By James Balowski
On January 18, a bomb exploded in an apartment in the central Jakarta slum district of Tanah Tinggi. Indonesian police say they found documents belonging to the banned People's Democratic Party (PRD), and a top military official has accused the PRD of being behind the incident.
According to police, the bomb exploded just before 6.30pm the evening of January 18, injuring three people who were in the apartment. Two of the three are believed to have suffered minor injuries and escaped. The third — a student named by the authorities as Agus Priyono — was seriously injured and has been taken in for questioning.
The Army chief of staff, General Wiranto, was quoted by the official government news agency, Antara, as saying the PRD was behind the incident and that the organisation was a regeneration of the outlawed Indonesian Communist Party.
According to a January 20 report in the Jakarta daily Kompas, police also claim to have found a detonator, ammunition, timers, a note-book computer, a pager, a number of identity cards and a passport.
In a report in the Jakarta daily Republika on January 22, Brigadier General Abdul Wahab Mokodongan quoted Wiranto that the explosion was as an act of terrorism and that the police and military intelligence had been ordered to hunt down the two other suspects and other members of their organisation. In the same report, however, the authorities claimed they had never said that the PRD was responsible, and hinted that some other organisation may have been involved.
In a statement posted on the internet on January 19, jailed PRD chairperson Budiman Sudjatmiko said that the accusations were groundless and that, like in the past, the regime was using the incident to attack the party and "distract" attention from the current political and economic crisis in Indonesia.
Sudjatmiko called on the Indonesian people to "tighten their ranks" in their struggle for democracy, a new president, the withdrawal of the five repressive political laws and the abolition of the dual function of the armed forces.
Fifteen PRD members were sentenced to long jail terms for "subversion" in 1997 after they were accused of being behind the July 27, 1996 riots in Jakarta which broke out after pro- government thugs attacked the pro-Megawati Sukarnoputri Indonesian Democratic Party offices. The PRD has also been blamed for "masterminding" a number of other riots in Indonesia over the last year.