Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 22:00:37 +1000
From: pmargin-AT-xchange.anarki.net (Profit Margin)
Subject: AUT: (fwd) Indonesia_revolt_was_Net_driven.htm


>Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 17:42:08 +1000
>From: braumann-AT-rznb1.rz.tu-bs.de
>To: leftlink-AT-vicnet.net.au
>Subject: LL:ART:Indonesia_revolt_was_Net_driven.htm
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> www.boston.com/dailyglobe/globehtml/143/Indonesia_revolt_was_Net_driven.htm
>
>     The Boston Globe Online
>   Indonesia revolt was Net driven
>
>   By David L. Marcus, Globe Staff, 05/23/98
>
>   ASHINGTON - As rebellions broke out across Indonesia this
>   month, protesters did not have tanks or guns. But they had a powerful
>   tool that wasn't available during the country's previous uprisings:
>   the Internet.
>
>   Bypassing the government-controlled television and radio stations,
>   dissidents shared information about protests by e-mail, inundated news
>   groups with stories of President Suharto's corruption, and used chat
>   groups to exchange tips about resisting troops. In a country made up
>   of thousands of islands, where phone calls are expensive, the
>   electronic messages reached key organizers.
>
>   ''This was the first revolution using the Internet,'' said W. Scott
>   Thompson, an associate professor of international politics at the
>   Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Thompson,
>   like many academics who follow developments in Indonesia, kept track
>   of the dissidents' communications with one another from thousands of
>   miles away.
>
>   New technologies have changed the ways the world learns about a
>   fast-changing political crisis. As Chinese troops quashed a democracy
>   movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the dissidents communicated with
>   the outside world by fax, and TV networks used satellites to send out
>   chilling footage. The same year, thanks to West German television,
>   many East Germans learned that the Berlin Wall was being toppled.
>
>   Details of a Russian coup in 1991 spread by fax and a primitive
>   version of the Internet, and a year later CNN sent images of a
>   military uprising in Thailand around the world.
>
>   Thanks to the Internet, Thompson said, Indonesian activists
>   circumvented press censorship. In one chat group, he said,
>   participants circulated inspiring accounts of the 1986 ''peoples'
>   power'' rebellion in the Philippines.
>
>   Some of the messages simply gave encouragement. Last week, in an
>   America Online chat group about Asia, a correspondent nicknamed ''Asia
>   Son'' urged Indonesians to keep denouncing President Suharto's
>   corruption and cronyism. ''One or two people saying that [are] easily
>   dragged away and silenced,'' Asia Son wrote. ''One or two million
>   doing it is not so easy.''
>
>   The same day, in broken English, another correspondent urged looters
>   not to pick on Indonesia's ethnic Chinese minority: ''Why are they
>   always the victim when there is a riot? ... All they do is make a
>   honest living. They work hard and when you worked hard you deserve
>   success.''
>
>   As Indonesia heated up this week, Abigail Abrash, an Asia specialist
>   at the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights in
>   Washington, stayed in constant touch with friends in Jakarta and other
>   Indonesian cities. She sent them summaries of the American news
>   coverage of the uprisings. Abrash received front-line reports from
>   students occuping Indonesia's parliament building. From what she read,
>   it seemed that someone brought a laptop inside and went on line while
>   surrounded by armed troops.
>
>   ''In a country that's as far-flung as Indonesia, the Net has meant
>   that people have been able to communicate at a time like this,'' she
>   said.
>
>   In Indonesia, with more than 17,000 islands, calling from one place to
>   another costs as much as $1.50 a minute, a considerable amount in a
>   country reeling from a recession. The Internet often costs much less.
>   On a trip by boat two years ago, Abrash was amazed to find that even
>   remote towns in Indonesian Borneo were ''wired.''
>
>   In the past few years, dissidents in Burma, Nigeria, Cuba, China, and
>   other countries have relied on the Internet, but access there is
>   restricted to relatively few professors, researchers, high-level
>   government workers, and employees of multinational businesses. In
>   Indonesia, the Internet is especially popular among students - the
>   group that took to the streets and was instrumental in forcing Suharto
>   to resign Thursday.
>
>   ''With the Internet, people in the country can get information out for
>   support, and they can also use the network to communicate with each
>   other in the country and build a body of knowledge about activities in
>   the country,'' said Stephen Hansen, a human rights specialist for the
>   American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington.
>
>   Diana Lady Dougan, chairwoman of International Communications Studies
>   at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said some of the
>   Internet's advocates tend to overemphasize its significance in
>   Indonesia. ''The Net was an escalating factor there, but I don't think
>   it changed the outcome,'' she said. ''It fast-forwarded things.''
>
>   Indonesian activists suspect that their phones are tapped, and some
>   worry that their e-mail is monitored, too. Several have developed
>   systems of encryption with their American colleagues, but they refused
>   to describe their methods.
>
>   On Thursday, the Internet enabled human-rights groups in Indonesia to
>   warn colleagues in Europe and the United States that military troops
>   threatened to imprison Muchtar Pakpahan, a hospitalized dissident.
>
>   The US groups contacted Capitol Hill, where Representative Bernard
>   Sanders, a Vermont Independent; Barney Frank, a Massachusetts
>   Democrat; Christopher Smith, a New Jersey Republican; and seven others
>   wrote to Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright asking for help.
>
>   Soon after, the US Embassy in Jakarta sent a representative to
>   Pakpahan's hospital room as a signal of support. ''The responsiveness
>   is unbelievable - we have people on the ground who e-mail information,
>   then we can react right away,'' said Brendan Smith, a legislative aide
>   to Sanders.
>
>   Yesterday, troops took away Pakpahan, but at least the US Embassy was
>   a witness, Smith said. Congressmen are continuing to protest.
>
>   Radio Free Asia, which the US government has used to broadcast
>   pro-democracy messages, can be heard in China, Laos, Vietnam, and
>   Burma, but not in Indonesia, long regarded as pro-American. Catharin
>   Dalpino, who was the State Department's top officer for democracy,
>   said the US government needs to more aggressively use interactive
>   technologies such as the Internet while relying less on traditional
>   media such as radio.
>
>   ''Nowadays, a so-called democracy program should lead to something
>   instead of people just sitting in their living rooms saying, `Oh,
>   that's interesting,''' said Dalpino.
>
>   This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 05/23/98.
>   =A9Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.
>
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