The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

by Vincent Bevins

Upon returning to a new, independent Indonesia, Francisca started working as a librarian—a dream job, because she could be surrounded once more by books. It wasn’t hard for her to land a position. The new republic was starving for qualified workers, and was still relying on Dutch librarians to work alongside her. As a result of intentional Dutch neglect, the Indonesian people were badly deprived of education. By the time the Dutch withdrew, only around 5 percent of the Indonesian population of sixty-five million could read and write.11 Francisca said, “I think this was one of the worst crimes of colonialism. After three and a half centuries of Dutch occupation we were left with almost no knowledge of our own people, and our own culture.”