Civil War threatens in East Timor, Australian and New Zealand troops out of East Timor!

East Timor is on the brink of civil war, after a revolt by rank and file soldiers and a series of bloody attacks on protesters by police. This is the direct result of US imperialism’s role, backed by its local sheriffs, Australia and New Zealand, in suppressing East Timor’s struggle for independence since it conspired in the Indonesian coup of General Suhato in 1965.

Police kill rebels and civilians

On February the 8th nearly six hundred soldiers - a third of the army - went on strike by walking out of their barracks. Most of the rebel soldiers come from the Loromonu ethnic group in the West of the country. They have complained of brutal treatment by commanders, poor pay, and poor living conditions. They have also been bitterly critical of East Timor's police force, accusing it of widespread human rights abuses and links with pro-Indonesian militias.

On the 16th of March the government of Mari Alkatori sacked the rebels en masse, but the protests did not end. On April the 28th the rebels marched on the capital, determined to win reinstatement and have their grievances heard by Alkatari and President Xanana Gusmao. The march was joined by thousands of unemployed Dili youths shouting anti-government slogans. When the march reached the offices of the Prime Minister in the centre of the city police opened fire on it, killing six people and prompting the youths to begin a riot that saw one hundred buildings burnt down or vandalised. The rebel soldiers fled the city, pursued by police. The World Socialist Website has received a report that one rebel was shot along with his two sons on the outskirts of the city. Two female relatives of the slain men were also reportedly murdered when they attempted to recover the bodies of their loved ones. Twenty thousand civilians fled Dili in the wake of the violence of April the 28th.

The rebels have regrouped and established a zone under their control in East Timor's mountainous interior. They have been joined by sympathisers carrying arms and by many members of East Timor's military police. On May the 5th the rebels issued a declaration which threatened attacks on Dili and other towns. On May the 9th a thousand of their supporters surrounded the police station at Gleno, a town outside Dili. After stones were thrown the police opened fire on the demonstation, killing one person and injuring thirty.

Australian and NZ to intervene

The violence in East Timor has alarmed the governments of Australia and New Zealand. John Howard and his Foreign Minister Alexander Downer have both suggested that Australian troops may have to return to East Timor in large numbers, and on the 5th of May New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters echoed their sentiments. Australia has already boosted the size of the skeleton UN force in Dili from 90 to 200, in response to a request from East Timorese Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta.

The East Timorese government has characterised the rebel soldiers and their supporters as 'terrorists' bent on 'undermining democracy', but the country's opposition politicians tell another story. Angela Feitas, who plans to run for President against Gusmao in the elections scheduled for next year, has blamed the government for the crisis, and said that 'Right now, it's worse [than it was] during the 1999 referendum [on independence]'.

The bloodshed and chaos in East Timor these past few weeks must have come as a rude shock to many New Zealanders. Over the past few years politicians and the media have turned East Timor into a sort of modern fairytale story. According to this story, Australia and New Zealand liberated the defenceless little country from Indonesian occupation in 1999 out of sheer benevolence. Since 1999, East Timor has supposedly been an island of democracy and peace, a positive example for the rest of the Third World. The reality is that the current crisis in East Timor is the direct result of 1999's 'humanitarian' intervention.

After wholeheartedly supporting Indonesia's genocidal occupation of East Timor for nearly a quarter of a century, the US and its South Pacific deputy sheriffs in Canberra and Wellington did a U turn near the end of 1999. By then it had become clear that Indonesia would be unable to retain control of East Timor much longer. Decades of guerrilla warfare and the weakening of the Indonesian state after the overthrow of the Suharto dictatorship in 1997 had made East Timor impossible to govern from Jakarta.

The US and its allies had supported the invasion of 1975 because they were worried about the emergence of an uncooperative government in East Timor. Their concern had returned in 1999. The Timor Strait which separates East Timor and Australia contains rich deposits of oil and gas, and in 1989 Australia had signed a deal with Indonesia that had allowed it to begin exploiting these deposits. The Howard government did not want to see this lucrative operation jeopardised by a nationalistic East Timorese government. Australia and the US were also worried by the possibility that an East Timorese government might encourage the secessionist war being fought in West Papua, another territory Indonesia had acquired illegitimately.

But the US, Australia and New Zealand soon found that the leaders of Fretelin, East Timor's main pro-independence movement, were more than ready to listen to their concerns. In the 1970s, Fretelin icons like Gusmao and Ramos-Horta had been anti-imperialists who espoused a mixture of radical Catholicism and Marxism; by the end of the '90s, though, they had long since become believers in free market capitalism and collaboration with the US and its allies. Ramos-Horta had spent years travelling the world trying to enlist Western support for the East Timorese cause, always emphasising the 'reasonableness' and 'moderation' of Fretelin. (In recent years, Foreign Minister Ramos-Horta has been an outspoken supporter of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.)

