ASIET news updates - December 7, 1998 ===================================== * Under fire in Jakarta's black Friday - BBC * Mob loots Java fertilizer warhouse - AFP * Graduates hold cap-and-gown protest - AFP * Students launch poll watchdog - AFP ------------------------------------------------------------- Under fire in Jakarta's black Friday ==================================== BBC - November 21, 1998 [The following is a delayed posting which was included as it provides very a graphic report of the military's actions on November 13-14 - James Balowski.] Jonathan Head -- I squatted down as low as possible in the marble porch of the office block, acutely conscious that I presented a much larger target than the Indonesians beside me. All about us was the crack of gunfire and the occasional boom of teargas grenades. But the man sitting next to me still managed to grin. He'd come down from his office to watch the protest. "Just look at our army", he laughed, "what a lot of fools they are chasing young students like that." Even during the Suharto era only a few ended with serious casualties. Now that Suharto was gone, no-one expected bloodshed. Suddenly the soldiers were trampling through the ornamental shrubs in front of the office screaming at us to come out. One of them levelled his M-16 rifle at a man running behind the building and fired. And then he pointed it at us. It was a moment of disbelief. In my three, often turbulent years in Indonesia, no-one had ever pointed a gun at me. This was different. I heard a shot and then I heard the glass door behind me shatter. We were all pressed down as flat as we could on the cold marble. Then the soldiers charged in, beating these innocent bystanders with batons. I still find it hard to guess what was going through the minds of those soldiers on what's now being called "Black Friday". Deafening barrage of gunfire There were surreal periods of calm when they chatted to the students in an almost fraternal way and then they'd launch another attack with a deafening barrage of gunfire which echoed off the glassy walls of the office blocks. This was Jakarta's most prestigious business district -- the showpiece of Indonesia's once booming economy. Now it felt more like Beirut or Sarajevo. I watched a young woman in an Islamic headscarf moving behind the fence of the campus where the protestors were seeking shelter. Without hesitating a soldier lifted his weapon and fired at her. The bullets were mostly rubber-coated but they can kill and they did. One man lay on the ground bleeding profusely from a bullet wound in his throat. The group of students who tried to lift him were set upon by the troops seemingly oblivious of the victim in their arms. A student enemy There is an official explanation of what happened -- that the soldiers were exhausted and stressed after four days of policing the protests, that they felt they had to stop the students from breaking through to the parliament. But the shooting went on for hour after hour. The soldiers coolly stepping back to reload their weapons then moving forward to start firing again. This wasn't crowd control: it had become a battle which the security forces were determined to win. The students had become the enemy. The army we witnessed on Friday was not the one Indonesians had hoped for in the era of reform. It seemed if anything more agressive and more careless in the use of its firepower than the one which defended the Suharto regime during its dying days in May. Painful lesson Back then Indonesia's students imagined they were leading a revolution which would usher in a new and more just political order. The painful lesson they've learnt from last week is that not much has changed. President Habibie's government seems equally intolerant of large scale protests and the military as ready as it always was to use lethal force against unarmed youngsters. This has come as a shock to the nation. Fourteen people died and more than 400 were injured. Flags are flying at half-mast across Indonesia, local radio stations are reading out messages of sympathy for the families of the victims. Maybe lessons will be learned this time to prevent a repeat of Friday's tragedy. But that's what we thought just six months ago. Mob loots Java fertilizer warhouse ================================== Agence France Presse - December 6, 1998 Jakarta -- A mob of farmers, angered by high prices of fertilizers, attacked a warehouse in Blora, Central Java, looted the fertilizers stocked inside and set fire to two trucks, a report said here Sunday. Hundreds of farmers gathered in front of the house of a local businessman dealing in fertilizers late on Saturday and began to attack his house shortly afterwards, the Antara news agency said. After ransacking the house of the businessman whom they accused of setting high prices for the commodity, the mob burned two trucks parked there and continued by looting the warehouse adjoining the house. Antara said the businessman, identified as Edy Kosasih, had sold fertilizers at between 75,000 and 100,000 rupiah (10-13 dollars) the sack while there was no stock available at the local village cooperatives. The mob was eventually dispersed by a joint team of police and soldiers abour four hours later. There were no casualties, Antara said. The governement last week withdrawn its subsidy on fertilizer prices but attempted to offset the impact by raising the producers' floor price of unhusked rice by 50 percent. Officials have blamed the scarcity of fertilizers on the wide disparity between the government-subsidized price and the market price which resulted in subsidized fertilizers ending up in the hands of plantation companies and not the small farmers they were intended for. Graduates hold cap-and-gown protest =================================== Agence France Presse - December 5, 1998 Jakarta -- A group of new Indonesian graduates celebrated their last day as students by protesting on the capital's busiest traffic roundabout, accompanied by proud parents and friends. The 50 students from the School of Information Management and Computer Studies demonstrated after their graduation ceremony at the nearby Hotel Indonesia. "Long live students," they shouted. "Long live graduates." "Our fight for reforms do not end here. We have passed our test as students but those in the government haven't passed the test of meeting the aspirations of the people," said one. In a statement the graduates demanded that the armed forces fight for the people -- not for the government -- and that the government bring to trial government officials suspected of corruption, including former president Suharto. The students also demanded that armed forces chief General Wiranto be held accountable for recent military violence against students and that probes be conducted into a series of riots. Mothers in traditional clothes and fathers with cameras waited patiently on the sidelines, some cheering and chanting with them. "I asked my son to come home after the ceremony but he demanded to join the others. I guess it's fine considering tomorrow he will be busy looking for a job," said one mother. Clashes between soldiers and students have claimed the lives of at least seven students protesting against a November special legislative assembly session they did not accept. Students launch poll watchdog ============================= Agence France Presse - December 5, 1998 Jakarta -- Students from 14 Indonesian universities met here Saturday to launch a watchdog to monitor general elections pledged for June 7 next year, student sources said. The meeting wound up two days of talks among representatives of the universities who aim to not only monitor the polls, but the parliamentary deliberations under way to draw up post-Suharto era election rules. The students said the watchdog body -- the University Network for Free and Fair Elections (UNFREL) -- was officially launched this weekend. "The forum will be established today after we finish deliberating our plan," said a University of Indonesia student who was part of the watchdog working committee. He said that the participating universities included ones from the cities of Surabaya, Ujungpandang, Padang, Semarang and Yogyakarta as well as Jakarta. The group will also launch voter education programs in the runup to the elections, which will for the first time in decades not be confined to three authorized parties or dominated by the ruling Golkar party. More than 100 political parties have sprung up since the fall of former president Suharto in May, when his successor and protege B.J. Habibie dropped the three-party restriction. But parliament is still locked in a fierce debate over what criteria the parties must fulfill to participate in the June elections, with most wrangling over whether a party must have offices in at least half the districts of this vast country of 202 million. ********************************************************** Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET) PO Box 458, Broadway NSW 2007 Australia Phone: 61-(0)2-96901230 Fax : 61-(0)2-96901381 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WWW : http://www.peg.apc.org/~asiet/ Free Xanana Gusmao, Budiman Sujatmiko and Dita Sari! 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