SUHARTO'S REIGN OF TERROR

The Indonesian military dictator, General Suharto, is currently visiting European capitals in an effort to win more support for his extremely repressive anti-communist regime.

He was received with full state honours in France last week and has now moved on to make similar calls in Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and Austria.

One of the main purposes of this tour is to boost the image of Indonesia as a country where foreign investors can reap vast profits with the assurance that their money will be safe.

In Paris, Suharto boasted to the Chamber of Commerce: 'It would be profitable for you businessmen, who are always looking out for new outlets wherever you can find them to take interests in the potential of Indonesia.' Many foreign capitalists, particularly in the United States and Japan, already do 'take an interest' in Indonesia. They have large investments in almost every sector of the country's economy.

Eighty per cent of Indonesian oil production, for example, is taken by the huge US petroleum monopoly Caltex. The remainder is split between other foreign firms— mainly Japanese-and the state owned Pertamina corporation.

Petroleum is by far the biggest export earner for Indonesia and in the past seven years there has been a mad scramble of overseas companies seeking to invest in it. Others have interests in industry, mining, coffee plantations and forestry.

The government's policy allows them to operate almost entirely without controls of any kind. It is formulated by a group of five economists, headed by professor Sadli, and known as the 'Berkeley Mafia'. These men are fanatics for free enterprise and play open house to big business all over the globe.

There are vast profits to be made in Indonesia, thanks to the 'Berkeley Mafia' and the military machine that stands behind them. To achieve this state of affairs over a million communists were in 1965 and up political prisoners are rotting without trial in the army's prisons and concentration camps.

Over 20 million are unemployed out of a population of 48 million and the inrush of foreign capital has created only some 20,000 iobs teracy among people over ten is 41 per cent and this is likely to be increased with the smashing of free education over the past seven years.

Prior to Suharto's coup, school attendance was almost 100 per cent, but "nder the military regime schooling has once again become the sole preserve of the more wealthy, costing up to several hundred rupees a month. Almost half the child popu- are frequ lent purges designed the rest of the officer its toes. • came to power in er crushing what he At the same time the mili- claimed was a coup d'etat Ended by the powerful ist Party of IndoKI). Though there is that some PKI offie involved in a plot, the Parts v made no concerted Political parties exist only attempt t o seize the power.

PKI under D. N. is one of the main : President Sukarno, the nationalist indemovement, who had d the post-war polile in Indonesia.

Suharto continues to raise It was ; completely tied to Servation of capitalist Indonesia through its with the nationalists. le nose of the Sukarno ent, the army leaders erican assistance were Arrests are a daily occur- preparing ; to overthrow the Find drown the Indovorkers and peasants lleged PKI coup proem with the pretext ded. The army leadediately set in motion The army is everywhere, a terrible e massacre. Egged on loslem priests, squads rs and lumpen bands the country for PKI supporters, trade unionists and anyone who had ever had any connection with it.

The rivers ran with blood. Nobody knows how many were murdered in the purge, but reliable estimates fix the figure between 500,000 and a million. The largest Communist Party in Asia, outside China, was physically wiped off the map.

Survivors of the massacre are still held in prisons and island concentration camps. No accurate figures are available, but there are thought to be as many as 150,000 of them.

All inquiries by international organizations like Amnesty International have been brushed aside. The prisoners are classed into three categories: A—communists considered likely to have been implicated in the alleged coup attempt; B-suspected communists; C-persons held on suspicion of being on the extreme left.

Virtually none of the prisoners has been brought to trial. In the seven years since the coup, only about 180 have appeared before the courts. Yet in October 1969, General Sugih Arto, the procurator, mentioned a figure of 69,000 prisoners 5,000 A, 11,000 B, 26,000 C and 27,000 others). Another 47,000, he said, were held under conditions of 'conditional liberty'. Arto's figures give a total of 116,000. One year later Suharto mentioned a figure of 58,000 prisoners.

About the same time, Dr Finngeir Hiorth, on behalf of Amnesty International, concluded that there were at least 150,000 prisoners in Indonesia, with 30,000 on the main island, Java.

The liberal Hong Kong weekly, "The Asian', this year published another estimated figure of just under 72,000 prisoners, which apparently does not include those in 'conditional liberty'. Indonesian political exiles put the figure at 200,000. "The Asian' sent novelist Dom Moraes to one of the most notorious island concentration camps, at Buru, over 1,500 miles from Java.

Moraes' description of the camp is eloquent testimony to the terrible repression waged by the Suharto regime against the Indonesian working class: 'Buru is larger than Bali an immense sprawl of forested hills lying in the Banda Sea,' he wrote. 'Lazy voracious sharks cruise off its shores, but few President Suharto. Left: 1965; a PKI committee member Is e8corted to a military tribunal curing the purges that followed the coup. Right: Sukarno, nationalist leader, ousted 1965. boats visit it. The dense forests contain wild boar, and the rivers are musky with crocodiles... Large parts of the island valleys are swamps where malarial mosquitoes proliterate in terrifying numbers..:

While they were there Moraes and other journalists met Pramudya Ananta Toer, one of Indonesia's best-known writers, who has been imprisoned since 1965. He told them: I cannot write. I am too tired. Professor Suprapto [a leading lawyer] and I are in the same camp, so are several writers I know, but we do not work in the same field and when we meet we are too tired to talk.

'So I do not write and I do not talk. . . In Buru I have no future. Conditions for me here are too difficult. 1 want to return to Java' Over 100,000 others are held without trial on similar camps and in Suharto's jails.

million unmarked graves.

PAGE Press, Wednesday Novamber 28, 1872 MATICE