Fretelin betrays independence struggle

At the beginning of September 1999, Indonesian-backed militia launched attacks on civilians across East Timor in the aftermath of a referendum on independence. The militia were far weaker than the regular Indonesian army, which had mostly withdrawn from East Timor in the lead-up to the referendum. Many militiamen lacked military training and used homemade weapons. Fretelin's armed wing Falintil could easily have defeated these amateur soldiers, but Gusmao and Ramos-Horta had ensured that Falintil troops were barracked deep in the countryside, away from major population centres. Falintil fighters who wanted to march on Dili and smash the militia there were disarmed and disciplined on the orders of the Fretelin leadership. Fretelin's strategy was to sacrifice East Timorese civilians to the anti-independence militia, in order to generate international sympathy and help push the US and Australia to organise an armed intervention.

In Australia and New Zealand, thousands of people took to the streets to protest the slaughter taking place in East Timor. In Australia, trade unions took industrial action against Indonesia's national airline and a number of other businesses linked to the government in Jakarta. In September 1999 Auckland was hosting the annual APEC summit of Asia and Pacific leaders; a handful of Fretelin politicians flew into the city to lead demonstrations. In a backroom meeting at the APEC summit in downtown Auckland, Bill Clinton, John Howard, and New Zealand Prime Minister Jenny Shipley were already organising an armed intervention force that would operate under a UN mandate.

The vast majority of those demonstrating in solidarity with East Timor supported Fretelin's call for UN intervention in the country. Australia's most popular left-wing paper, the Green Left Weekly, demanded that John Howard organise a force to occupy the island; the trade unions of Australia and New Zealand echoed this call. Only a few small Marxist groups opposed the intervention and pointed out the strategy Fretelin leaders were employing.

Imperialist occupation leads to today’s rebellion

Many East Timorese welcomed the troops that landed under the UN's banner in October 1999. But the reality of the occupation soon set in. The mainly Australian and New Zealand troops had come to ensure the submission of an independent East Timor, and to safeguard Australia's interests in the Timor Strait. Tens of millions of dollars worth of military material was poured into East Timor, but relatively little humanitarian aid arrived. Many East Timorese resented the arrogance of the new occupying force, which was not subject to any local control.

In December 1999, UN troops and East Timorese police opened fire on a march through Dili by unemployed workers, killing several people and sparking a series of riots (the photo at the bottom of this post shows an Australian soldier standing guard over a detainee in the aftermath of one of the riots). Over the next few years Dili would see more riots, as the reality of the new order the UN force had established became ever clearer. On December the 4th 2002, for instance, two Dili students were killed after a protest against police and UN brutality was fired on and turned into a riot. By December 2002 it was clear to many East Timorese that their country's formal independence masked domination by Australia and New Zealand. Australia continued to exploit the oil and gas of the Timor Strait, but paid the East Timorese government only $130 million in royalties every year. In May 2005 Australian control of the Strait was cemented by a one-sided deal which saw the East Timorese agreeing not to stake territorial claims to previously-disputed areas of seabed for sixty years.

With only a trickle of money coming from the Timor Strait, East Timor remains very poor. The UN estimates that per capita income is $370 a year, and falling. Unemployment stands at sixty percent. It is not surprising that the extreme poverty caused by imperialist superexploitation has led to widespread dissatisfaction. But even before the soldiers' strike, the East Timorese government had been in the habit of responding to opposition with threats and repression, not dialogue. Under the rule of Fretelin, the East Timorese police force has become almost as feared as the Indonesian army of occupation once was. A Human Rights Watch Report released in April accused the police of torture, rape, and the murder of opponents of the government.

Imperialist troops out of East Timor!
 
When we consider the recent history of East Timor, it is easy to see why the soldiers' rebellion has attracted the support of many people outside the military. The soldiers' complaints of poor pay, poor living conditions, and police abuses are complaints that many East Timorese share. The big military-civilian protest which was so brutally repressed on April the 28th showed the level of popular anger with the regime of Gusmao and Alkatari. That regime and its backers in Canberra and Wellington may yet try to crush the rebellion by deploying thousands of Anzac troops across East Timor in a re-run of 1999. The Australasian left must learn from the mistake it made then, and refuse to support any new imperialist adventure in East Timor.

From Class Struggle 66 April/May 2006

ACEH: IT'S ABOUT IMPERIALISM

From Class Struggle 50, May-June 2003

Aceh is at war again. A truce between the Indonesian government and rebels has been torpedoed by the Indonesian demand that the Acehese renounce their claim to independence. Now Indonesian troops are burning villages and schools and hunting fighters of the Free Aceh Movement through the jungle. What position do revolutionaries take on this question?

