From: Montyneill <Montyneill-AT-aol.com>
Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 22:30:50 EDT
Subject: RE: AUT: Indonesia now: student activist perspective


I forwarded mauro jr.'s remarks to John Roosa, a fellow Midnight Noter, who
has long been active around Indonesia. He responded as follows. Monty

Subj:	 Re: Fwd: AUT: INDONESIA now : student activist perspective (fwd)
Date:	98-05-20 03:47:54 EDT
From:	jproosa-AT-students.wisc.edu (john roosa)
To:	Montyneill-AT-aol.com (Montyneill)

Hey Monty, 

Feel free to post this to the list under my name, though i'm sure that my
email address, with the word students in it, will mark me as an obvious
bourgeois reformist and betrayer of the working class. 

Best, 

John 

At 09:31 PM 5/18/98 EDT, mauro jr. wrote:

>The accusation of this guy that the riots were/are a manouver of the army,
>before to be a vulgar slander, is the proof that too many "militants" are
>absolutely unable to grasp the concrete global situation. 
>Really somebody can think that the simple monstruous figure of the poverty
>vs. the richness is not sufficient to explain the riots? 

It is clear from the evidence that has so far been assembled by journalists
and investigators from various NGOs, that the Jakarta riots of May 13th and
14th were the result of both the military's manipulations and the
outpouring of the urban poor into the streets. The Suharto regime has been
engineering riots and killings for 33 years (cases of 1965-66, 1974, 1983,
1996 being the prominent examples) to make it look as if ordinary people
were killing each other. The Indonesian military, having an
institutionalized presence inside the country and unchecked authority for
33 years, is perfectly capable of mobilizing street gangs, mafia
organizations, and its own troops to organize a riot. (Why it does this is
another matter and the reason varies from case to case.) There are
indications that this riot fits into the pattern. Witnesses from different
parts of the city report seeing gangs of men dressed up in the uniforms of
high school and university students instigating the crowds against the
Chinese -- not the government. (The Chinese have not been the object of the
students' hatred.) It appears that the anti-Chinese riot the military
wanted to stage (such as those it organized in 1996 in other towns in Java)
soon turned into a general social revolt. Government buildings, including
police stations, were burnt down and ransacked. Over 1000 people, many of
them of urban poor who were looting the large shopping plazas, were
incinerated in this riot. Their bodies were burned beyond recognition,
until nothing was left except their bones. I don't understand exactly how
this arson happened but I am pretty sure that the urban poor did not kill
their own neighbors by setting fire to the shops they were looting. I
definitely don't understand why mauro.jr is so arrogant in brandishing
assumptions about a situation he does not appear to know well. (I assume
this is his method for knowing "the concrete global situation.") The
student M. is absolutely correct in saying that the students did not start
the riot and in suspecting that the military played a hand in it. 

>And you see the kids of the most "respectable" bourgeoisie  set
>up a democratic movement from their luxury colleges.
>Sure, this same student M cannot be nothing else than a democratic
>reformist, a bourgeois with the natural blindness of its own class.

Instead of beating up on this student for being a bourgeois reformist,
mauro.jr would do better to think about how to respond to this student's
appeal for international support. Some 15,000 students are now occupying
the houses of parliament and defying military threats to forcibly evict
them. You can be sure that many of those students sitting in the parliament
building have been, during the course of their demonstrations over the
previous weeks, learning a lot about the experiences of the urban poor who,
by the way, are giving them much moral, even some material, support. One of
the reasons that the military has engineered riots in the past has been to
make the middle class fearful of collective action in the streets involving
the urban poor (the 1974 Malari riot was a clear example of this). That
students such as M. have rejected a collaboration with the military in
ousting Suharto and have been willing to come out into the streets in
defiance of the military's shootings and bludgeonings bodes well for the
education of the students into the realities of the Suharto dictatorship.
Mauro.jr himself could use some education in those realities (and some
humility).  

[Note: for info on the riot see the preliminary report by the Volunteer
Team posted on Peacenet, conference act.indonesia.]

John Roosa
May 19, 1998


     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---