AN EMERGENCY solidarity appeal has been launched, following attempts by the Suharto regime to decapitate indonesia's emerging mass democracy movened.
At least 20 members of the People's Democracy Party (PRD) have been capturea and cnargea wim subversion. including the president and general secretary, and the president of the PPBI (Indonesian Centre for Labour Struggle). If convicted, they face the death penalty.
On July 27, supporters of the opposition party permitted by tne dictatorship, the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), were forcibly ejected by the military from their offices in Jakarta. The regime PRD chair Budiman Sujatmiko used the riots, which erupted spontaneousiy in response as a pretext to launch an anti-communist witch hunt against the PRD and other outspoken opponents of military rule.
According to security minister General Soedarman, the PRD's manifesto does not mention the official Panca Sila ideology and is based on "popular social democracy". The PRD is accused of SERGEANT (RESERVE) Sergio Yahni, was sentenced to 18 days in military prison for refusing to perform his military duties in Hebron. Before being tried Sergio stated: "When a government is not ready to apply what it has signed, it Subscribe to I Socialist Outlook and PRD General Secretary Petrus links with "left-wing social democratic" forces overseas, Amnesty International and the Australian workers movement, as well as the New People's Army in the Philippines.
The government's orchestrated removal of elected PDI leader Megawati Sukarnoputri and the witch hunt against the PRD express the panic of a ruling clique increasingly divided and isolated, and facing collapse as the social and ideological props of its rule crumble.
This brutal regime was responsible for the slaughter of up to a million people, mostly landless labourers who had een organised by the Communist Party and left nationalists when it took power through a military coup in 1965.
There is growing opposition to Suharto among the aspirant capitalist and protessional classes, wno crave stability and fear mass social unrest and wish to modernise Indonesia politically and economically.
The regime's former allies in the West also fear that Suharto can no longer guarantee stability.
The use of anti-communist rhetoric is a desperate attempt to recreate the political climate which brought the regime to is upon the citizen to apply these commitments.
According to the various agreements with the Palestinians, the Israeli army was supposed to be out of Hebron a long time ago. I will not be there in complete von der Lahnfortpower, and to reunite the middle class behind it against a supposed threat to "order" and national identity.
The biggest threat to Suharto comes from the growing mobilisations of industrial workers, the urban poor, small farmers and landless labourers, led by a new generation of students and militant peasants and trade unionists.
Formed in 1994 as the People's Democratic Union, transforming itself into a party in April 1996, the PRD has emerged at the helm of these mobilisations, drawing together the most radical organisations and leaders - the PPBI, STN (National Peasants' Union), SMID (Student Solidarity for Indonesian Democracy) and JAKER (the People's Cultural Network).
It has developed a programme which fuses the demands of the exploited and oppressed for democracy, human rights, equality and social justice.
It is the only party calling for an end to Indonesia's occupation of East Timor. In a daring act of solidarity, 50 young PRD members joined 50 East Timorese students in climbing into the Dutch and Russian embassies on the 20th anniversary of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor.
The PPBI, the PRD's industrial wing, was formed in October 1994 on the basis of local factory committees built up since the late 1980's to fight for wage improvements. humane conditions and the right to organise. It is the youngest, most dynamic and rapidly-growing indebenden workers organicaton.
Its programme includes demands for a living minimum wage and an end to the government's deep labour strategy for attracting foreign investment. decent conditions, workers' rights and freedom, workplace democracy, equality between male and female workers, and violation of what the government promised on behalf of our people."
Sergio Yahni has already been sentenced three times in the past for refusing to serve in the occupied territories.
In this context he explained today, in a statement to the Israeli media: "The behaviour of the Israeli army in 90 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza, the continuing arrests of Palestinian activists, land confiscations, expansion of settlements, etc. confirms that the occupation is not a matter of the past, but the crude reality of the present.
This is why the same way I refused to serve the occupation in the past, I will continue to refuse to serve the occupaSi Free, NO Suppor Indonesian D