Imperialism and Indonesia

The crisis in Aceh is caused by imperialism. Indonesia itself is a creation of imperialism, an unwieldy collection of peoples forced together by arbitrary boundaries drawn up by European capitalists. Imperialist countries like the US, Britain, Japan and the Netherlands continue to exploit Indonesia, sucking big profits from cheap labour and rich natural resources out of the country and into Western banks, and leaving only crumbs for the locals. In his movie The New Rulers of the Earth John Pilger noted that between them the tens of thousands of Indonesians who work in Nike factories earn less in a year than Tiger Woods gets from his advertising contract with Nike. Even in Aceh, one of the richest parts of the country, underdevelopment and foreign control are easy to find. Aceh’s large oil reserves are controlled by multinational companies, most notably Exxon-Mobil. There are few oil-based industries like plastics or chemicals to add value to Aceh’s oil. The big companies give their most skilled jobs to experts from outside Aceh and Indonesia.

From Communism to Nationalism

In the 1950s and early 60s opposition to Western exploitation of Indonesia was led by communists. Attracted by the promise of the seizure of foreign-controlled land and businesses, hundreds of thousands of peasants and workers joined the Indonesian Communist Party. The Communist Party was a serious contender for power in the 1960s, but it was destroyed by Stalinist misleadership and by the CIA-backed coup that brought General Suharto to power in 1965. With US help, Suharto slaughtered over five hundred thousand communists and destroyed the organised working class movement in Indonesia. With class politics driven into the shadows,leadership of the opposition to imperialism passed to nationalists and Islamists. Today, the Free Aceh Movement blends Acehese nationalism and Islamism. But can nationalism and Islamism defeat imperialism? Aceh is a small region, containing only about four million people. The Free Aceh Movement commands around 5,000 fighters, against an occupying force of 45,000. In a quarter century of war, the Acehese have lost at least 40,000 lives without ever looking like gaining independence.

Across Indonesia, the force which has been able to shake the Indonesian ruling class and its imperialist backers is not nationalism or Islamism, but the mass action of workers and peasants. In 1998 it was mass street protests, strikes and land occupations which brought down Suharto, the man Bill Clinton had in 1996 described as ‘our kind of guy’. These protests sparked solidarity actions by students and workers around the world. Unfortunately, without any sort of any organisation in place of the old Communist Party, the workers and peasants of Indonesia were unable to turn the anti-Suharto revolt into a revolution.

As Marxists, we support the Acehese people’s right to independence. The workers in the imperialist countries that have a history of oppressing Aceh such as Britain and the US, and their local ‘peacekeeping’ deputy sheriffs Australia and NZ, should demonstrate that they are on the side of the Acehese people by offering arms and military support.Indonesian workers, students and poor peasants should fight against Megawati Sukarnoputri’ s genocidal attack. If this fails to lead to workers and peasants taking control of the revolution in Aceh out of the hands of the capitalist leadership, then only the experience of living in an ‘independent’ capitalist Aceh will teach the Acehese the truth – that socialism is the real alternative to imperialism. Only when Aceh’s natural resources, land and industry are taken out of private ownership and a planned economy is built, will outside domination of Aceh cease.

The local capitalists who dominate the Free Aceh Movement do not dare to challenge the foreign control of Acehese resources – they wish only to negotiate a better rate for the control of these resources. For that reason, they refuse to mobilise the Acehese working class, and to use strikes and other workers’ tools to fight for independence. They prefer to use guerrilla attacks to rouse the ‘moral conscience’ of the West and drag the Indonesian government to the negotiating table. The leaders of the Free Aceh Movement spends a lot of its time jetting about the world, trying to convince imperialist governments to back its cause. The supreme leader of the Movement is based not in Aceh but in faraway Sweden, that homeland of ‘enlightened imperialism’.

The Khaki Greens and dangerous ‘solidarity’

Protests in support of the Acehese have been called across Australia and New Zealand, with Indonesian embassies and consulates being popular targets. In both countries, the Green Party have emerged as enthusiastic backers of the Free Aceh Movement. This is not surprising - the Greens are cut from the same cloth as the Acehese capitalists. Like the Free Aceh Movement, the Greens are dominated by the interests of local capitalists who are trying to get the multinationals off their backs, and who think that enlightened imperialism can help them. Over the last eighteen months or so the New Zealand Greens have made a name for themselves by calling for the pulling of Kiwi troops, ships and planes out of the Middle East. It’s not so well known that the Greens want these forces redeployed in the Pacific and South Asia, to act in a ‘humanitarian’ role in ‘crises’.

The ‘Khaki’ Greens are all for military adventures, as long as they’re ‘humanitarian’ military adventures like the invasion of East Timor in 1999 or NATO’s war on Yugoslavia in the same year. The Greens want New Zealand to stop helping out the bad guys in the Middle East, and start acting like good guys in Asia and the Pacific. What better place to start than Aceh, with a new ceasefire and some ‘peacekeepers’, perhaps?

