The Streets and Parliaments Are Burning in Indonesia

For several weeks now, regional parliaments and the residences of ministers and deputies have been besieged by enraged crowds in Indonesia. After it was announced that the 580 members of the House of Representatives would receive a salary increase to 14,000 dollars per month, the streets of the capital, Jakarta, and of the main cities filled with demonstrators summoned by labor unions and student organizations.

Since then, the protests have escalated, and with them police repression. Last Friday, a young delivery worker was brutally run over by an armored police truck, provoking greater outrage among the mass of unemployed youth, who responded by throwing Molotov cocktails at police buildings and attempting to storm a mobile police brigade in the capital, only to be repelled by tear gas and water cannons.

The government of businessman and former military officer Prabowo Subianto has placed all police units and army soldiers on maximum alert to repel the actions of the masses. This watchdog of Wall Street emerged from the entrails of the anticommunist dictatorship overthrown in the late 1990s, and he is known for his crimes and torture against those who fought to bring down the regime of his former father-in-law Suharto—a trajectory that ultimately led to his expulsion from the military institution itself.

Now, under his leadership, the government has deepened militarization, assigning the armed forces civilian duties, granting them access to increasing numbers of administrative posts, and directing food-related projects under the direct supervision of the military caste—all enabled by a law passed in March of this year, which sparked protests by unemployed youth who recognized this as a return to the dictatorship of more than two decades ago.

On the basis of major mineral deposits—especially coal—lucrative deals have been struck with European powers (through the Trade Agreement with the European Union) and with Trump’s United States. With more than 280 million inhabitants, Indonesia has been transformed into a prison meant to sustain the world production of minerals and energy, even as poverty and unemployment rates climb.

The president was forced to cancel a trip to China and backtrack on his attempt to further privilege the reactionary forces, withdrawing the salary increases and other benefits already enjoyed by deputies. But the demonstrations were now demanding the fall of the House of Representatives and of the government itself. This has placed the bourgeois regime and the military elite in a tight spot, while Subianto—seeking to appear conciliatory toward the protesters’ demands—deploys additional police and military checkpoints with snipers positioned at key points in the cities.

Proletarian youth are leading the most radical actions of these demonstrations; however, they bear the weight of years of betrayals by the main political leaderships that devoted themselves to delivering the mass movement to the feet of the bourgeois state. Maoism, the principal political current decades ago, ensured that the working class and the enormous mass of peasants supported the Sukarno government—ultimately paving the way for the largest wave of anticommunist repression in the region.

Old formulas of cross-class political conciliation are now being revived under the pretext of fighting foreign powers. Indonesia experienced one of the darkest chapters of betrayal by the old reformist leaderships when they subordinated themselves to bourgeois nationalism—consequences paid for by thousands of grassroots militants who were brutally murdered. This instructive history leaves only one road for opening the world socialist revolution: the Transitional Program of Trotskyism, which takes up bourgeois democratic demands and fuses them with the tasks of proletarian revolution. More precisely, it confronts the national and democratic question through the hands of the working class, supported by the poorest peasants, advancing the world socialist revolution.

The Asian proletariat has waged major battles in recent years—even amid the pandemic—as demonstrated by the Indonesian working class when it protested the deepening militarism. Time and again, these struggles show that even the most elementary demands can only be won through street combat, through our own political organizations, our self-defense bodies, and with the most exploited sector of the proletariat at the head. Unity with the exploited youth across the continent is vital, as is the inspiration drawn from battles in the metropolises, such as the recent ones in the United States.

May protests once again spread through Myanmar and Bangladesh. May the working class return to the streets to bring down the rotten and corrupt bourgeois military regime at the service of international finance capital.

FORWARD TO THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION THROUGHOUT ASIA!

FOR THE REFOUNDING OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL!