been literally clogged with bodies. Although the motive for the killings seemed political, some scholars argue that the events were caused by panic and political uncertainty. Part of the anti-Communist force responsible for the massacres consisted of members of the criminal underworld who were given permission to engage in acts of violence. Among the worst-affected areas was the island of Bali, where the PKI had grown rapidly before the crackdown. On 11 November, clashes erupted between the PKI and the Indonesian National Party which ended in the massacre of suspected PKI members and sympathizers. Although much of the anti-PKI violence in the rest of the country was perpetrated by Islamic political organizations, some of the killings in Bali were performed by Hindus. Bali was the only place in the country where local soldiers intervened to lessen the slaughter. On 22 November, Aidit was captured and killed. The military announced that Aceh had been cleared of communists in December, and special military courts were set up to try jailed PKI members. The party was banned by Suharto on 12 March, and the pro-PKI Central All-Indonesian Workers Organization was banned in April. Some of the events were fictionalized in the 1982 film, The Year of Living Dangerously. After 1965 After initial sporadic resistance, the PKI was paralyzed after the 1965-1966 killings. The party's leadership was crippled at all levels, leaving many of its former supporters and sympathizers disillusioned, leaderless and disorganized. The remnants of the party politburo issued a September 1966 statement of self-criticism, criticizing the party's previous cooperation with the Sukarno regime. After Aidit and Njoto were killed, Sudisman (the fourth-ranking PKI leader before October 1963) took over the party's leadership. He attempted to rebuild the party on a base of interlocking groups of three members, but made little progress before he was captured in December 1966 and sentenced to death in 1967. Some PKI members took refuge in an isolated region south of Blitar in East Java after the crackdown on the party. Among the leaders in Blitar were the Politburo member Rewang, the party theorist Oloan Hutapea and the East Java leader Ruslan Widjajasastra. Blitar was an underdeveloped area where the PKI had strong peasant support, and the military was unaware that the PKI had consolidated there. The PKI leaders were joined by Lieutenant Colonel Pratomo, the former commander of the Pandeglang military district in West Java, who helped