Trouble is, New Zealand has always been a bad guy in Asia and the Pacific. New Zealand is a semi-colony of the US – US capitalists own many of our key companies and are able effectively to dictate the New Zealand government’s economic and political policies. It’s not surprising, then, that the US has always been able to count on New Zealand to serve as its Deputy Sheriff in the Asia-Pacific region, from Vietnam to Samoa to East Timor.

Riding on the coat tails of the US, New Zealand has even been able to carve out a sideline career as a mini-imperialist power in the Pacific, sucking profits out of small countries like the Cook Islands and Fiji. Earlier this year we ran an article on the looting of the Solomon Islands by New Zealand, Australia and the International Monetary Fund. We described how ANZAC suits in the South Pacific branch of the IMF had forced the Solomons to cut government spending by a third, and lay off a third of government employees. Now that these IMF ‘reforms’ have intensified the chaos and crime in the Solomons, the Australasian governments and their friends in the mass media have taken to describing that country as a ‘failed state’ and a potential ‘haven for terrorists’. Sound familiar?

The Solomons is not an isolated case: both the US and the ruling classes of Australia and New Zealand are increasingly keen on military intervention in the Pacific and in South Asia. With the backing of the US, New Zealand and Australia combined to quash the independence struggle on Bougainville Island, co-opting the leadership of the Bouganville Revolutionary Army and getting it to sign a sell-out peace deal renouncing independence with the Papua New Guinea government on a New Zealand frigate. Papua New Guinea itself is now being mooted as a candidate for armed ‘humanitarian’ intervention by an Australian intelligence establishment spooked by the political instability in Oz’s former colony. Australia has already begun nibbling at Papua New Guinea’s neighbours – it oversees a neocolony in East Timor, and has flooded Indonesia with secret service forces since last year’s Bali bombing.

For now, Australia, New Zealand and (surprise surprise) the US are all backing the Indonesian government against Aceh. Bush, Howard and Clark all gave the Free Aceh Movement the same line: give up your claim to independence if you want the truce to continue. For now, the US is more worried about Islamists building a state of their own in Aceh than about the instability a new round of fighting could cause. But Aceh is a very important part of South Asia. Not only is it rich in oil, it sits on the western side of a shipping lane that leads to Singapore, one of the busiest ports in the world. There is a real chance that, if instability worsens, the US (and therefore Australia and New Zealand) could decide to change horses, and back a neo-colony over chaos. The US might decide to put its muscle behind an independent Aceh, in return for the Free Aceh Movement guaranteeing it control over the region’s ports and oil. This, of course, is exactly what happened in East Timor back in 1999, when Clinton andstooges like John Howard and Jenny Shipley saw the opportunity of setting up a UN colony and grabbing control of the oil in the Timor Gap.

Solidarity with Aceh, against Imperialism

There is a real danger that the Aceh solidarity movement in Australasia could play into the hands of imperialism, by making arguments for a ‘humanitarian’ intervention in the region. Again, this is what happened in 1999, when mass protests against Indonesian occupation of East Timor were turned into cheerleading sessions for a US-orchestrated invasion that only seemed necessary because the sell-out East Timorese leaders were keeping their troops away from the Indonesians in an effort to ensure massacres that would appeal to the ‘moral conscience’ of Bill Clinton. Today East Timor is a rapidly disintegrating neocolony of the West.

Unemployment stands at 50%, crime is rampant, students are shot for protesting UN occupation, and demobilised Fretelin troops have started a low-level guerrilla war in the countryside. East Timor is the sort of mess that the Khaki Greens’ ‘humanitarian imperialism’ makes.

The Australasian left should show solidarity with the Acehese fight for independence without offering an excuse for any Western military or political intervention in the region. Let’s recognise that the real cause of the war in Aceh is imperialism, not Indonesian brutality or a lack of moral conscience amongst Western governments.

Let’s focus our protests on the US, Australian and New Zealand governments, and on companies like Mobil. We should only target Indonesia with direct action to stop any military gear going through Kiwi ports, for instance. By their very nature, actions like these highlight the links between New Zealand capitalism and the war in Aceh. Symbolic protests focused on the Indonesian government are dangerous, because they bolster the Khaki Green argument that Indonesia acts alone in its oppression of the Acehese, and that ‘neutral’ governments like New Zealand’s might be able to play a ‘humanitarian’ role in Aceh.

BALI BOMBING: TERRORISE BOSSES NOT TOURISTS

From Class Struggle #47 October-November 2002

Class Struggle condemns the recent terrorist bombing of a Bali nightclub. The bombers are probably Indonesian Islamists angry at the exploitation of Indonesian workers and resources by Western governments and businesses. By turning their anger on innocent workers from Western countries, they only strengthen the position of their enemies.

