On March 28 and 29 a series of rightist mobilisations took place in Jakarta. The largest of these was a 500 strong mobilisation aimed at disrupting a march and rally being organised by the United Party for National Liberation (Papernas) protesting foreign domination of the Indonesian minerals sector and demanding nationalisation of companies in the sector. These groups were armed with scythes, knives and canes. This was the fourth time in the last six months that Papernas had been targeted for violent disruption.

Kompas daily newspaper listed the following groups as being involved in the attacks: Forum Betawi Rempug (FBR), Front Pembela Islam (FPI), Pelajar Islam Indonesia, Indonesian National Patriotic Movement and the Front in Defence of the Red and White Flag. Other smaller mobilisations, but mobilising people from the same network of groups, were also mobilised against other targets on the 28^th as well as the 29^th. These also included the Anti-Communist Movement (GERAK).

 Government legitimised repression

The common theme in these attacks have been a virulent anti-communism. The atmosphere encouraging an offensive by these small rightist groups has been set by the government who has launched its own anti-communist campaign through the Attorney-General’s department. This campaign has not been aimed at Papernas, but at the second group of people who have also come under attack from the rightist groups on March 28. These are the numerous historians who have been writing new histories of Indonesia in the more free atmosphere after the fall of Suharto.

Last week the Attorney-General banned 14 history textbooks. Earlier writers and even Ministry of Education officials had been summonsed as part of a criminal investigation initiated by the Attorney-General’s Department. (see GLW 685, 27 September, 2006) The crime that the historians have been accused of is that they no longer label the actions of a groups of military officers who detained and later killed seven generals on 30 September, 1965 as part of a plot by the then legal Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). The military officers who led the action to arrest their seniors, whom they claimed were plotting to overthrow the then president, Sukarno. called itself the Thirtieth of September Movement (G30S). General Suharto, whose faction seized control of the Army, started a campaign to describe the G30S as a PKI conspiracy and started to call it the G30S/PKI. The PKI was banned and more than a million of its members and supporters killed in an Army led pogrom.

The new generation of historians have written text-books where they return to using just G30S and which, sometimes, provides alternative explanations of what has happened. The fact they they do not continue to blame the PKI is considered by the Attorney General’s department as a criminal act. A 1967 resolution of the Peoples Consultative Assembly (MPR), which had been purged of all its left-wing members, bans the spreading of Marxism-Leninism. This resolution, which in effect bans communism, is still in effect.

On 28^th March, twenty members of the group GERAK protested at the Indonesian Academy of Sciences calling for it clean itself of communists, singling out historian Asvi Warman Adam, one of the most active writers and campaigners for the end to the falsification of history, specially on the events of 1965. Other groups demonstrated at the Attorney General’s department supporting the ban on the history text books.

 Attacks on Papernas

Previous attacks have taken place on Papernas meetings in Surabaya (2006), in Jogjakarta (2006) and in East Java earlier this year. Attacks on the party which has initiated its formation, the Peoples Democratic Party (PRD), had last come under this kind of attack in 2001, when they were seen to be supporting President Abdurrahman Wahid, who had called for an end to the ban on communism, or any ideologies. In these earlier instances, the group leading the attacks was the Indonesian Anti-Communist Front (FAKI), which was able to mobilise 50-100 armed men.

In most of these earlier cases, the police stood between FAKI and the Papernas events, so that no actual physical attacks took place. At the same time, the police applied pressure on Papernas to end their events more quickly than they had planned. The laws banning communism, and which have not been questioned by any party in the parliament, lend a huge “formal” legitimacy to these groups activities in the eyes of the police, many of whose views reflective the conservative mentality developed during the Suharto years. As a result, while Papernas has refused to be intimiated and has continued with their campaigns, some of their events have been forced to end more quickly then they had planned.

 March 29

As a part of launching Papernas’s political campaigning following its founding congress in December, 2006, it scheduled a series of morning rallies and a Jakarta Peoples Rally in the afternoon to demand the nationalisation of the mining sector industries, including oil and gas. Of the 137 oil and gas companies operating in Indonesia, 110 are foreign owned with contracts giving them explorations rights over 35% of Indonesian territory, according to Papernas’s analysis. The occasion for the demonstration was the parliament’s discussion of new laws on investment and a UN seminar, being held at the Shangri La hotel, reviewing Indonesia’s progress in meeting the UN’s Millenium Development Goals. Agus Jabo, Chairperson of Papernas gave me the details of what happened by phone from Jakarta.

On the morning of March 29 around 2000 supporters of Papernas, many of them members of urban poor campaign groups, headed for Jakarta in buses. They had been saving for months, donating a few cents a day, to be able to hire the buses. As they arrived at the second of their protest destinations, the Shangri la Hotel, they came under a surprise attack by around 100 members of the FPI, FBR and other groups who were wielding knives and canes and threw stones into the crowd or into the bus windows, smashing at least 20 windows. The overwhelming majority of the Papernas supporters were housewives, unarmed of course, many with young children and they were forced to disperse. Heavy rain made the situation even more difficult. The Papernas supporters later regrouped back in their base areas. They had to cancel their planned afternoon Jakarta Peoples Rally at the Independence Proclamation park, where another 300 or so FPI, FBR and other members were also waiting.

Agus Jabo told me that at least 10 people had to be taken to hospital. According to Kompas newspaper the head police detective there was also injured. Despite knowing of the threats, the police mobilised only a very small contingent to the event totally ineffective in protecting the rally. The police had only issued the paperwork making the rally and march legal at the very last minute, using the fact of the threats and possible violence as a reason for holding up the bureaucratic permission process.

 Still moving forward

Papernas members also report that the feeling among their supporters, after regrouping back at their base was still strong and angry. “Later in the afternoon on March 29, we held a press conference protesting the events,” Jabo told me. “There were other groups there who had suffered similar harassment the day before, such as the Coalition Against Foreign Investment an NGO coalition that had protested outside the parliament.” At the conference a joint protest statement was signed by Papernas as well as the two main Indonesian human rights organizations, Imparsial and KONTRAS, as well as the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute and the pro-democracy advocacy group, DEMOS. Other groups, including the Working Peoples Association (PRP), have also since issued solidarity statements.

“We will also be suing the FP and FBR for the damages they did to the buses and to the ten people were hospitalised, some beaten, some suffering heart problems,” he said.

Dita Sari, the Papernas Presidential candidate, also related over the phone how three of the women, housewives, also spoke at the press conference. “They told how these armed men demanded they confess to being paid to attend the rally. They refused saying that they had instead donated 10,000 rupiah to pay for the buses. The gang members demanded the women confess to being communists, but they explained the were religious people and were there to support education and health for poor people. Others gave evidence of how they were beaten with bamboo canes,” she said. “Again and again we have seen how the police cannot be relied on at all to protect our rights. I think this means that whenever Papernas organises events in the future we will need to have own self-defence group for protection.”

Separate from this, but at the same venue, another meeting was being held to organise resistance against the attack on the historians. Hilmar Farid, one of the most active of the historians, told me that they would be thinking of how to link the responses to the increasing active of the rightwing groups. They would consider with their petition campaign but also try to organise a major public forum to debate the issue of the right to interpret history.

“It seems there is a conflict sharpening between some of the old Suharto era groups and the elite factions who are trying to consolidate their power,” Jabo told me. “Both, of course, want to shore up the neo-liberal economic system so they don’t like our policies. But it may be that the old New Order elements, now out of power, are trying to provoke wider horizontal conflict as a way of destabilising or discrediting those in power now. The groups who are attacked us are just the manipulated agents on the ground, not the real forces pushing this process along”.