CALL FOR BOYCOTT OF ALL INDONESIAN BUSINESSES
RELATED TO SUHARTO'S FAMILY AND CRONIES

The attack on the PDI headquarters, is a blatant replay of the regime's invasion and consequent occupation of East Timor. Various similarities can be raised. Firstly, the deliberate efforts to create divisions within the group to be conquered, by openly favoring one group to be pitched against the other. In Indonesia we call this "taktik adu ayam jago", or the cock-fight tactic. Secondly, when it was time to physically invade and occupy East Timor as well as the PDI headquarters, the regime used a variety of actors, namely regular troops disguised as civilians, civilians from the favored side, and then regular military to finish it of. By appplying this two tactics, the regime could claim that it was an internal conflict, which "unfortunately" spilled over beyond the confines of the group to be subdued. This, again "unfortunately", forced the Indonesian armed forces to interfere, to prevent further blood shed.

Talking about bloodshed, this is again another similarity between the invasion and occupation of the PDI headquarters, and the invasion and occupation of East Timor, since 1975. The regime's intervention did not prevent more bloodshed, but created even more bloodshed. The casualties in the so-called 'civil war' between UDT and Fretilin from August till September 1975, had led to about 2,000 casualties, as admitted by Fretilin spokepersons themselves on various occasions. The Indonesian invasion and occupation, on the other hand, has led to between 200,000 and 300,000 lives lost in East Timor.

In the case of the PDI conflict between the pro-Megawati and the pro-Suryadi factions, there had been no casualties at all between the two groups, prior to the military intervention. Only after the military cracked down on the pro-Megawati demonstrators near the Gambir train station on June 20, 1996, victims began to fall. And eventually, on June 27, 1996, more than one hundred victims have died, according to the liberal Muslim democrat, Abdurrachman Wahid, or popularly known as "Gus Dur".

Here we come then to the fourth similarity between the treatment of East Timor and PDI: in the most well-publicized cases, conflicting numbers of casualties have emerged. In the Dili massacre on November 12, 1991, the Suharto regime only admitted as high as fifty casualties, without providing the list of names of the deceased and their graves. On the other hand, the East Timorese resistance, under the leadership of Xanana Gusmao, whom at that time had not yet been caught, managed to obtain a list of 271 names from the parents of the missing youth, the parishes, and medical staff.

In the attack on the PDI headquarters, which we can objectively label as "the second Jakarta massacre" during the New Order, after a previous massacre of Muslim demonstrators in the Tanjung Priok harbour in September 1984, the regime only admitted that two people had been killed. One of these casualties, has even been blamed to the demonstrators, because this person died when he jumped down from a building burned by the demonstrators. On the other hand, during the first day of the uprising, after the attack on the PDI headquarters, people were already talking about a number of 47 casualties. And a week later, Gus Dur's figure of more than one hundred dead became the most well-believed figure, based on the investigations of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) and the PDI officials themselves.

In terms of the actual operation of the attacks, there are also some similarities. During the attack on the demonstrating youth in Santa Cruz, Dili, fire fighters with their water cannons were already present at the scene, minutes after the shots had been fired, to wash away the blood from the streets. Similarly, water cannons were very quick to flush the blood away from the PDI compound, after the specially trained troops had carried out their bloody job, in this case with clubs, knives, and stones.

The treatment of journalists by the invading troops was somehow rather similar in East Timor as during the attacks on the PDI headquarters. Alan Nairn, one of the American journalists present at Santa Cruz had suffered severe concusions from the rifle buts of the Indonesian soldiers. While during the "Diponegoro massacre" (I call it so, since it happened on the Diponegoro boulevard in the heart of Jakarta), one Indonesian journalist, Sukma, had suffered severe injuries when he was repeatedly beaten by the Indonesian soldiers and police.

Finally, one of the most important similarity between the two geographically and politically completely different cases is that there were similar scapegoats to be butchered in East Timor as in PDI, namely Communists. One of the rationales of invading and occupying East Timor, is to protect the Indonesian body from the virus of Communism, which was claimed to have entered East Timor through the radical nationalist party, Fretilin. Hence, it was a self-preserving operation, so to speak.

Likewise, in only two days after the attack on the PDI headquarters, which triggered a selectively targeted attack by angry mobs on numerous buildings owned by the government, the military, and some private companies, the regime had found its scapegoat to blame for the riots. Who else, if not the most radical wing of the student movement, which had formed its own political party, the People's Democratic Party, or PRD according to its Indonesian abreviation (Partai Rakyat Demokratik). And since most of the PRD leaders had been able to escape the regime's nets by going underground, the regime had to please itself by arresting a trade unionist, Dr Muchtar Pakpahan, a labour and constitutional lawyer, who had just been released after a brief period of inculceration, when he was wrongly accused of master minding an ethnic riot in Medan, North Sumatra. He is currently charged with subversion, which under the draconian Indonesian Anti-Subversion Act, inherited by the regime from its colonial masters, can carry a life-long sentence.

