INDONESIAN political activists and work tained over the last few since December 12 1996 in Jakarta and Surabaya.
The charges they face range from creaung puolic asorder to sowint: subversion. The maximum penalty for the latter is death.
The verdict will be delivered > within the next few months and probably before General Elections scheduled for May 1997 - so as not In any event the final judgement is not in doubt. The defendants will be found guilty and sentenced to the severest punishment under law - unThe accused include members of the opposition Partai Demokras indonesia or Indonesian Democracy Party (PDI). However the main targets are leaders of the left wing Par. ai Rakyat Demokratik or Peoples Democratic Party (PRD) including its Chairperson Budiman Sudjarmiko, 26. trade unionist Dita Indah ari, 24, peasant leader Coel tussein Pontoh and student activis M. Sholeh The other principal accused is the Muchtar Pakpahan, 43, who had already spent a year in jail for his organising efforts.
Riots
hey were arrested following the anti-government riots that swept Jakarta after the Government organquarters on July 27th, to prevent it being used as a meeting place for democracy actvists and as a forum for anti-government speeches and ralThe 'New Order' regime of President Saharto has prided itself on its authoritarian grip over the country. advertising Indonesia as an invest ment safe and profitable site for foreign trans-nationals. These companies croose indonesta Decause of its abysmally low wages and (until recently) docile working The labour force has been man. bination of 'yellow' or company union federation - the All Indonesia Workers Union (SPSI) and the direct intervention of the military in factory disputes.
rowever in the last tew years in dependent trade unions have the new industrial working class. As. sociated with them are new political formatons including partes Dased upon and oriented to the working In the 1980s in Indonesia a new civil society gained expression in non-governmental organisations in. volveo in environmental campaigns. legal aid and human rights. On its own criteria and to maintain its survival this important movement was strictly non-political and respectful of constitutional norms and state policy.
Voices
However the 1990s has witnessed the appearance of previousty unorganised constituencies and unarticulated voices and concerns. The existence in spite of severe represticularly the SBSI (Indonesian Labour Welfare Union) with its 18,000 members and the very foundation of the PRD are grounds for the real oportest that entuse the progressive movement even in this time of despair for the lives of those fighters.
Ine rau nas a sopnistcated and refined analysis of the nature and cial change as well as a principled approach to the question of the occupation of East Timor and the sonoode or is poopie This small party with barely a few hundred militants has managed in a sands in related front organisations of students, peasants, workers and cultural activists.
In an orchestrated campaign of rising hysteria, the regime and army plainty astonished by the strength lost interest in the larger legal oppo. sition party, the PDI and has instead concentrated on manufacturing mistruths and falschoods about the ing them as "masterminding" the july protests and wrongy sabeling them as 'Communists'.
The latter charge must be of the 1965 massacre of the Indonesian Left and the organisational exPeruvians of their most vital needs. The situation has not changed at any time under Alberto Fujimori's administration. In fact it has worsened, with a dramatic rise in the number of poor in Peru."
The opening of the internal market to trans-nationals has driven many Peruvian companies out of business. The Peruvian sol is trad. ing at artificially high levels which is good for importers but bad for exporters.
Banks have pegged interest rates high attracting foreign capital but making it expensive for local capitalists to borrow for investment.
The alternative for Peruvian capital is to play second fiddle to tinction of the Indonesian Communist Party, wiwen nao three milice members and many millions more in 1s mass Organisadons.
Contain communism All of these acts were perpe. trated by the present ruing clique of Suharto and the military, and with the direct support of western powers in their bid to 'contain' Communism in south-east Asia.
The torture. Imonsonment and killings which followed; the battery of repressive laws: the growth of the military apparatus and its reach into everyday life; the policing of dispast; the egos and fortunes of the Suharto clan, the crony capitalists and their army buddies are by-products of this period.
Ironically the regime was initially preoccupied by the rise in public support for the state created Partai Demokrasi Indonesia led by MRTA leader Nestor Cerpa holds a press conference after interrupting the ambassador's cocktail party foreign trans-nationals by entering into joint venture schemes as junior partners, and this is precisely what is happening.
The Peruvian economy has been growing in the 1990s — not because of Fujishock, which with its deflatonary mechanisins arcateus a to cession any day - but because it has been a desirable destination for portfolio investment capital drawn by the high interest rate and the fortune it makes on the stock mar ket through the purchase of grossly under-valued public assets.
Wealth is concentrated in fewer (and mainly foreign) hands and Fujimori while denouncing the hostage taking by the MRTA is holding to free the detainees!
Megawati Sukarnoputri. She is a daughter of the nationalist leader Sukarno and was tipped to do the unthinkable, challenge Suharto in Presidential elections and possibly Suharto's original plan was to prevent her from challenging him and to weaken her support base in her party and in the country. That accounted for the ham-handed assault on the rui olke where ner sup* porters were barricaded.
Congress
It also explains the swift convening of a PDI congress by the military.
which Megawati and her supporters vote barco rom do which replaced her with a Suharto stooge who will play his scripted part in Indonesia's 'Guided DemocIn other words the PDI was restored as a 'kept' opposition party.
giving the political system the facade the entire country hostage to the whims of finance capital which is notoriously nervous and fickle.