What's behind the Bali Bombing?

Indonesian is rich in natural resources, but its workers and peasants are poor. The mines and oil fields of Indonesia earn billions of dollars in exports each year, but most of this wealth is taken overseas by Western-based companies. The factories of Indonesia turn out huge numbers of consumer goods every year, but few Indonesians can afford to buy these goods. Left-wing journalist John Pilger estimates that the tens of thousands of workers who produce Nike shoes in Indonesian factories are together paid less a year than Tiger Woods gets for promoting Nike products.

The island of Bali symbolises the domination of Indonesia by the West. Bali is a paradise of shining beaches and lush forests, yet few Indonesians can afford to take holidays there. Ordinary Balinese are treated as casual labourers and second-class citizens by the largely foreign-owned tourist industry on their island. The Sari club where the bombing occurred employed security guards to keep ordinary Balinese off its premises.

The governments of Western countries like the United States, Australia and New Zealand have always interfered in Indonesian affairs in an effort to protect the investments their big business friends have in the country.

For thirty-three years Western countries supported the military dictator Suharto as leader of Indonesia, selling him arms and extending him loans. When he took power in a military coup in 1965, Suharto used US intelligence reports to hunt down and kill 500,000 communist workers and peasants who opposed him. In 1975 Suharto invaded the newly independent country of East Timor, beginning a reign of terror which killed at least 250,000 people. Fearful that an independent East Timor would go communist, the US gave guns, ammunition, and diplomatic support to the invasion. Australia and New Zealand followed the US lead, taking part in numerous joint training exercises with Indonesia’s army during Suharto’s rule.

In return for the assistance he received from the West, Suharto crushed any attempts by Indonesian workers and peasants to organise against their exploitation by Western businesses. Suharto’s successors have continued to do the West’s dirty work. The Islamists who were probably behind the bombing in Bali exploit the deep reservoir of anger and frustration Indonesian’s semi-colonial status creates in workers and peasants.

The Perfect Excuse

The Bali bombing gives Western governments and companies an excuse to increase their interference in Indonesia’s political affairs and their exploitation of Indonesia’s natural resources and labour. Already US Ambassador to Indonesia Ralph Boyce has demanded that the Indonesian government "deal with this problem" by passing an anti-democratic ‘anti-terrorism’ law that will make it possible for ‘suspects’ to be detained without clear evidence they have committed any terrorist act. Boyce also wants US security forces to be given a free reign in Indonesia. Already, CIA operatives and a unit of Australian Federal Police have been dispatched to the country.

When Indonesia’s neighbour the Philippines allowed US troops into its country as part of the ‘war of terror’ these troops spent much of their time intimidating union activists and hunting for communist rebels. Any ‘war on terror’ in Indonesia would be likely to involve war on workers unionising and striking against their exploitation at the hands of Western bosses.

Back home in New Zealand National, ACT and the Greens have all used the bombing in Bali to attack the Labour government for not committing enough military muscle to the Pacific region. ACT and National are pushing for a New Zealand military contribution to any new US invasion of Iraq, and an increasing number of voices in parliament and in the media are calling for the return of nuke ships to New Zealand ports. Labour Party leaders have themselves used the Bali bombing to justify the military support they gave to the US invasion of Afghanistan.

It is clear that New Zealand political leaders and their business backers want to exploit the Bali bombings in the same way as their US counterparts exploited S 11. New Zealand workers shouldn’t let their sadness at the slaughter in Bali be used for political and commercial ends by these warmongers.

Instead of bombs, a general strike

In 1998 Indonesian students, workers and peasants showed that the way to challenge Western domination of their country was through mass direct action, not cowardly bombs. In a matter of weeks, massive street protests kicked off by students forced the mighty Suharto out of power. Students and workers in many Western countries protested in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Indonesia. Unfortunately, the workers and peasants of Indonesia were unable to turn the anti-Suharto revolt into the socialist revolution that alone can tear Indonesia away from the rule of the market and the Western domination the market imposes.

The failure of the 1998 protests to go all the way and deliver the goods has driven some angry young Indonesians toward violent and counterproductive acts of frustration like the bombing in Bali. Anger at the continuing Western exploitation of Indonesia should be channelled away from Islamism and terrorism, towards the building of a workers’ and peasants’ movement and party capable of taking power in Indonesia. It takes a general strike to terrorise the bosses

The US, Australia, NZ and East Timor [April 1999]

AFTER 23 bloody years it seems that Timor is about to get its independence, or is it? Far from being a response to pressure from below, these latest proposals from Habibie have come from above – from the Clinton-led US insisting that Indonesia resolve its human rights problem in Timor and find a 'political solution' in the name of 'democracy'.

