Dear Green Left Weekly readers,
The 200 million people of Indonesia — the millions of factory and office workers, the tens of millions of farmers and the millions upon millions of unemployed and underemployed — face an impending social and economic catastrophe. Thirty years of economic mismanagement, under the guidance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and under the control of a super-corrupt dictatorship has brought Indonesia to a crisis point where the very survival of a civilised society is at stake. Over the last two years, more than the total population of Australia has slipped under the poverty line.
The IMF is insisting on policies that are further destroying productive capacity, both in industry and agriculture. In agriculture, almost all protection for the millions of rice and sugar farmers is being destroyed. Cheap rice is being dumped in Indonesia threatening the livelihood of tens of millions of already impoverished rice farmers, eking out an existence from the tiniest plots of land. The IMF bosses have demanded that eventually these millions must compete to buy fertiliser and pesticide on the same terms with foreign capital for credit from commercial banks. They say cheap credit for the impoverished rice farmers must end.
In the cities, young women search for jobs in garment and footwear sweatshops where they earn A$80 a month working 13-hour days, seven days a week, sometimes doing 24-hour shifts, sleeping two hours on the footpath and then starting again. They go home to suffocating two-by-two metre rooms which they share with one or two other people. They must pay for their own water and share the toilet and bathroom with another 50 people. More and more women are being forced into prostitution. In the smaller, poorer towns, woman factory workers prostitute themselves in their lunch time.
This is the future the IMF envisages for Indonesia and which the Indonesian political elite is willing to go along with while ever they can get their cut of the oil and loan monies swirling around in its billions in Jakarta. While the so-called new reformers, such as President Wahid and Vice-President Megawati themselves, swirl around in their own incompetence, corruption and self-seeking, unable even to arrest the corrupt son of former President Suharto, the old Suharto forces — Golkar party, the old bureaucrats with their pockets full of money and the military — plot and scheme and use their control of the media, the provincial apparatus and the army, to get back into power. Afraid to rely on the people to fight these forces, whatever reforms President Wahid does try to implement face impossible blockages.
Therefore it's not surprising that more and more of the country's downtrodden and exploited masses look for ways to resist. More than 10,000 new enterprise unions have been registered under the new more liberal law on trade unions; 38 national unions, including the militant Indonesian National Front for Labour Struggles (FNPBI) have been registered. Big militant strikes as well as the unreported half-day strikes to win Rp1000 (A$0.20) lunch money are growing. Farmers occupy land or demonstrate demanding capital and technology to increase their productivity. Students demand the arrest and trial of Suharto and his cronies on corruption charges.
The task of bringing all the mushrooming social struggles into a single movement for change is urgent. The work of analysing and learning from all the experiences happening around Indonesia on a day by day basis piles up at a pace that the still small revolutionary forces — primarily embodied in the People's Democratic Party (PRD) — races to keep up with.
A brief survey of the some of the issues the PRD face points to the magnitude of the challenge. How explain to the millions of impoverished workers and small farmers as to why they must reject the IMF and seek a solution of their own to the current crisis, perhaps in the face of hostility from the most powerful countries in the world? What is the solution, not just in general terms, but specifically? How do progressives deal with the problems of immediate survival? How to prevent the comeback of Golkar, the army and the cronies, while explaining the hopelessness of people like Wahid and Megawati? How to deal with the escalating violence from new army backed militias used against striking workers and protesting farmers? How to support the peoples of Aceh in their fight for self-determination, while at the same time building up the progressive forces in Aceh that can also defeat the feudal and conservative forces leading the struggle there? And for West Papua the same applies. The list of issues goes on and on.
For the PRD to take the struggle to a higher stage it is crucial to have an instrument that helps centralise the discussion of the issues and an explanation of the solutions and answers produced by the discussion. The struggle for national liberation from the IMF and the struggle for a democratic order where the majority of workers and small farmers truly reign supreme needs a national regular newspaper.
The PRD needs a regular, national newspaper. But the economic crisis has hit the base of the PRD — workers, peasants and students who have given up their middle class position to struggle — hardest of all. They struggle to finance their organisation's basic needs. Full-time organisers live from hand to mouth as they work an almost 24-hour day among the mass base trying to win the poor and exploited to the cause of organised struggle. The PRD does publish a magazine, Pembebasan (Liberation). But financial constraints hold it back. Even as we write this appeal, the latest issue sits stranded at the printers. The party has no money to pay the printer.
A paper that can bring the struggle together; that can lead, debate and then explain the way forward needs more money than the PRD can raise at that moment. The PRD believes that if it can get between five to 10 issues of a new improved version of Pembebasan out on a fortnightly basis, the project will become self-sustaining.
Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET) is making an appeal to the subscribers of Green Left Weekly to help the PRD do that. We want to raise the start-up money for this project. They need what is a huge amount for them — 25 million rupiah — over the first 10 weeks of 2001. This is just A$6000!
ASIET is appealing to you to make whatever donation you can. Supporters of Green Left Weekly in particular must realise the value of a regular independent national newspaper. Perhaps you can give $20, or $500 or $1000 or $6000. Perhaps you are feeling the pinch as well but think you can make a 12-month interest free loan to ASIET. This would also be great. Over the next 12 months ASIET will be holding film showings, dinners and other fundraising events. We will be able to pay back any such loan.
ASIET will also be calling upon you to join in campaigns in solidarity with the struggle in Indonesia as it unfolds: to support public meetings, participate in demonstrations, join the global movement to cancel the Third World debt and push back the corporate tyrants. But we also make this special appeal to Green Left Weekly readers: donate or make a loan now to the People's Power Fighting Fund to help make a national newspaper of struggle a reality in Indonesia.
In solidarity,
MAX LANE, ASIET national chairperson
JOHN PILGER, independent film-maker, author and ASIET patron