that were captured were then given options to "surrender, support the government, or die." The oppression was not just physical. Propaganda campaigns were conducted against the PKI while they were being exterminated. After the 30 September movement coup failed, the army set up a new tabloid to spread rumors of the bestiality of the PKI. They emphasized that women would sink to new depths of depravity under the influence of the godless communists. One of the first regions to feel the wrath of General Suharto's campaign against Communism was the district of Prambanan. In this area, Suharto's soldiers went on hunts for suspected Communists. They would ask peasants if they were members of the PKI and the soldiers' slightest suspicion led to death or capture. One example account of this concerns a peasant's buying cheaper seed from a PKI member. In return, the member mislead the peasant and signed him up for the PKI, causing him to get killed. The peasant knew nothing about the PKI or Communist party; he was just taking advantage of a good deal. Thousands of people were rounded up and held until a decision was made about their fate. In the harshest case, prisoners were interrogated about Communism. If they were believed to be Communists, they were taken to a killing location, shot in the back of the head, tossed into a prepared hole, and then left to rot. The Indonesian military was slaughtering communists, but it was presented in the western press as a civil war so as not to elicit sympathy for the communists. According to documentation declassified in the late 90s and released in 2001 pertaining to the Indonesian Army's fight against the Indonesian Communist Party, the U.S. Embassy originally stated that 50-100 PKI members were being killed nightly. In an air-gram to Washington in April 1966, the estimated fatalities had reached between 100,000 and 1,000,000. The fight against the Indonesian Communist Party eventually led to President Suharto's heightening of power and ultimately led to a brutal dictatorship from 1967-1998, marking 31 years of brutality. The United States' involvement in these activities is marked with controversy. An August 1966 airgram from Marshall Green stated that the U.S. Embassy had prepared a list of Communist leaders with attribution to the Embassy removed, and that the list was being used by Indonesian security officials that lacked overt knowledge on Communist officials. US stance in