REPRISAL FOR COUP

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30945, 29 December 1965, Page 7

REPRISAL FOR COUP

100,000 Deaths Estimated

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) CANBERRA, Dec. 27.

As many as 100,000 Indonesian men and women may have been killed in reprisal for the October 1 coup, the “Australian’s” Asian affairs correspondent, Peter Hastings, reported. According to Hastings, estimates in Djakarta vary widely. Hastings wrote: “Former P.K.I. sympathisers privately and savagely claim at least 300,000 deaths.

“It suits them to exaggerate wildly and paint the Army rank and file as black reactionaries.

“Quite a few conservative Indonesians believed that 200,000 P.K.I. members and sympathisers may have been killed to date, many of them in direct military mopping up operations, most of them in small scale, local actions carried out by Moslem extremists with tacit Army approval. “Most people I met in Djakarta thought the figure about 100,000.”

Electricians’ Officers.—Officers elected by the Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Institute of Electricians were as follows: president, Mr C. Collyer; vice-president, Mr E. J. Hansen, secretary, Mr D. G. Rich; treasurer, Mr J. L. Forbes; executive, Messrs J. H. Box, R. W. Hand, P. R. Isles, A. Tucker, F- J. Tutt, trustees Messrs T. H. Mitchell and N. S. Street.