A former freelance journalist who worked in Jakarta following

the abortive October 1965 communist coup attempt relates his

numerous interesting experiences

Stringing for Time Magazine

Tom Graciano / Indonesia Media

PART 7

Following hard on the heels of the special sessions of the MPRS (Provisional People’s Consultative Assembly), Indonesia’s highest policy-making body, in May 1966, Yasunori Asai, the Indonesia correspondent of the Asahi Shimbun, then said to be Japan’s largest-circulation newspaper, retained me as his reporter. Asai-san wanted to take me along with him on a trip to West Kalimantan. In those days travel of foreign journalists to that area and certain other Indonesian provinces outside Metropolitan Jakarta had to be approved by the military.

The story we were after was the aftermath of the ceasefire agreed upon by both Indonesia and Malaysia in early 1966. Prior to the ceasefire, heavy fighting was going on along the border areas between West Kalimantan and its northern neighbor Sarawak, a state in East Malaysia. The armed conflict inflicted a lot of casualties reportedly more on the Indonesian rather than the Malaysian side. The fighting was part of President Soekarno’s policy of confrontation against Malaysia since the birth of the federation in late 1963. General Suharto and Adam Malik, the foreign minister, agreed with Tun Abdul Razak, Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister, to end all hostilities.

On the surface the armed confrontation was ostensibly between soldiers of the Tentara Nasional Kalimantan Utara or TNKU (North Kalimantan National Army) and Malaysia’s Royal armed forces. The TNKU – as far as Malaysia and Britain were concerned, they were just bands of guerrillas -- were fighting to get the federation to cede Sarawak and its eastern neighbor Sabah, the other state in East Malaysia. They wanted to be independent and form their own Negara Kesatuan Kalimantan Utara or NKKU ( North Kalimantan Unitary State). Soekarno purportedly dispatched Indonesian volunteers to help their “ North Kalimantan brothers” win the armed struggle from Malaysia. In reality the undeclared war was between Indonesian soldiers, dressed either in TNKU uniforms or as Indonesian volunteers, and Malaysian soldiers well-trained and assisted by British troops. It clearly wasn’t a fair fight, not due to any fault on the part of Malaysia.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of Indonesian soldiers were reportedly killed. But the true story never came out in the press. It was suppressed by Soekarno’s left-leaning government. Things turned around after the new cabinet was formed in which General Suharto, Adam Malik, the Sultan of Yogyakarta, Dr. Ruslan Abdulgani and Dr. Leimena were appointed deputy prime ministers following the abortive communist coup attempt.

I knew the civilian official in charge of processing the military passes for foreign newsmen. That made it easier and quicker to get our passes. Thory Tulaar hailed from Menado, North Sulawesi, the same province where Grace came from. He later on worked for the U.S. Information Service (USIS), publisher of the Titian magazine where I first saw Grace’s picture before I met her. From USIS Thory moved to PT Astra International to become its public relations (PR) manager, with whom I worked closely after I switched from journalism to public relations. Astra International, a large Indonesian company operating many joint ventures with foreign counterparts, was the Indonesian sole distributor for Toyota vehicles at the time.

I also managed to get a special letter signed by Thory’s boss, Colonel R. Ng. Soenarjo, introducing Asai-san and me to the commander of West Kalimantan’s Tanjungpura military division. I think his name was Brigadier General Ryacudu, but I’m not very sure. But more important than the letter was the special permit granted to us to visit the areas bordering West Kalimantan from the neighboring East Malaysia’s State of Sarawak to the north. There was a separate military division operating in those areas whose commander was Major General Willy Soejono.

Asai-san and I flew to Pontianak, the capital of the West Kalimantan province, which lies exactly on the equator. We were supposed to be the guests of the military commander. At the airport we were met by Captain Piet Damanik, the information officer of the military division. Damanik put us up in the officers’ guesthouse. He escorted us everywhere we went throughout our four-day visit. I knew it was partly the military’s courtesy to look after its foreign guests. But I also knew the other part was to keep an eye on us to make sure we didn’t do anything they wouldn’t want us to do. We didn’t get to meet Damanik’s top boss but we did meet and interview several of the general’s senior assistants. One of them was his intelligence officer, whose name I don’t remember now. He gave us a lot of information – I’m sure it was all declassified – about what was going on in the border areas separating the province from Sarawak.

Captain Damanik drove us in his military jeep to General Soejono’s headquarters in a village along the border. The general was very candid in admitting the Malaysian soldiers clearly had the upper hand in all the battles fought against the TNKU forces and the socalled Indonesian volunteers. If it were officially a war between Indonesian and Malaysian forces, the Indonesians would have had a chance to win some battles, or even the entire war. At least they could have minimized the casualties on their part. But the TNKU and the Indonesian volunteers were not supposed to be armed the way Indonesian forces were really armed. We had a long interview with the general followed by a visit to the cemetery where the fallen TNKU soldiers and Indonesian volunteers were buried. I took pictures of the hundreds, if not thousands, of unmarked graves in the cemetery. They had to be unmarked, although the identities of the dead were known, because they were supposed to be volunteers.