Slave labour and silence in Plantungan camp: Women’s experiences of imprisonment and memory suppression
Slave labour and silence in Plantungan camp: Women’s experiences of imprisonment and memory suppression
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Authors
Głąb, Katarzyna
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Date
2026-06-18
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History and Anthropology
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0275-7206
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2026-06-18
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Abstract EN
This article examines the Plantungan women’s camp as a central instrument of gendered repression under Indonesia’s New Order regime. The study argues that Plantungan functioned as a gendered carceral regime in which women’s bodies were simultaneously disciplined, exploited, and morally stigmatized. To support this, I draw on fieldwork in Central Java, interviews with former prisoners, local memory traces, and various published testimonies. Through forced labour, spatial isolation, sexual violence, ideological instruction, and the enduring myth of the ‘wild Gerwani,’ the state produced a multilayered apparatus of domination that sought not only to punish political dissent but to reshape gendered subjectivities. The analysis situates women’s testimonies within broader frameworks of biopolitics, necropolitics, and feminist theory, demonstrating how state power operated through everyday routines, embodied practices, and enforced silences. It also traces the afterlives of this violence, showing how memory erasure, local stigma, and the absence of institutional reckoning have shaped survivors’ lives long after their release. Finally, the article examines contemporary artistic grassroots efforts that challenge official forgetting and reclaim gendered histories excluded from national narratives. This reconstruction of prisoners’ lived experiences illuminates the intersections of gender, forced labour, and authoritarian power, while contributing to debates on memory politics and transitional justice in Indonesia.
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Keywords PL
Keywords EN
Indonesia 1965–66
plantungan
political imprisonment
forced labour
sexual violence
memory and silencing
plantungan
political imprisonment
forced labour
sexual violence
memory and silencing
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Sustainable Development Goals
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Krajobraz ludzkiej i nie-ludzkiej pamięci w post-autorytarnej Indonezji
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2019/33/N/HS2/02270
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