Or is this a suberfuge to mount a civil war? A civil war would make a referendum difficult and even defeat an independence vote.

Indonesia may pull out its troops but it has been arming anti-independence para militaries for the last few months. Reports carried in the Australian Green Left Weekly stated that Indonesian troops are reactivating the paramilitaries and "planning to distribute 20,000 weapons". Some of the paramilitaries are from outside East Timor, but many are unemployed and displaced East Timorese.

We can be forgiven for some cynicism. How did the situation in East Timor arise? Can it be the world's no 1 imperialist power is about to give away any rights to super-exploit this small Pacific Island just like any other?

In 1974 Portugal was kicked out of its African colonies and out of East Timor by Fretilin the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor. Within months 30,000 Indonesian troops invaded the country and established the bloody regime that has lasted for nearly 25 years against the opposition of the people and their resistance movement.

Some 200,000 thousand people, about a third of the original population, have died during the occupation. Their leaders have been assassinated or like Xanana Gusmao, imprisoned.

Why then, after nearly 25 years do Habibie and other political leaders including the Foreign Minister Ali Alatas- talk of as referendum on independence? Is this for real or is there some fly in the ointment? Maybe Habibie is hoping that the thousands of migrants who have been re-settled in East Timor will swing the balance. Maybe he hopes that armed right wing factions will disrupt the referendum and defeat a vote for independence?

Is this a victory for the democracy movement in Indonesia that forced the resignation of Suharto and is pressing for major constitutional changes? Or is it merely a ploy to delude the masses into accepting a few cosmetic changes under the name of 'human rights' while the old regime of brutal capitalist rule continues

There is no doubt that the US wants to keep the Habibie regime in power so that it can deliver on the IMF deal imposed after Indonesia's economic collapse last year. To do this without imposing a Suharto type military regime, Habibie has to appear the democrat and head off Sukarnoputri and the movement for democratic reforms.

This is why the U.S. Senate recently passed a resolution calling on Indonesia to introduce democratic reforms including the self-determination of East Timor.

Workers should not be taken in by the promotion of human rights by the US. The nature of US imperialism has not changed since 1965 when if backed and partly funded Suharto's bloody coup and his ruthless slaughter of up to one million workers and peasants who were in the Communist Party or happened to be Chinese. The US did not object to the invasion of East Timor either.

Nor did the US allies in the South Pacific Australia and New Zealand. They dutifully lined up behind the US and refused to question the role of Indonesia or support the right to self-determination of the East Timoreans.

NZ support in 1975.

It was hardly an accident that on the very day that Indonesia dispatched its troops to East Timor, December. 6, 1975, President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger were visiting Jakarta.

As Chomsky points out, this was not surprising – the US had already engineered the overthrow of Sukarno when he told them "Go to hell with your aid". Sukarno had had enough of US bribery and corruption, and CIA subversion and dirty tricks under the pretext of "aid". Behind this humanitarian smokescreen the US was preparing to replace Sukarno with Suharto in 1965 and launch a massive massacre of workers, peasants and communists.

By 1975 the US made no secret of its growing alarm that Indonesia could still be the next state to fall to the wicked communism after Vietnam. The US had just lost its war in Indochina. Vietnam and Cambodia had fallen to the dreaded "communism". The US was paranoid about East Timor falling to the Fretilin and becoming a new "Cuba" of the Pacific. It would become a beacon for all other liberation and anti-imperialist movements in the region and So for the second time in a decade, the US sponsored an anti-communist pogrom – this time the suppression of Fretelin.

The payoff of this decade of blood for US imperialism was the virtual destruction of one of the most powerful working class movements in Asia. This has allowed an unchallenged ripping off of massive super profits it has pumped out of Indonesia for 25 years. Hungry for the rich pickings of oil timber and other mineral, Mobil, Atlantic Richfield, Tenneco, Union Carbide, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, Alcoa, Freeport Sulphur and Uniroyal made big killings. Cheap labour also attracted US, and other MNCs, like Nike into clothing and footwear production.

Indonesia's recent crisis has only made US (and other imperialist companies) even more hungry for control over its rich resources and labour. The collapse of the economy had nothing to do with Indonesia's potential wealth. It was caused by a combination of corruption at the top (Suharto's family ripped off US$50 billion) and the greed of US (and other banks) for a larger share of the wealth.

Under the current regime of IMF imposed austerity, the opportunity for US banks and firms to take complete control of Indonesia's economy is what is behind the US campaign for human rights. It is a democratic smokescreen behind which US interests will takeover the whole economy.

This in the final analysis is what explains the about turn of the US and its regional client states, Australia and New Zealand on East Timor. The assets and resources of the region which are currently jointly managed with the Indonesian state will be privatised and bought-up by the giant MNC's as part of the IMF plan to restore the Indonesian economy. The most profitable carve-up will be Pertamina which oversees the huge oil fields in the Timor

Carving up Pertamina.

