Socialist Resistance

An archive of socialistresistance.org, 2002–2022

Right wing violence against new Indonesia left group

by Norman Traub  |  Socialist Resistance no44  |  page 15

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

Bloodied but not silenced: the western media's favourite opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai after a police beating.

stay-away on April 3-4th. Around 2,000 right wing thugs gathered in Central Jakarta on March 29 to prevent the National Liberation Party of Unity (Papernas) from holding a planned launch rally later that day.

They accused Papernas of being a new of manifestation of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).

Scores of people suffered minor injuries and one was seriously hurt. This is not the first time that antidemocratic goons have tried to prevent Papernas holding meetings.

The groups involved in this right wing assembly included a range of Islamic groups. the Anti-Communist Front (Permak), the Community Forum for Sons and Daughters of the Armed Forces, the Indonesian Movement of National Patriots (GNPI) and the Community of Sons and Daughters of the Police(KBP3).

KH Fadloli El Munhir said the new political party is tangible evidence that the communist movement has started to revive in Indonesia. He argues that if the Papernas declaration goes ahead it means that the government is allowing communist ideology to grow and develop in Indonesia.

"Moreover" he continued, "this communist party has consistently spread hostility against the New Order regime of former President Suharto and the army, Because of this, we will use any means to thwart the revival of communism in Indonesia. Even if it requires violence"

Papernas will not be intimidated and is reorganising its launch rally for June. Socialist Resistance sends them our warmest solidarity.