Cikini Incident

The Cikini Incident or Cikini Affair (Indonesian: Peristiwa Cikini), also known in Indonesia as the Cikini Tragedy (Indonesian: Tragedi Cikini), was an assassination attempt against President Sukarno of Indonesia. On 30 November 1957, Sukarno attended the fifteenth anniversary celebrations of the Cikini School in Cikini, Jakarta, with his son Guntur and daughter Megawati. While his children entered the school to watch a film, Sukarno walked towards his limousine as a crowd gathered around him. When he was approximately halfway to the vehicle, five grenades were thrown from individuals hidden within the crowd. Sukarno was initially thrown to the ground by his aide Sudarto, who then worked with two bodyguards to rush him into a building across the street. Although Sukarno escaped the attack unscathed, delivering a brief speech to the nation shortly afterwards, the grenades killed several bystanders and wounded dozens more, with most of the casualties being children. The Indonesian military arrested more than seventy individuals by the end of December, and unsuccessfully pursued former intelligence chief Zulkifli Lubis as the potential mastermind. Four attackers—Saadon bin Mohammed, Tasrif bin Hussein, Jusuf Ismail, and Moh. Tasim bin Abubakar—were found guilty at trial in 1958; three were sentenced to death and one to twenty years' imprisonment. Fallout from the attack led several members of the Islamic party Masyumi to flee Jakarta for Sumatra, ended government negotiations with dissident groups, and exacerbated anti-Dutch sentiment. Sukarno, who ruled Indonesia until 1967 and survived several further attacks, later came to believe that the Central Intelligence Agency had orchestrated attempts on his life.