By Max Lane
In New Delhi, India on October 28 students, trade unionists and human rights activists will demonstrate outside the Indonesian embassy against the crackdown on the democratic movement and the imprisonment of activists and the leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party (PRD). The All India Congress of Trade Unions and the All India Association of Students will also hold a press conference, and a public meeting at the Jawarhal Nehru University. The next day similar activities are being organised in Calcutta. Nico Warouw, international representative of the PRD, will speak at both events.
On the same day in Pretoria, activists from the trade unions, the ANC and the South African Communist Party will hold a picket outside the Indonesian embassy. In London, the British human rights group, TAPOL, will hold a picket. In Vancouver, local East Timor groups and Canadian trade union leaders will hold a press conference and in Manila, students and unionists will be picketing the Indonesian embassy. In Amsterdam, Indonesian exiles and Dutch supporters will be pitching tents outside the Indonesian embassy and holding a hunger strike, joined by others in Berlin, Stockholm, Lisbon and many other places.
In every capital city in Australia protests, pickets and hunger strikes are being organised by Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET), a national organisation working with the Indonesian democracy movement. Church activists, union militants, high school activists, the National Union of Students, socialists, migrant community and political groups, and musicians will be participating. Every Indonesian embassy and consulate will be targeted.
Crackdown
In Indonesia itself, the crackdown continues. Over 120 people are being tried for allegedly participating in anti-government rioting on July 27 and 28. Many are supporters of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) or just angry Jakartans picked up for acting defiantly towards patrolling military and police.
More than 24 leaders and members of the PRD remain in jail with little news about when their trials will start. There is no news on the trial dates of union leader, Dita Sari, or democracy and labour rights activist, Muchtar Pakpahan. Father of jailed PRD president, Budiman Sujatmiko, has been terrorised in Bandung after announcing that he would sue General Syarwan Hamid for accusing the whole Sujatmiko family of being "communist".
The Coordinating Minister for Politics and Security has announced a hunt for radical activist and writer Danial Indra Kusuma, leaders of the National Peasants Union and the Peoples Cultural Network. Four more activists from the newly formed Students for Democracy Party in Sulawesi were detained for interrogation. Three tabloid weeklies, who have been attacking the regime over their actions against the PDI and the PRD, have been warned. Suharto himself has accused the retired generals who own them of deliberately fomenting instability.
Cracks
However, cracks are appearing in the regime's facade. The National Human Rights Commission, a generally timid body set up by Suharto, last week released a final report on the July 27 attack on the PDI headquarters and the ensuing rioting.
The Commission laid full blame for the riots on what it describes as the government's excessive intervention in the internal affairs of the PDI. The report claims that the army and police trained 800 soldiers for the assault on the PDI office, selecting the best 200 for the attack. These conclusions fly directly in the face of the regime's pronouncements that the PRD caused the rioting.
Given the national and international attention that has focused on the commission, it has been impossible to prevent its main conclusions being reported in the Indonesian media. Spokespeople for the armed forces have merely stated that they would look into the findings.
It is unlikely that the commission would have dared issue such a confronting report without the backing of elements in the political elite, and general public support.
The report has enormous ramifications for the PRD's struggle to regain entry into the open political struggle. The regime's attack on the PRD was initially focused on its alleged backing of the rioting. Megawati Sukarnoputri has refuted this, blaming Suharto's puppet PDI leader, Suryadi, for provoking the riots. Now that the commission has blamed the government, almost nothing is left of the regime's case against the PRD. The dictatorship has had to fall back on attacking the PRD as "communist", but despite initial support from conservative Islamic elements, this campaign too is faltering.
Siar magazine, published by dissident journalists, reported on a national television debate between General Hamid, the deputy Human Rights Commission convenor, and a prominent civil liberties lawyer, Mulya Lubis. Hamid was described as passive and lethargic, never making a comment unless asked by the moderator.
Lubis argued that the real threat to society was not "communism", but unemployment and the radicalism, of whatever ideology, that it provoked. Unemployment in Indonesia is around 30%. While Hamid at first argued that all the recent industrial unrest was being organised and manipulated by the "communists", by the end of the debate he was stating that the threat from communism wasn't so great after all.
Meanwhile on October 11, outspoken pro-democracy figure and former parliamentarian Sri Bintang Pamungkas held a press conference in Jakarta challenging Suharto to a popular election for president. Sri Bintang said that it was important not to be intimidated into quiescence by the persecution of pro-democracy activists. "We must not lie down quietly", he said.
Bintang himself was recently sentenced to three years in jail for calling Suharto a dictator during a demonstration in Germany. He is currently waiting for the result of an appeal. Earlier this year he helped form the United Democracy Party, bringing together former student activists from the 1970s and some Islamic democrats.
The threat to the dictatorship from the organised movement of the people is greater than ever. Now is the time for democratic-minded people in Australia to work harder to help them.