[1] It was faced by strikes and instability in the summer of 1951, violent rural banditry, internal political divisions, and tensions over the negotiations of the Treaty of San Francisco which would mean peace between Indonesia and Japan.

[2][1] In June the Justice Minister Mohammad Yamin also unexpectedly pardoned 950 political prisoners, including Chairul Saleh and a variety of suspected rebels, without consulting the army and based on his arbitrary assessment of each person and not legal principles.

[13] On 11 August, the government enacted a curfew in Medan, North Sumatra under the pretext of military exercises, and started arresting hundreds of "troublemakers" in and around the city.

[5][14][15] Estimates of the first raid put it at 51 people arrested, including leading Sumatran communists Abdoe'lxarim MS and Jusuf Ajitorop and local PKI members, though the number was soon revised upwards to almost 500.

[1][24] Military police carried out preventive detention of roughly 100 communists and leftists, including sixteen members of the Provisional House of Representatives, some of whom were arrested at their homes early in the morning.

[3] Information Minister Arnold Mononutu also kept the charges secret and alleged the a foreign power was preparing a coup in cooperation with local Communists.

[3] Among the arrested parliamentarians were Mudigdo, Tjudito, and Djokosoedjono of the PKI, Mustafa of the worker's bloc, Pandu, Syono and Maruto of the Murba Party, Sarwono S. Sutardjo of the Partai Kedaulatan Rakjat, Sidik Kertopari of the Peasants Front of Indonesia (BTI), and independent member Siauw Giok Tjhan.

Five editors from Sin Po were brought in: A. Karim, Tjia Tjo Soen, Lieng Jing Chen, Lee Swie Kee and Oen Tek Hian, as well as the director Ang Jan Goan.

[36] 100 or so people were arrested in Cirebon, West Java on 17 August, with the support of a Mobile Brigade unit from Bandung, though none of the figures were high-profile political ones.

[37][38] The military police portrayed the detainees as a mix of criminal gangs, Darul Islam rebellion supporters, members of the paramilitary Barisan Sakit Hati and communists.

[38] Another 50 were arrested in Bandung, West Java on 20 August; again, the PKI and SOBSI offices were raided, with a list of local party and union leaders sought by police.

[45] Parliamentarians were very unhappy about the detention of their members and protested as early as 16 August, when Deputy Speaker Albert Mangaratua Tambunan sent a delegation to the Prime Minister to demand an explanation.

[29][24][25][48] Later in the month, the PKI accused the Soekiman coalition of falling prey to a "rising fascist ideology" akin to that which Indonesians lived under during the Japanese occupation.

Masyumi, some of whose members had been arrested, still supported the campaign overall, whereas Sutan Sjahrir of the Socialist Party of Indonesia said communist or Darul Islam rebels were just symptoms of deeper economic causes.

[59] The PKI also moderated its agrarian policy and stopped supporting armed activity within Indonesia as a result of the arrests, but the detentions did not slow the rapid growth of the party in the early 1950s.

[61][1] Tan Po Goan, a lawyer and parliamentarian representing Baperki who put forward the interpellation, noted that people who had been foot soldiers in the APRA rebellion in 1949 who had been held without charge for a year and a half and received an apology upon their release.

[64] Tan Po Goan found the answer incomplete and asked for a more detailed response from the government about the basis on which it felt entitled to act outside the law.

[66] He also noted that the detainees had been prevented from being committing any crimes during those months and asked the critical parliamentarians if they should just sit and wait for a coup d'état to take place.

[67][45][68] He denied that the government had committed any legal excesses, and offered to send the Attorney General to personally visit every single arrest site and punish any local officials who had gone beyond their mandate.

[68] He said that he regretted having had to arrest sitting parliamentarians within the House back in August, but that Indonesian government apparatuses were still emerging from a revolutionary period and had not yet reached a state of perfection.

[45][69][70] Upon the fall of the Soekiman Cabinet in early 1952, the release of August detainees was one of the demands of left-wing parties being asked to support an incoming new government.