regime change’ became fashionable. But the consequences of what transpired in Jakarta and Santiago in 1965 and 1973, in that order, are yet being felt and of course remembered.
Those changes of regime occurred in the month of September, which is why in September all these decades later it becomes important for the history of the times we speak of to be recalled. The changes which were to occur in Indonesia and Chile were to leave searing and lasting effects on minds everywhere, beyond the countries where these changes took place.
The changes were violent and were to cause the deaths of unknown numbers of citizens at the hands of the soldiers who seized the state from legitimately established governments in the two countries. On the last day of September 1965, the world came to know that an abortive coup d’etat, allegedly spearheaded by the Partai Komunis Indonesia, the country’s powerful Communist Party, had led to the death of six senior generals of the army. A seventh one, going by the name Suharto, escaped. General Suharto quickly seized power even though President Ahmed Sukarno, in office since the country gained independence from the Dutch in the late 1940s, was around.
In the years following the 30 September incidents, it became increasingly clear that the PKI had had little to do with the coup, that indeed Suharto and his associates in the military had planned the whole operation all along. What followed 30 September was a pogrom which was to leave anywhere between a million and two million Indonesians dead at the hands of the soldiers. These dead were communist sympathisers or party members or simple citizens. D.N. Aidit, the influential leader of the PKI, was abducted by the military and summarily shot. Dr Subandrio, the foreign minister, was arrested, tried on charges of treason and sentenced to death.
An emasculated Sukarno who was eased out of the presidency in 1967. Since 30 September 1965 he had exercised no authority, which authority had passed into Suharto’s hands. As the years went by, Indonesia, which had been close to China in the Sukarno years, was opened up to western investors, especially in the field of natural resources. Within weeks of the military takeover, as the Australian journalist John Pilger was to recount in his work, The New Rulers of the World, representatives of global multinational companies met in Europe to determine their role in exploiting the new opportunities opened up in Indonesia. Jakarta passed into the western orbit.
Eight years later, another September caused unprecedented havoc in Chile. On 11 September 1973, the Chilean army led by General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, led a violent coup d’etat against the elected government of President Salvador Allende Gossens. The coup, staged in connivance with US President Richard Nixon and his national security advisor Henry Kissinger, led to the death of Allende. The circumstances of Allende’s death remain unclear, with conflicting reports of the President committing suicide when he became certain that his government had collapsed and of soldiers shooting him dead in the presidential palace.
The coup in Chile led to a bloodbath of Allende supporters, for the good reason —- the same reason which worked among the soldiers in Jakarta —- that Allende was a socialist whose administration meant to power Chile into an egalitarian socialist future and thereby wrest control of the country from its entrenched oligarchy. Prior to Allende’s election to the presidency in 1970, the Nixon administration had gone out of its way to ensure that the socialist would not gain power. Following the election, the Nixon-Kissinger team went out on a limb to engineer trouble in Chile through interacting with forces unhappy with Allende in office.
Strikes were organised by the CIA in Santiago and elsewhere in Chile. Truck drivers refused to operate their vehicles. Wives of senior military officers taunted the army chief, General Carlos Prats, over his failure to act against the Allende government. Prats, loyal to the end to President Allende, resigned. And then came the move by the President to appoint General Pinochet as the new army chief. Unknown to Allende, Pinochet soon aligned himself with the anti-government elements in the army, air force and navy and placed himself at the head of the coup that would push Chile down the road to a long bloodbath.
The coup of 11 September led to the brutal killing of thousands of Chileans by the soldiers. Thousands were detained in the stadium in Santiago, where they were beaten and humiliated in myriad ways. The well-known theatre personality and poet Victor Jara was among the prominent Chileans murdered following the coup. Not even the ailing Nobel laureate-poet-former diplomat Pablo Neruda was spared indignity. His home was ransacked by the soldiers, who were looking for materials that would incriminate him and perhaps cause them to put an end to his life. In any case, an ailing Neruda died twelve days later, on 23 September.
The Pinochet regime would preside over a reign of terror that would take the lives of many more Chileans at home and abroad. Former ambassador Orlando Letelier was murdered in a car bomb explosion orchestrated by Pinochet’s goons in Washington DC in September 1976. Prats and his wife were blown up in Buenos Aires. Writers and artists fled to Europe and other safer climes. The father of Michele Bachelet, who would later become President of Chile, was tortured to death by the army. Bachelet herself was a victim of the regime’s misdeeds.
In September 2024, questions about Indonesia 1965 and Chile 1973 remain unanswered. President Sukarno died a broken man in 1970. Dr Subandrio was never executed but remained in prison for twenty-nine years. Following his release, he remained silent. General Suharto and his family presided over a kleptocracy for thirty-two years before they were forced from power. In Chile, Pinochet left the presidency in 1990, but not before constitutionally ensuring that he would not be prosecuted over the actions of his regime. On a visit to London, he was placed under arrest on the strength of a warrant served by a Spanish judge but was freed within a short space of time to return to Santiago.
General Suharto was never charged with the murder of the one to two million Indonesians post-September 1965. Likewise, General Pinochet did not go on trial over his role in overthrowing the elected Allende government and pushing thousands of Chileans to death and exile between September 1973 and his exit from power. Both Suharto and Pinochet died peacefully in bed.
The pogroms they inaugurated in their countries remain, though, as some of the darkest chapters in modern history. Regime change in Jakarta and Santiago rudely shook up lives everywhere. Someday the truth will be exhumed from the graves it is buried in. Jakarta and Santiago are beautiful cities today. And yet the presence of the ghosts of the Suharto and Pinochet eras is felt all these decades on.
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