Pertamina, Indonesia's state owned oil monopoly is about to be broken up and privatised. The Dec 24, 1998, Far Eastern Economic Review reports "as the spirit of reform spreads in Indonesia," legislation is working its way through the parliament that would break up Pertamina's monopoly in refining, distributing and selling oil. The resulting competition—from foreign oil companies—will help the government "peel away subsidies that provide Indonesians with some of the world's cheapest petrol, diesel fuel and kerosene."

The drive to break up Pertamina is coming from foreign investors who criticize it as corrupt and inefficient. One executive at a Western oil company said, "What we want is Pertamina off our backs so we can regain control of our businesses."..."Pertamina's backers are taking shelter behind a web of laws rooted in the 1945 constitution," says the Review, "stipulating that Indonesia's natural resources belong to the state and that economic areas affecting people's livelihood shouldn't be in private hands."

It is obvious that the US oil sisters like Mobil and Atlantic Richfield using the racist attacks on Asian values and Suharto's corruption to justify their takeover of the nationalised oil industry. In their mad rush to cream off the super-profits from oil they are being cheered on by their little brothers and sisters in the South Pacific – Australia and New Zealand.

No faith in the US-Indonesia fake independence moves!

No Indonesian or UN sponsored referendum!

For immediate release of all political prisoners! Return all refugees!

For the immediate removal of all Indonesian troops!

For the immediate disarming of anti-independence paramilitaries!

For the formation of Workers and Peasants councils and armed militia!

From Class Struggle No 26 March-April 1999

Indonesia and Permanent Revolution [July 1998]

Recent dramatic events in Indonesia have thrust it to the fore as a hotpoint of world struggle. The demise of Suharto has sparked off claims that the Indonesian 'revolution' has begun. We reported on the causes of the latest crisis and political upheaval in the last issue of Class Struggle. After several weeks of mass struggles that brought the downfall of Suharto, we take a hard look at the way forward.

We should all remember that the mass murder of around 500,000 communists and Chinese in 1965 was the direct result of a Stalinist policy of class collaboration that disarmed the working class. Are we about to go down the same road today? We look at the analyses and programme the main left tendencies inside and outside Indonesia.We conclude that the legacy of Stalinism and of degenerate trotskyism means that none offers a convincing analysis or a revolutionary programme so desperately needed to win the struggle for socialism.

Worse, the default of the left primes the brave and militant Indonesian masses for another historic defeat. We cannot analyse the current situation without some background on the Indonesian political scene. The ruling bloc of Golkah and its "New Order" was forged in the years after 1965 when Suharto put down the failed coup and killed up to 500,000 communists and dissidents. The 'democratic opposition' around Megawate Sukarnoputri and the Democratic Party of Indonesia (PDI) is a weak force which is prevented from playing any serious role by the constitution and by political repression. Under the 1945 Constitution, the President is able to usurp power provided he controls the army. Though nominally elected by the Supreme Advisory Council (MPR) which meets every five years, the President can appoint over half its members, and in practice influence the rest. The Parliament (or the Peoples' Representative Council DPR) has little authority. Formally, it too can pass legislation. But the grip of Golkar is such that only opposition candidates which are acceptable to Golkar have been allowed to enter parliament.

Therefore while the President is not exactly a military dictator, by establishing a network of personal patronage around Golkar - the "crony capitalist faction" - and his control of the army, he is a near-dictator, i.e. a form of bonapartist dictator. The student led uprisings of recent weeks have shaken Golkar but it has not challenged is grip on power. The military (ABRI) remains the backbone of Golkah . Although the ruling bloc has its splits, none have emerged so far to suggest that it cannot rule. The replacement of Suharto by his deputy Habibie shows that the ruling bloc is capable of making concessions so long as they are cosmetic.

The popular extra-parliamentary left consists of mainly 'communist' and 'nationalist' groupings. Most see the way forward as one of a 'democratic' revolution based on 'people power'. The students who mobilised for the recent demonstrations largely share these 'democratic' aspirations. Many, influenced by Maoist ideas see the 'democratic' revolution as a stage toward a socialist revolution in the future. There is a widespread belief that the causes of all Indonesia's problems, are not so much Chinese entrepreneurs, but the Golkar regime and the "orang kaya baru" (OKB - the new rich its massive corruption and wealth. This is the view of the Western economic experts as well. The solution is to mobilise the popular masses and demand democratic or constitutional reform to clean up the cronyism and the corruption. But who is going to reform the constitution and how?

