October 1997

Indonesian upheaval led by students, poor

By Anne Jaclard

New York-Edwin Gozal, a leader in the Indonesian pro-democracy and student movements, spoke on tour in the U.S. in August. He began with a question posed to him recently by an East Timorese friend: Why has the military regime not yet fallen? He answered by discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the pro-democracy movement.

Its strength, he said, lies in its leadership by students and the urban poor. The students, who were instrumental in the ouster of dictator Suharto in May, continued to organize during their summer break. Many industries in Jakarta are on strike, and strikers, including the flight attendants from the national airlines, joined the democracy demonstrations. Blind people who were tricked out of the money due them by Suharto-controlled charities joined. In the countryside, poor farmers are seizing and occupying the land that was taken from them by Suharto's family. In both urban and rural areas, corrupt officials are being pushed out of office by mass protests.

The weaknesses in the movement, Gozal said, are opposing tendencies on the questions of abolishing the military in government vs. giving it some seats in parliament; whether to allow East Timor independence and possibly Aceh and Irian Jaya (West Papua); demanding only elections vs. more thorough reforms; whether there should be restrictions on the parties that can run for office; and discrimination against ethnic Chinese.

Gozal and others have strong evidence that the violence inflicted on the ethnic Chinese and urban poor during the May rebellion was planned, instigated and orchestrated by the government. He did not discuss it further, but world-wide interest has arisen in the burning, killing and rapes of ethnic Chinese at that time. There were even protests by women's and student groups in Beijing Aug. 17-the largest demonstrations there since Tiananmen Square in 1989 and, of course, illegal. They were protesting both the horrible violence and their own government's muted response.

Recently the Indonesian government has denied that the rapes occurred and tried to discredit the international campaign against them. But numerous eyewitness accounts and victims' testimonies attest to the truth of the horrors.

Due to the Asian financial crisis, close to half the country-100 million people-will soon be living below the official poverty line. Even before the country's economic collapse, 45% of the one-year-olds were malnourished, and conditions are much worse now. The 70 multinational corporations who did business with the Suharto family remain in the country and are taking advantage of the economic collapse to buy up stock and land.

Indonesia has the fourth largest population in the world, and if its mass movements prevent the government from complying with IMF demands for greater and greater austerity measures (read: impoverization), they can trigger others to defy the IMF and spark a new global order. The East Timor Action Network/U.S. is urging people to write Congress to cut off military aid and IMF funding to Indonesia.

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