The lessons of the Mexican debacle, where the peso went into free fall and had to be bailed out by the US government, have not been fully absorbed in Latin American capicals. The bulwarks of the Fujimori administration are therefore the international financial institutions, and also the military.
Hand-picked
He has his hand-picked loyalists in the armed forces hierarchy who are intensely and personally loyal to him in return for his giving them carte blanche to pursue a counter of multi-partyism but which never seriously challenges the ruling Gol. kar party or the social and economic system.
Megawati herself will be handled with coution by the Government Her profile and the prestige of her father sive her some protection in that regard.
Mearwhile she has become identified as the public face of the yearning for an end to the Suharto presilency and for grester opennes and accountability from the state.
It is tempting and instructive not only to draw the obvious parallel between Megawati and Burmese oppoperhaps from further afield Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani Prime Minister.
Bhutto drew on the populst legacy of her father and his party.
symbolised the struggle against dictatorship. But her record in ofice and attitude towards former allies underThe Fujimori government removed basic labour standards, and introduced large scale redundancies by halving the public sector payroll. It has privatised most of the state owned assets and reduced tariffs for imports and removed foreign exchange restrictions. insurgency campaign against antistate forces without fcar of punishment for abuses and excesses.
Under an amnesty decree of June 1995, no military personnel can be tried for offences relating to human rights violations or drug trafficking from 1980 onwards, the beginning of the Sendero Luminoso insurgency.
Marginallsed
The terror of the state continues in the rural communities and in the working class and poor neighbourhoods. The roots of Sendero Lumi. noso is in the real immiseration of the poor; the marginalisation of the indigenous campesinos who face land hunger and starvation; and the exclusion of the majority from a political and economic system in which they simply do not exist.
However the tactics of Sendero which operated on the basis that "if you are not for us, you are against us backlired arainst them. They murdered many progressive activists, from feminist leaders to militants of the Fourth International. They would not tolerate any opposition or debate as to their ideas and strategies.
The capture of their leader, Guzman, in 1992 has weakened and split them, but they have not gone away.
Their struggle and the military campaign against them consumed the lives of 35,000 people. The revulsion at this waste and disdain for armed struggle increased popular support for Fujimori's authoritarian efforts to curb Sendero, and was a major factor in his re-clection victory of 1993.
Another reason being his reining scores the inherent limitations of these charismatic individuals and their ideologies.
The pro-democracy movement against the dictatorship and to recognise that the PDI of Megawati will for the foreseeable future be its larg: est component. This will deline the movement's strategies and its deMegawati's immediate prionty has been to preserve her own politiporters and trying to secure legal levitimacy for her party Optimism A spokesperson for the PRD interviewed by Green Left Weekly was optimist about the future, He ob served that his party (courtesy of the rezame it vows to overtion has been catapulted from obscurity into national prominence. It is gaining a new audience for its ideas. in of hyper-inflation from a high of 7,659 per cent in 1990 to 139 per cent in 1991 and a new low of 10 per cent 1n 1993 Here the Peruvian cicctoraic aic representative ol ine contincatal trend, in that even with decply unpopular austerity measures, they prefer the reality of economic stability associated with low inflation to vague promises from the Lett.
In Brazil too, this was one obvi. ous lesson of the dcicat of the Workers Party (PT) by Collor de Mello and Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Unfortunately for the MRTA, even in the popular imagination of the barrios of Lima they are seen as little better than Sendero Luminoso. "There is little popular support and sympathy for them in a country weary of violence and which longs to believe in the Fujimori promise The MRTA as a legal party may have better prospects but that path is fraught with dangers too. It could for example go the way of the Colombian M-19, originally a left wing sucitilla movement but later co. opted into supporting the neo-liberal economic programme.
Another example is that of ine URNG in Guatemala, which has now signed a peace accord with the government which includes granting army personnel immunity from prosecution for tens of thousands of 'disappearances' there and the genocide of entire indigenous vil.
Peru's traditional 'left', the populist APRA and the United Left (IU) fared badly in the 1995 clections, and are seen as part of the discredited political establishment.
Opportunity
They have the opportunity to rebuild their support in the months ahead by Icading the anti-privatisation campaign which the left wing daily La Republica is spearheading. and by combining that with assaults against the authoritarianism and corruption of the present government.
The events of the last few weeks may be the stimulus to a reawakening of the interventions of the radiThe MRTA members are prepared to be martyrs in their strug gle, ready to die for the brief spotlight on their imprisoned comWe must hope that they will live to participate in the reconstruction of the Peruvian Left and in re-kindling interest in alternatives to neo-liberal ruin.
"Some pro-democracy groups believe the movement has receded.
but we feel the opposite. The opportunities... are far greater today.
So our perspective is to raise the level of struggle and give it a political focus".
In Australia members of the Mari.
time Union have been mounting go-slows on cargo bound foi Indonesia, and in one case are refusing to unload a ship.
Elsewhere there must be similar protests targeting Indonesian busi.
ernment by pickets, lobbies and the like, campaigning to frée all detainees, repeal repressive laws and end arms sales.
The regime has left no doubt that it will not hesitate to take the We must leave it in doubt that there is nothing that we won't do •to save their lives.
Socialist Durkook