Currently, PRD activists all over the country are suffering from a McCarthyan witch-hunt, so anachronical in this post-Cold War era. Three PRD activists, Dita Indah Sari, Cun Husain Pontoh, and Sholeh, who were detained after leading a mass demonstration of workers in Surabaya, East Java, on July 8, 1996, are already languishing in police cells in Surabaya, were charges against them are being prepared for inciting public unrest, which carry a possible sentence of six years imprisonment. Meanwhile, their 27-years colleague, Budiman Sudjatmiko, who had recently been elected in the party's first congress as their leader, is also charged, in absentia, with the same sentence as Muchtar Pakpahan, namely subversion.

Although the pro-democracy movement which has nominated Megawati Sukarnoputri as its candidate for Indonesia's next president is a quite wide alliance of different groups (see my posting on Apakabar, in early July 1996), activists who are actually leaders of the mass organizations under the PRD umbrella, or only suspected of being PRD activists, have been targeted by the military and police in Java. Not only the national and provincial headquarters of PRD has been occupied and seized by the authorities, but also the houses of the parents of these young activists have been raided by the military, police, and government-controlled neighbourhood leaders. In Surabaya, three activists of PRD's student organisation, SMID, have been detained. in Yogyakarta, apart from interrogating fourteen student activists, five of them have been tortured during the interrogation, to force them into admitting that they were PRD members.

Meanwhile, in Jakarta, Megawati Sukarnoputri and three ofher members of the parliament from the PDI, are going to face a similar fate as the outspoken Muslim politician, Sri Bintang Pamungkas, namely to be interrogated and possibly charged of being complicit in a conspiracy to insult, if not also to overthrow, the government. In addition, several outspoken social activist, such as Ridwan Saidi, a former leader of the Indonesian Islamic Students Association (HMI), and Permadi SK, an outspoken Sukarnoist, as well as other persons who had been involved in the campaign to defend Megawati's legitimate right as PDI chairperson and presidential candidate, are also enduring tens of grilling interogation hours in the Jakarta police and Attorney General office.

Taking all these repressive developments into consideration, I believe that the political pressure to bring the Suharto's regime to its senses, that it is time to enable a constitutional transfer of power, the only thing that Megawati and all her supporters were dreaming of, is not enough. The political pressure which the US and European nations are beginning to exert on Jakarta, should be combined with more economic pressure. Economic pressure on all the overseas Suharto-related businesses is crucial, since that, among other things, is what the Suharto oligarchy wants to accumulate, unendedly.

This economic pressure could be exercised in various ways, which I will outline as follows:

