The aim of these pages is to provide news, analysis and solidarity with the Indonesian workers, students, urban poor and peasants struggling to transform society.  See also the section on Asia.

• Indonesia : the Weakest Link of South East Asian Capitalism
  A joint project with Indonesian activists with the aim of making Marxist literature available to the new generation of revolutionaries.

• Indonesian students fight privatization of education
  Under pressure from the IMF, the Indonesian government is planning to make drastic cuts to education spending which will mean massive tuition fee increases. Like in UNAM, students are campaigning against policies which mean education only for the wealthy. (March 22, 2000)

• New President in Indonesia: Masses will not wait long for promises of change
  A look at the recently elected government in Indonesia and its chances of improving the lives of the masses. (November 1999)

• Report from Indonesia
  More first-hand reports from Indonesia.  (October 18, 1999)

• First-hand Account of the Student Protests in Indonesia
  The information that you are about to read is a first hand description of the student demonstrations in Jakarta. The only things that have been changed are grammatical errors. As you read this understand that that this could be your University, your friends, your streets, your city's police. The battle these students are facing is enormous, the courage they are showing is incredible.  (September, 1999)

• East Timor: Can we trust the United Nations?
  Early this morning, the United Nations force, Interfet, landed in East Timor. The operation is likely to be confrontational. Great expectations are being placed in the intervention of the international military force. Not least in East Timor and Australia. This article analyses the role of the United Nations in East Timor and also the policies of the Timor Resistance movement and the left in Australia. (September 20, 1999)

• Referendum in East Timor
  The overwhelming majority of the Timorese population voted in a UN sponsored referendum to end the 25 year long Indonesian military occupation. Now the militias and the army are trying to challenge these results with a campaign of terror.   (September 6, 1999)

• Australian trade unionists take action on East Timor
  See also a news item from the Australian press.

• Indonesian elections: massive rejection of the Suharto era
  Belgian socialist activist visited Indonesia during the recent election campaign and spoke with student, peasant and worker activists. In this article he analyses the election results and explains how the bourgeois opposition leaders will betray the expectations of the masses who voted for them. (June 16, 1999)

• The Role of Bourgeois Opposition in Indonesia
  This is a rough translation of an article we received from Pembabasan analysing the role of the bourgeois opposition in Indonesia, specially during the November mass revolt in Jakarta. The article argues that the bourgeois opposition is more afraid of the masses than it is of the Habibie regime. (December 1998)

• Mass Revolt in Jakarta - Eyewitness Account
  "Rakyat Bersatu Tak Terkalahkan", (the people united will never be defeated) is one of the most popular slogans shouted at the student demonstrations in Jakarta these days. It is proof of a clear shift in the orientation of the democratic student movement towards joining with the workers, the urban poor and the peasants in order to defeat the regime. (November 15, 1998)

• Indonesia: the Rise of a Young Working Class
  Belgian trade union activist Mark Slane visited Indonesia in July. These are his impressions on the development of the working class movement after the May events. (August 1998)

• Indonesia: Interview with PRD Activist
  In July we interviewed Muhammad Ma'ruf, chief-editor of Pembebasan-Liberation, paper of the Indonesian PRD: "We are in favour of an uninterrupted movement, an uninterrupted revolution. The struggle for democracy means a freeway for socialism. A strategic demand for the actual situation is the building of people's councils at every level. The nationalization of crony capitalism will have to develop to the nationalization of the whole economy." (August 1998)

• Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Indonesia 1965
  This article written by Alan Woods in October 1965, provides the reader with an historic background to the current events in Indonesia. At that time the wrong tactics of the Communist Party leadership led to the crushing of the revolutionary movement with anything between 1 and 1.5 million people being killed and the coming to power of Suharto.

• Indonesian Revolution: Workers Strikes Grow
  On June 17th the Indonesian rupiah hit a new low of 16,800 to the dollar - a fall of 10% in one day, a collapse of 30% in one week. Economists are now predicting that inflation will hit 100% and the economy will contract by 20%. The rupiah has now devalued by a staggering 66% this year and more than 80% since the economic crisis began to unfold in mid-1997. Phil Mitchinson analyses the effects on the labour movement

• Indonesia: the Asian Revolution Has Started
  The news of Suharto's resignation hit the world like a bombshell. For thirty-two years, this bloody tyrant ruled Indonesia with a rod of iron, having come to power over the corpses of over a million people. Now he has been blown away like a dead leaf in the wind. The magnificent mass movement of the students and workers has won a great victory. To the very last minute, Suharto clung to power, threatening a bloodbath if the masses continued to defy him. But in the moment of truth the whole edifice of repression collapsed like a house of cards in the face of a popular uprising. This is the beginning of a revolution. It is like 1931, when the Spanish monarchy was deposed and the Republic proclaimed. This opened the flood-gates of revolution. Indonesia has now entered the same road. Ted Grant and Alan Woods. (May 22nd, 1998)  Also available in Spanish.

• Marxism and the Struggle Against Imperialism
  It is nearly seven years since George Bush, the then president of the US, made his famous "New World Order" speech. This was in 1991. In the build-up to the Gulf War the main imperialist power on earth promised a world without wars, without dictatorships and, of course, a world firmly under the control of a single all-powerful world policeman--the US. After the fall of Stalinism, US imperialism really thought that the world would be firmly under their command and they would be able to dictate the destiny of each and every country. Now all these dreams have been reduced to rubble. In this document Ted Grant and Alan Woods make an in-depth analysis of the history of the imperialist domination of the Third World and the way.  (June 1998)