Gathering in the Paddies

One of the more familiar faces around President Sukarno's office these days is the grim and sorrowing visage of Yao Chung-ming, Red China's ambassa dor in Djakarta. Three times in a week, he showed up to express his grave con cern at the Indonesian government's recent antisocialist behavior. If the Bung was being honest, he must have expressed grave concern right back, for there was precious little he could do about the disturbing turn of events. The army was clearly in control.

Smoking Volcano. Even as they conferred, Defense Minister Nasution was preparing a purge of all Communists in the armed services, and there was dark talk of a sweeping decree banning the Indonesian Communist Party (P.K.I.). Under army pressure, Parliament suspended all its 57 Communist members. And as Yao yelped, 100,000 Moslem students attacked the Red Chinese consulate in Medan on Sumatra, tore down its flag, and howled "Chinese Go Home" for an hour.

The real center of Communist resistance was among the fertile paddies around inactive but smoking Mount Merapi in teeming central Java, where economic dissatisfaction is helped by one of the world's densest populations. Somewhere in a lOO-sq.-mi. triangle centering on Mount Merapi, Indonesia's Red Boss D. N. Aidit was said to be hiding out with ten or eleven cohorts in the P.K.I.'s stoutest stronghold: the party claims some 1,000,000 members, 30% of its total, among the poverty stricken peasants in the region surrounding the sprawling city of Solo. In the month following the abortive "Gestapu" (30th of September) coup, the P.K.I, openly defied the army in a region of terror in Solo and the nearby towns of Boyolali and Klaten that resulted in some 200 to 600 being clubbed or stabbed to death--or disposed of by that hoary Chinese practice of burying the victim up to his neck and leaving him to the sun and insects.

Escaping History? The Chinese merchants of the district had little connection with the Communists, but in reprisal to Communist brutality, Moslem and Christian youths burned more than 200 Chinese homes. As a result of the terror, usually bustling Solo, Boyolali and Klaten are anemic ghost towns. On the highway from Djokjakarta to Solo, normally clogged with traffic, only an occasional bullock cart lumbers by, while convoys of steel-helmeted Dipo-negoro division units from Sumatra and colorful Kommando Para Raiders from Djakarta in bright vermilion berets race past the empty paddies in armored cars and trucks. In Solo, Moslem student groups in khaki shirts and peaked caps help the army patrol the streets.

Headquarters for the search for Aidit is an abandoned farmhouse twelve miles northeast of Solo. From it some 5,000 troops are combing the hills and stopping vehicles on the roads. Says mild-mannered Major Sajidiman, plotting the action on a U.S. Army map: "I am convinced that Aidit cannot escape history." So far, however, Solo's resident Napoleon has managed to escape the Indonesian army, and the odds are that he is busily rallying support for some sustained guerrilla warfare. "Mount Merapi is quiet just now too," warned one Soloist, "but watch out. Gestapu blood is still hot."

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