1. . Let us continue the pickets in front of the Indonesian airlines, both Garuda as well as Sempati, since the funds of the public company Garuda has now been used to finance Suharto's East Timor campaigns, such as building an unwanted US$ 6 million statue of Christ in Dili, and since Sempati Airlines is owned by the Indonesian Army and Tommy Suharto, who made his wealth from exploiting Indonesian clove farmers and now from robbing millions of dollars from the Indonesian national coffers by his duty-free imported Korean cars, rebaptized as the "Timor car" by his father, an insult to the suffering of the Maubere people;
2. . Let us declare a consumer boycott of daily consumer products which are currently monopolized by the Suharto oligarchy, such as the instant noodles made by the Indofood Group, a member of the Salim Group, owned by the richest Indonesian businessman, Liem Soei Liong and his relatives, Sudwikatmono, Suharto's half brother, and two of Suharto's children, Sigit and Tutut;
3. . Through another company group, namely the First Pacific Group, the Salim Group has also penetrated the Australian market, by forming a joint venture with the Australian real-estate group, FPD Raine & Horne; hence, specifically to the Australian supporters of the Indonesian pro-democracy movement, I appeal to campaign for a consumer boycott and picketing of Raine & Horne branches all over Australia;
4. . To our friends of the Indonesian pro-democracy movement I also appeal to campaign for a consumer boycott and picketing of Chesterton International, the real estate marketing company which is silently continuing to market the luxury houses in the Bali Nirwana Resort project near the sacred Hindu temple in Tanah Lot, Bali, despite the public outrage against this religious desacration of the Hindu-Bali religion and culture; the Indonesian owners of this resort, the Bakrie Brothers, have thrived in their business from their close cooperation with Suharto's children and his half-brother, Sudwikatmono, and one of Suharto's minister, Tungky Ariwibowo, who is also a business partner in Tommy Suharto's Sentul racing circuit;
5. . Apart from Chesterton International, which is a world-wide company, a Melbourne-based company, Meinhardt International, which has also grown into an international company, has been involved in numerous luxurious tourism projects, which has wasted Indonesian taxpayers money, scarce farming land, and evict poor farmers from their land. Apart from designing the Amanusa resort in Bali, which is owned by one of Suharto's sons, Sigit Harjojudanto, Meinhardt International has also designed the 22,000 hectare Bintan Beach international resort on the island of Bintan, near Singapore. While the local farmers have been very poorly paid and raised their concerns in the national parliament, the Indonesian owner of the resort, another son of Suharto, Bambang Trihatmojo and the Navy, will enjoy the benefits of this gigantic tourist project, together with their Singaporean partners. Hence, let us picket in front of Mr Bill Meinhardt's office in Melbourne, and urge him to stop further business deals with the Suharto kleptocracy;
6. . Speaking about tourism, no other sector concentrated on one island is so dominated by the companies owned by the Suharto dynasty, as luxury tourism in Bali. And it is still expanding, drastically, with the construction of Tommy Suharto's new 650 Ha Bali Pecatu Graha project, with multiple star hotels and golf courses, after already owning two Four Seasons Regent hotels on that island. Hence, supporters of the Indonesian pro-democracy movement can help to exert some economic pressure on the Suharto regime, while helping to save Bali's delicate culture and environment, by boycotting luxury tourism projects in Bali;
7. . Let us appeal to the public and to private companies to boycott three brands of car and industrial batteries -- Exide (formerly British), Century (formerly Australian) and Yuasa (still partly Japanese) --, since these battery manufacturing and distributing companies are owned by the Wanandi Brothers, with its main offices in Sydney and Brisbane, as well as in the UK and Ireland;
8. . These Wanandi Brothers, whose Gemala Group of companies made their wealth through their close association with Suharto's private assistants and Suharto's former military unit, Kostrad, which was the main killing force during the invasion of East Timor in 1975. Their companies also obtained their capital by deferring the payments of nearly US$ 26 million from an Indonesian state bank, Bank Bumi Daya, depriving small Indonesian businesses from much needed capital. In addition, the Gemala Group has also exploited its own workers in its US subsidiary, Trailmobile, and has supported the PDI politician, Suryadi, who unconstitutionally disposed Megawati Sukarnoputri from her leadership of the party, and cooperated in the military attack on the PDI headquarters; hence, to the Australian public I specifally appeal to boycott products from the Australian pharmacy group, Amcal, which has began a joint-venture with the Gemala Group in Indonesia;
9. . A 60% stake in Australia's largest video rental company, Video Ezy International, has recently been acquired by Berjaya Group from Malaysia. The shareholders of this group includes Mohkzani Mahathir, son of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, and Indonesian businessman Johanes Kotjo, a member of Bambang Trihatmojo's Bimantara Group. Hence, I encourage all the friends of the Indonesian pro-democracy movement in Australia, New Zealand, and Malaysia, to tell the Video Ezy customers, that their money is helping to enrich the ASEAN clique, which has supported Indonesia's invasion of East Timor, as well as repress their own dissenters in Malaysia and Indonesia;
10. . Finally, I appeal to all the friends of the Indonesian pro-democracy movement to hold picket lines in front of the branches of the private banks owned by the Suharto family and their cronies, such as the Lippo Bank, owned by the Riyadi family, a former banker of the Salim Group's Bank Central Asia (BCA), where two of the Suharto siblings own 32 % shares, Bank Central Asia itself, Bank Pacific, owned by the family of Retired General Ibnu Sutowo, Suharto's best-friend who never had to be accountable for the US$ 10 billion credit scandal of Indonesia's oil company, Pertamina.

All these steps may hopefully help to create some political space for our friends in Indonesia and East Timor, who have just began to forge an alliance against the same repressive regime which have colonized both groups during the last twenty years. This alliance is what the Suharto regime is afraid of, and that it why the People's Democratic Party (PRD) and Muchtar Pakpahan, two important political actors, which have publically defended the East Timorese self-determination right, have been 'chosen' as the prime suspects of the July 27 riots. Riots, which were only the logical consequence of decades of repressed political disatisfaction, triggered by the brutal attack on the PDI headquarters, their short-lived "fortress of democracy", as short-lived as the Tienanmien student's "Goddess of Democracy".

So, with that message in mind, I leave it up to you to decide, what to do to support the Indonesian democratic struggle to end the Suharto oligarchy. Thank you very much for your support. May God, and the Indonesian people, reward you for your support, one day.

Your brother in the struggle,

Dr George J. Aditjondro
Indonesian dissident in self-imposed exile
for responses, use fax: (61-49) 677 053