Indonesia

[Foto: Dok. SDK]
Inspired by the growing Movement of the 99%, which has has staged protests and occupations from Wall St to all corners of the globe, Occupy Indonesia kicked off on October 21.
Visit the website here.
Below is a report from the Jakarta Globe.
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['Suppression' by Didotklasta Harimurti.]
July 11, 2011 -- Didotklasta Harimurti, an Indonesian social activist, visual artist, theatre director and writer, will hold an exhibition of his drawings at the Free Range Gallery in Perth in July.
Titled Realm of Suppression, this will be his first solo exhibition in Australia.
Didotklasta began writing about social issues in senior high school. In the early 1990s he became active as a painter and in establishing theatre groups. He eventually established a radical theatre group, the Yogyakarta Institute of Popular Theatre, which worked with poor communities.

[The sued article.]
June 7, 2001 -- By EngageMedia -- Press groups are outraged as a Supreme Court judge awarded the youngest son of Indonesia's former President Suharto - Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra - damages worth 12.5 billion Rupiah (US$1.46 million) for a Garuda Indonesia in-flight magazine article which described him as a "convicted murderer" as a reference to his 2002 conviction for ordering the murder of a Supreme Court judge.
Dr Agnes Callamard, Executive Director of ARTICLE 19, said it was disturning that the Indonesian court true facts about his conviction.

[Upik Desmidarti vs. APRIL (Photo: Ramadhanti).]
By Rini Ramadhanti, Institute Social and Economic Changes (ISEC)
June 7, 2011 -- Forest Peoples Programme -- In mid 2009, I started making regular visits to the village of Teluk Meranti to meet the women and talk about their current living conditions and the issues that affect them. Teluk Meranti is a village of about one thousand people next to the Kampar Peninsular, a peat swamp forest in Riau, on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. On my first visit we discussed women’s fears of losing their agricultural lands and forests, and their desire to further develop their gardens and small businesses. The women were concerned about a plan of the government and the pulp and paper company APRIL to create a pulpwood plantation covering 56,000 hectares and take over a forest that their community have managed for generations.

[Jakarta protest for free education and health care.]
By Peter Boyle, Green Left Weekly
March 20, 2011 -- Progressive Indonesian website Berdikari Online said in a March 14 editorial that the recent US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks exposing the corruption of the Indonesian government confirmed what most Indonesians already knew.
However, it said the leaks have further delegitimised the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

[SRMI urban poor activists delivering aid to Merapi volcano victims. Photo by Data Brainanta/Berdikari.]
By Data Brainanta
November 14, 2010 -- Hundreds of thousands of victims of the Mount Merapi volcano eruption in central Java face economic and social destruction unless the government carries out a comprehensive recovery plan to help them.
By November 9, the Data Communications Centre from the health ministry has put the death toll from the October 26 eruption at 168 people, with 1105 injured and 279,779 evacuated.
In solidarity with the victims, the Indonesian Poor People’s Union (SRMI) has set up disaster relief centres in eight districts: Mungkid, Salam, Ngluwar, Salaman, Muntilan, Mertoyu, Srumbung and Borobudur.

[Indonesian soldiers on patrol in Timika, West Papua. Photo: Westpapua.net.]
By Ash Pemberton, Green Left Weekly
October 31, 2010 -- Videos showing the torture of West Papuans by occupying Indonesian soldiers have embarrassed the Indonesian government ahead of a scheduled visit in November by US President Barack Obama.
Obama is due to discuss a security deal that would involve the US training Indonesian military units accused of human rights violations.

October 1, 2010, Engage Media -- Despite Soeharto's propaganda, 'Genjer Genjer' is actually not the anthem of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), but about the hardship of lives during the Japanese occupation where food was scarce and genjer vegetable became an option for food. It was widely banned, but now it's making a comeback. Tika is an Indonesian folk singer who often performs the song with her group, Tika and the Dissidents. The writer of the song itself, Muhammad Arief, was killed for being a PKI sympathiser.

September 29, 2010 -- The East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) and West Papua Advocacy Team (WPAT) today urged that the US government suspend all funding and training of Indonesia's Detachment 88 police unit pending review of charges leveled against the unit for systemic human rights violations, including use of torture.
"US funding and training should not go to a security force that has repeatedly and credibly been charged with human rights violations including torture of those engaged in peaceful dissent," said WPAT's Ed McWilliams.

September 27, 2010, La Via Campesina -- Some 20-thousand peasants from all across Indonesia marked the 50th commemoration of the National Farmers’ Day on September 24. Half of the number chose to rally in Jakarta , focusing to the Presidential Palace.
These parallel actions all across Indonesia were organized by 44-organizations, mostly farmers’ organizations, to remind President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono that he made a speech on 2007 saying that the government was to pursue agrarian reform. “No implementation of the program whatsoever until now,” said Henry Saragih, chairman of the Indonesian Peasant Union.
Meanwhile, there are 9.6 million hectares of unclaimed land ready to be redistributed to the people. The government seems only focusing on “market-led agrarian reform”, as advised by the World Bank from 1999 to 2004. This includes titling, cadasters and land registries. Of course it fails to adhere with the problems of food sovereignty, human rights (most notably the rights to land), and furthermore—justice.