Continued...

district caused many large proprietors to sell lands or shift their residence. Relation of government restrictions, enforced in the 1950s, on the role of foreign-born residents in Indonesian business and commerce has allowed the Chinese to reassert themselves in the town's trade. Finally, Tabanan district has a reputation for excellent rice yields and intense politicization of both town and village areas. Communist party (M0 activity thrived here in the early 1960s, and subsequently Tabanan suffered severely during the mass reaction to the attempted PKI coup in 1965. There are no reliable figures on the numbers killed, but district death estimates run as high as 10,000, and reports and rumors on the treatment of imprisoned communist suspects, especially women, are correspondingly gruesome. In 1972 the political situation in Tabanan as elsewhere in Bali was still very tentative:

Land ownership is restricted by law since the reform to a maximum of 7.5 hectares of sawah or nine hectares of dry land. The large landowners, mainly the members of the traditional ruling families or of the Chinese business community, were divested of their properties on promise of what amounted to token compensation in swiftly inflating rupiah - if, indeed any payment was made at all. These alleged reforms were carried out at a time when the Communist Party was achieving paramount influence in the Sukarno government. The Party leaders very shrewdly manipulated the law to penalize their political enemies and reward themselves and their adherents. As a result of these so-called reforms, large amounts of land changed hands ... but no one seems willing even to risk an opinion as to how much the condition of the animosities over land often played a key role in the identification of potential victims of the 1966 massacres. Many peasants who had suddenly become