Indonesian cops break up solidarity conference
On the afternoon of June 8, the Asia Pacific Labour Solidarity Conference on Neoliberalism in Sawangan south of Jakarta, organised by the Indonesian Centre for Reform and Social Emancipation (INCREASE), was violently broken up by Indonesian secret police and their right-wing militia thugs.
32 foreign participants, and the five year old child of one, were loaded onto police trucks and cars to be driven to the central Jakarta police station. There they were detained without charge by police intelligence and their passports removed. 8 Indonesian participants were also arrested and the whereabouts of some of them is still not clear.
Thugs
The police left the conference site mindful that the machete- and sickle-wielding militia thugs had stayed behind.
At approximately 7pm they launched an attack on the remaining Indonesian participants, who had to run for their lives. A number were injured and two people were hospitalised, one requiring emergency surgery for a slashed artery.
The question of so called "visa violations" was used as an excuse used by the police intelligence to close down the conference. The Indonesian immigration authorities have stated that the foreign participants using a short stay pass were entitled to attend seminars and did not breach any laws.
According to Mursanuddin Gani, a senior official for the Director General for Immigration, who was quoted in the June 11 Jakarta Post, the police acted on their own.
"The police could have contacted our office prior to raid, but as far as I know there was no notification … If they [the foreigners] really violated immigration laws, why were they released? … The police can only summons the organisers of the seminar for questioning, not necessarily question the foreigners."
Gani pointed out in the same interview that foreigners visiting Indonesia for special events like conferences and business meetings were eligible for the visa-on-arrival facility, the same visa obtained by the Australian participants at the INCREASE conference.
One of the participants, Farooq Tariq from the Labour Party Pakistan, was singled out for particularly repressive treatment by the authorities.
Deportation
He was asked to leave the country within four days and had a stamp of deportation put on his passport. This behaviour is particularly dangerous given the repression meted out to Tariq by the military regime in his own country.
As he pointed out at a subsequent press conference, the decision to deport him shows " the colonial mentality of the Indonesian authorities" and puts his life further in danger.
Tariq told The Jakarta Post that he felt he was being discriminated against. "This is just because I’m from a poor country... the people from rich countries have been released.
This vicious attack on democratic rights is of serious concern: it signifies the beginning of an attempt by the right wing to return to the worst of the New Order repression experienced under the former Suharto regime.
It is also reminiscent of the actions carried out by the Indonesian armed forces in collaboration with militia thugs in East Timor in 1999 and by similar groups in Indonesia against the democratic forces.
Protests took place in response to this undemocratic outrage in many Australian cities and also in a number of places in the United States. Support was also received from a rally of striking dock workers in South Carolina on June 10 and a message of support was read at the protest rally to greet George Bush in Madrid.
Messages of support should be send to [email protected]