30.09.1999

Students show the way

Indonesian crisis

Militant demonstrations last week forced the Indonesian government to back down from the immediate implementation of its new security law. Six civilians and one police officer were killed last Friday as students took to the streets after the outgoing Suharto-era Indonesian parliament passed the ‘state of danger’ draft law. In an attempt to curtail further mobilisations, president Habibie has postponed signing his consent, but has refused to reject it outright - a move expected to provoke further protests.

The security bill, which allows for the Indonesian military (TNI) to take power during unspecified national emergencies for an indefinite period, all but reintroduces the subversion law of 1963, revoked last year in the wake of Suharto’s resignation in May 1998. If introduced, the law will also allow for detention without trial and the abolition of press freedom.

The bill is an attempt by the TNI to reassert its central position in political life before the new parliament, elected in May, opens on October 1. In justification the army is whipping up anti-western, nationalist feelings, as Australian-led UN troops fan out over East Timor. The military is seen to have been humiliated after Habibie’s about-turn two weeks ago and the subsequent withdrawal from East Timor under pressure from the IMF, World Bank and US/EU/Australian imperialism.

While the media in Australia have publicised some of the Indonesian protests against the security bill, they have not attempted to distinguish them from nationalist demonstrations. In general there has been a growing chorus calling for more military spending and a shift in Australian foreign policy towards greater intervention abroad, associated with what has been dubbed the ‘Howard doctrine’. This envisages ending the ‘special relationship’ with Asian dictatorial regimes.

Advocates of social-imperialism - chiefly the Democratic Socialist Party - dovetail behind this shift in the strategy of the Australian government. The DSP junked basic socialist principles by opportunistically pursuing the line of least resistance and calling for Australian armed intervention - unopposed or opposed.

Yet now the DSP leadership protests about the results. In Green Left Weekly Allen Myers writes:

“The logic [of the way in which the UN is entering East Timor] is the logic of domination and control. The UN force is seen by the governments of Australia, the United States and other imperialist powers as a de facto government of East Timor for an indefinite period.

“East Timor is to become a UN protectorate in much the same way that Kosova is being made into a Nato protectorate. The aim will be to ensure that the government of independent East Timor, whenever it finally comes into existence, will be a thoroughly tame, predictable and neo-colonial one - a government whose actions will upset neither the generals in Jakarta nor corporate offices in Sydney, Melbourne and New York.”

Did the DSP really think that once imperialist troops had gone in the East Timorese revolutionary movement would flourish? Fretilin is in a similar quandary to the KLA. Having invited the imperialists in, it is in danger of becoming an aid-funded puppet.

Only the communist programme based on the independence of the working class can bring a democratic resolution of the crisis in both East Timor and Indonesia. Last week, the students of Indonesia showed the way forward.

Marcus Larsen