Australia: DSP electoral campaign
The Democratic Socialists will field Senate tickets in all states in the coming federal elections. The party will also contest several lower house seats.
"For the first time in recent history, every voter in Australia will have the choice of voting for a socialist candidate or ticket", said Peter Boyle, the party's national election campaign director.
"With up to 66% public disillusionment at the economic rationalist agenda of Coalition and Labor parties at an all-time high, more people will be looking to socialist solutions.
"Further, the socialists are the ones leading the campaigning in the streets against the disgusting racist scapegoating promoted by Pauline Hanson's One Nation party and their neo-nazi sup28 International Viewpoint #303 porters. We have received broad support for this campaign in the cities and in the country areas."
While Hanson is exploiting the turn against the major parties, the Democratic Socialists are determined to expose One Nation's reactionary agenda.
The Democratic Socialists are closely associated with Resistance, the socialist youth organisation that organised the recent high school walkouts against racism. "Without the support of Australia's youth One Nation has no future," said Boyle. Several Resistance leaders will be part of the DSP electoral list. * Contact: Peter Boyle, Democratic Socialists PO Box 515, Broadway NSW 2007, Australia Tel: +61 2 9690 1230 Fax: +61 2 9690 1381 Email: [email protected] www.peg.apc.org/~dsp the jobs that are needed, to write off the (public or sovereign) debt that is almost as large as the private debt and which was incurred by an illegitimate regime financed by banks and international financial institutions who should bear the costs of their irresponsible lending decisions and the whip of the market' they are so keen to flex on others. Army atrocities exposed
In Aceh, East Timor and West Papua, families of the 'disappeared' and human rights groups have come forward with details of those believed killed by ABRI in its counter-insurgency operations and "dirty war'. Extra-judicial executions, 'disappearances', , torture and long terms of imprisonment for political 'crimes' on trumped up charges were rife. General Wiranto made a public apology for ABRI atrocities in Aceh and has announced that 'non-organic military units' will be withdrawn.
All these 'provinces' too shared the status of 'Military Operational District' (DOM), which is blamed by locals for legitimising the militarisation of their societies and exacerbating the poverty-stricken conditions as military authorities and their activities frustrate and hinder employment and investment projects.
Ten mass graves on three sites have been identified in Aceh, where the military was engaged in a brutal campaign of terror and rape between 1989 and 1993 in suppressing the separatist Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh Movement) there. At least 5 000 people 'disappeared' between those years there too.
The Aceh NGO Forum which has been leading protests there has demanded financial compensation and psychological counselling for the victims of torture, widows and relatives of those killed by the military; free education for orphaned children up to high school and freedom from detention for alleged separatists. Pro-independence protests
In West Panua nro-indenendence In West Papua, pro-independence demonstrators have staged protests in Biak, Sorong, Jayapura and Manokwari. Tragedy struck at one rally when the raising of the West Papuan 'Morning Star' flag was met by ABRI gunfire into the 500 strong crowd killing several and wounding many.
Meanwhile bodies of those suspected of sympathising with the Free Papua Movement (OPM) and its struggle have washed up along the shore of Biak Island reminding us that the Armed Forces continue their previous pattern of behaviour and are neither instinctively reformminded nor willing converts to the pro-democracy cause.
In East Timor, the government claimed to have withdrawn 1,000 troops but the resistance reports that a further 10,000 have been secreted in across the border from Timor Barat (West Timor). The Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas has dismissed calls for a referendum on self-
determination as "out of the question" Instead he continues to parade his threadbare proposals for a "Special Autonomous Region within the Republic of Indonesia".
CNRM leader Kay Rala Xanana Gusmao speaking from Cipinang Prison in Jakarta is adamant that, "There can be no solution to the problem in East Timor without a referendum. Otherwise the situation will just continue as it did in Palestine. Autonomy is something you ask for after integration, and what's first needed is a referendum" (Time Magazine July 13 1998). Will the guilty stand trial?
A number of senior military officers associated with the feared special forces command unit KOPASSUS have been arraigned before military tribunals for their part in the abduction and torture of political activists and human rights workers in the run up to the March Presidential election. Most of them have now resurfaced, released by their captors with threats to their life if they spoke out about their experiences. However at least a dozen are still missing.
Chief among the accused is Lt. General Prabowo Subianto, son-in-law of the former President, who was sidelined to head the Army Staff College after Suharto's resignation. He is also under investigation for the role of his former command, KOPASSUS, in orchestrated acts of killing, gang rape and arson in the Jakarta riots in May which have now come to light including the Trisakti killings.
Prabowo was tried by a Military Honour Council, whose maximum sentence is a dishonourable discharge, to the disappointment of parents of the dead students among others. There have been broad hints in the press dropped by ABRI that he will face a court martial too.
The singling out of Prabowo who is reviled from Banda Aceh to Jayapura is convenient for General Wiranto who is anxious to defuse anger and criticism of ABRI and remove his arch-rival Prabowo in one fell stroke. Political prisoners
While many political prisoners have been freed, including three of the thirteen ex-Communist Party (PKI) members imprisoned since 1965 and four members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PRD), Wilson Nurtias Ken Kusumandaru, Coen Hussein Pontoh and Mohamad Soleh.
Those deemed the most dangerous to the State remain incarcerated. There are three categories of prisoners the government is opposed to releasing. They are the G30S/PKI prisoners [relating to the 1965/66 events]; those opposed to the state ideology of Pancasila and those involved in armed rebellion and related "criminal acts"
They include ex-P.KI members such as Colonel Latief [one of the key surviving actors in the September 30th 1965 putsch which provided the excuse for Suharto's coup d'état], the resistance leader Xanana Gusmao and 120 other East Timorese, 24
West Papuans, 55 Acehnese, Islamists and leaders of the radical left Peoples Democratic Party (PRD) including its Chairperson Budiman Sudjatmiko, its Secretary Petrus Haryanto and labour front leader Dita Sari. The release of all political prisoners must remain a focus of the solidarity movement abroad.
The long march of the Indonesian people this century for freedom and justice has undergone many detours and forced halts. Suharto's removal puts the masses back in forward movement on that road which stretches ahead.
The agencies of radical change: the