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

by Vincent Bevins

In total, at least 5 percent of the population of Bali was killed—that is, eighty thousand people, probably the highest proportion in the country.29 The Balinese had been especially strong supporters of Sukarno’s multifaith political project, because it gave Hindus more freedom in a Muslim-majority country.30 A severe economic crisis in the early 1960s made the communists’ promises of redistribution more attractive to some—and more threatening to others. The PNI killed Suteja, the governor, and members of his family, and spread the myth that he actually chose to nyupat, or volunteered to be executed and be reincarnated as a better person. Some Balinese were indeed asked if they wanted to nyupat or not. But those who said no were killed anyway, rendering the question meaningless.31 They were executed, murdered one by one, over just a few months, for affiliation with an unarmed political party that had been entirely legal and mainstream just weeks earlier. A little bit later, the first tourist hotel went up on the very beach, Seminyak, that had been used as a killing field.