Full Text in Class Struggle No 22, June-July 1998

Indonesia: Where to now? [May 1998]

Asia/Pacific economic turmoil

The so-called "Asian crisis" is as really a capitalist crisis where the blame is being shifted from capitalist exploitation onto Asian "values". (see Class Struggle # 20). Indonesia is usually given as the worst example of what the West sees is wrong with Asia. They say the country is run by an aging dictator, whose family controls the state and owns a large chunk of the economy, and who is stubbornly opposing the IMF's rescue package for restoring the economy. We reject this argument. We oppose Suharto's dictatorship, and we do not trust him to fight the IMF's medicine which will make Indonesian workers and peasants pay a terrible price for economic stability. We make the case for a socialist plan run by and for workers and peasants as the only alternative that meets the needs of the vast majority of the 200 million Indonesians.

The phoney battle over the terms of the IMF's US$40 billion rescue package for Indonesia has been won by international capitalism. There is no way that the international banks who have $130 billion invested in Indonesia will walk away from this kind of money without a showdown. So from a position of mock defiance, Suharto has now been worn down to accept most of the IMF's terms.

These include austerity measures to balance the budget which means real impoverishment for millions of working people. It means opening up the ownership of Indonesia's state corporations to foreign investment. Suharto has agree to allow foreign shareholding in 4 out of 5 of the major state combines. It is clear that despite a great show of opposition, this was only an attempt to keep his share of the booty intact. Now Suharto has no option but to comply with the demands of international capital. The question is why?

Indonesia : a US client state

We don't have to look very hard to see why. The Indonesian economy is bankrupt. Prices have risen 400% in a few months; the rupiah is worth less than 25% of its value one year ago; 90% of companies are technically insolvent leaving 10s of millions unemployed. Neighbouring states such as Thailand and Malaysia are rounding up and repatriating Indonesian migrant workers in their thousands. Protests, rioting and unrest have reached crisis proportions. Despite an army of 300,000 soldiers, 20,000 deployed on the streets alongside 20,000 police, there is no way that Suhato can keep the lid on a mass uprising unless he deploys the aid of his main allies, US and Japanese capitalists.

In other words, Suharto has been forced to recognise that his interests, if not his skin, lies with the international capitalist class and not the Indonesian people. The IMF will call the shots, which will include economic and military sanctions if Indonesia does not repay its debts.

Suharto was appointed as a stooge for the US in 1965 when he was aided by the CIA in the slaughter of up to 1 million communists and dissidents. But he has been able to hide behind a façade of nationalism until now. Growing opposition to Suharto over the last few years is clearly opposed to his comprador role as agent of foreign capital. Not only has his family and their cronies profiteered from Indonesian working people, but he has facilitated the locking of Indonesia in to the global capitalist economy.

Peoples' Power?

The popular alternative to the Suharto's oligarchy and the IMF package is the peoples' power strategy of the democratic opposition forces around Megawati Sukarnoputri. Like the recently elected President of South Korea, Kim Dae Jung, Sukarnoputri looks to "progressive" forces (including imperialist powers and puppets) outside Indonesia to bring pressure on Suharto to democratise the regime. Some of the militant unionists jailed by Suharto are appealing the IMF to withhold loans until Suharto introduces democratic reforms.

This is a tragic betrayal of Indonesian workers and peasants. It accepts that they have to pay back the debts owned to foreign banks. It sows illusions that the IMF as the economic hit-squad for US imperialism can play a progressive role. It creates a cover for US imperialism, which can get rid of Suharto and replace him with a more popular figure like Sukarnoputri, and lock into place the IMF package under the guise of 'human rights' and 'democracy'. The result would be the consigning of the masses of Indonesia's 200 million to further super-exploitation , misery and death in order to create imperialism's super-profits.

In order to overthrow Suharto revolutionaries must participate in all mass demonstrations against him trying to strengthen and radicalise them. Even though it is necessary to participate in joint demonstrations with the "democrats" (and even to do some entrist work amongst its tanks), our goal is to separate the working class from these bourgeois forces. In Indonesia it is important the call for the workers and peasant organisations to be independent from the capitalists and to establish a new party. The only way to smash the IMF and Suharto is tough mass action including a general strike and the formation of strike committees and workers and peasant councils and militias.

Workers' and poor Peasants' Power!

It is necessary to mobilise the working people around democratic and transitional demands to oppose the IMF imperialist package and to get rid of Suharto.

- Overthrow the dictatorship! Call for a Democratic Constituent Assembly.

- Build militant workers and poor peoples councils and self defence militia!

- Troops out now from east Timor and West New Guinea! Self-determination for all the nations of the archipelago!

- Repudiate the national and foreign debts! Break with the IMF!

- Nationalise landlords land under working peasant control!

- Socialise private and multinational assets under workers' control!

- For a Workers' and Poor Peasants' Government! - - For a socialist federation of South East Asia!

From Class Struggle No 21 April/May 1998