Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol. 37, No. 19. July 31, 1974
[Introduction]
Since 1965 a new word has been added to the Indonesian language — Tapol. Today, seven years after the establishment of President Suharto's New Order, the arrest of political suspects remains a continuing feature of the Indonesian scene. After years of consolidation and a general election (1971) which provided it with powerful Parliamentary support, the Indonesian Government still sees those in detention as a serious threat to its stability. The prisoners number remains in excess of 50,000. Up to the end of 1972 only about three hundred political prisoners had been brought to court; the vast majority have never been tried and the Government has itself admitted that it has no intention of trying them.
In the first years after independence, Indonesia was virtually free front political imprisonment. Then in the late 1950s, after regional rebellions had taken place in several parts of the Republic, several thousand political arrests were made; by the early 1960s, most were released under a general amnesty.
During the 1960s Indonesian politics underwent an increasing polarisation between left and right; in October 1965 this came to a head with the army defeating a left-wing coup attempt, the gradual replacement of Sukarno's Cabinet by a military administration, and the onset of a massive and violent anti-communist purge in which more than 300,000 died and 250,000 were arrested. Under General Suharto the army moved rapidly to crush the coup attempt, claiming that the entire communist and left-wing movement had been implicated in it. Army raids and mass assaults were launched on communist party (PKI) and left-wing organisation offices which retaliated only in isolated areas, and arrests of their leaders were soon under way.
During the course of 1966, some of those who had been arrested were released but the numbers under detention still remained very high. In March 1966 President Sukarno, who had tried to stem the tide of persecution and who had began an investigation into the massacres, was forced to sign over his powers — though not yet his position — to General Suharto. A day after the order was signed, 13 of Sukarno's Cabinet Ministers were placed under arrest and a new cabinet was formed.