The Man on Trial

It was a year to the day after the abortive coup that was meant to hand Indonesia over to Communism. Now the anti-Communist army officers who put down the revolt were preparing to show the nation just who had been responsible. Before a military court sat a lean little man whose only name was Subandrio. He had been President Sukarno's Foreign Minister, secret-police boss and closest confidant. Last week Subandrio was on trial for his life.

The charge was treason, and the testimony proved fascinating. So nervous that he often mumbled incoherently, the once-glib Subandrio admitted to a secret meeting with Chou En-lai in January of last year, in which the Red Chinese Premier had offered weapons to arm 100,000 Indonesian workers and peasants. He also admitted that he had learned that the Communist coup was in the wind but neglected to tell Sukarno about it. Why? Subandrio assumed that the President already knew. Besides, he confessed, "I have an inferiority complex about telling such things to the President."

As the prosecutor's questions made clear, Subandrio was not the only one on trial. The government's real aim in hauling him before the court, in fact, was to implicate Sukarno in the plot. So far, Subandrio had managed to avoid this, but only barely. "It's only a matter of time," said a top government officer. "If Subandrio gets up and says he was just following orders of the President--well, that's all."

Sukarno had already been tried and convicted by the mobs that clogged Djakarta's streets last week. Once again, the vocal anti-Communist student organizations ignored pleas of the generals to wait for the trial to indict Sukarno. "Court-martial Sukarno!" cried the youngsters. They tried to invade Sukarno's presidential palace three times, were finally driven back only when troops attacked them with fixed bayonets and rifle butts.

The events of the week had a visible effect on Sukarno. Although he still refused to condemn the Communists, he was nervous enough to allow in a speech to his countrymen that, in a general way, what had happened last October had been "treason."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.