John Rees, editor of International Socialism Journal (quarterly theoretical journal of the Socialist Workers' Party in Britain), spoke to Dita Sari who was imprisoned for trade union activities under President Suharto. She has recently been released.
Tell me about your time in prison.
I was arrested in July 1996 after leading a demonstration of 20,000 workers from 11 factories in Surabaya, East Java.
I was charged with being opposed to the state's institutions.
After July 26 1996 when Suharto decided to destroy Megawati's organization, they tried to scapegoat my political party, the PRD (the Revolutionary Democratic Party).
Suddenly charges were added under the anti-subversion laws for violating the state ideology.
The government accused us of being communists, which in Indonesia carries the popular association with the 1965 coup attempt and with being anti-religion.
This enabled the government to give a 13 year sentence to the leader of the PRD, to arrest the officials of the party's mass organizations.
I was given a six year sentence reduced to five years on appeal. The first two years I was in prison I wasn't subject to physical intimidation, but they did try psychological intimidation.
I wasn't allowed to read or write, listen to the radio, look at newspapers or TV, or even listen to music.
You are put in a position where you know nothing about what is going on outside. You are treated just like the other criminals. You are isolated. They want to kill the spirit. They wanted to make me as unpolitical as possible.
But it didn't work, either with you or with the movement. How did you situation change with the fall of Suharto?
When we were arrested, people began to see that the PRD was a scapegoat for the government. Looking back people saw the clamp-down of July 26 as a bad historical experience.
Our being in prison added to the accumulation of anger at the suppression of the pro-democracy movement.
Finally, two years later in May 1998 the students took to the street.
They led the masses of the ordinary people and they occupied the parliament building.
They said 'No to Suharto'. It was a rejection of all that the government had done in 32 years.
Our imprisonment did not have a direct influence, but it was part of convincing people that no more activists, no more trade unionists should go to jail. Suharto dug his own grave.
The PRD learnt a very hard lesson after our imprisonment. We never saw the attack on Megawati coming. We thought it would be too costly, too risky, for Suharto to attack Megawati and then blame the PRD.
But then he did it, and we suffered.
We had declared the PRD as a legal party on the July 22 1996. Five days later we were all wanted by the government. Suddenly, we had to work in a clandestine way. All out tactics and strategy had to change.
Even the structure of the party had to change. We could no longer approach the masses with the banner of the PRD. We had to work with semi-legal and illegal forms of organization.
The PRD was set-up as an open, legal party. Now, because of the repression it became half-legal, even illegal. We set up committees of workers in industrial areas. We had to start from zero at that time.
How do you see the growth in workers' consciousness between the fall of Suharto and the demonstrations of hundreds of thousands outside parliament in November 1998?
They moved, they became politicized, but very slowly. I always give an example of a train: the students are at the front of the train, but the workers are in the last carriage, maybe even the restaurant car!
It's so slow. The issues like the dual function of the military, about Suharto's cronies, the corruption and the nepotism -- the workers got the message about these things.
They read, they know this is a corrupt country, a corrupt military. They have this in their minds, but when it turns to practice they still talk about wages.
When we try to get them out on the street about the more political issues, they just back-off. Very few consciously want to join a political demonstration.
So consciousness has developed, but very slowly. Before May 1998 they did not have very clear ideas about corruption or the dual function of the military.
But after May 1998 it became very clear because it was in the papers, on TV, even in the songs that the urban poor sing on the buses and trains. Now it is the task of the party and the unions to make it materialize in physical actions rather than just think about it.
The November demonstrations were as big as those that brought down Suharto. Many in the student movement thought they would be enough to bring down Habibie. But they didn't. What conclusions did people draw from that experience?
The demonstrations were part of the students' effort to complete the democratic revolution.
In May 1998 it was only the regime that was changed, not the system. The students were not satisfied that Suharto was not being brought to court, that the dual function still exists, the judicial institutions are still corrupt, that all the old generals are still in their positions, the electoral system is still the same. So in November 1998 they saw an opportunity to complete the democratic revolution.
But it was not so well organized, even though millions of people were taking to the streets. It wasn't that the masses weren't ready. But the people at the core of the masses weren't ready, not in terms of consciousness, but in terms of physical organization.
The movement seemed to reach a peak in November, but then at the beginning of this year in seemed to lose its way, to fragment, when it had to decide how to participate in the June elections.
Yes, they fragmented. It's a problem with the democratic movement. There's an old-fashioned notion that the student movement represents a moral force not a political force.
So there is no need for the student movement to go to the people, to organise the workers or the urban poor. Students simply respond to each crucial event, that's all.
But other student groups, under the influence of the party, see that it is the job of the students not only to lead the democratic movement but also to go to the other classes to organize them, to create a political force, a class consciousness among workers.
The party tried to show how to bring workers into alliance with the student movement, but it is still really difficult because of sectarianism and a feeling that 'we don't want to be under the influence of the PRD'.
How did the PRD's election strategy work? It seemed to face in two directions: on the one hand standing candidates, on the other calling for a boycott of the elections.
There were lots of questions about these issues, inside the PRD as well there were some cadres who didn't want to join in the election campaign. But the party saw it as an opportunity to campaign very openly after years of being underground.
It was a chance to tell people what the PRD really stands for. We were able to distribute our leaflets and our programme everywhere~on the buses, in the park, at the station.
We believe that we cannot just ignore the illusions that people have -- they still see the election as a very important event in achieving change, in replacing the existing leaders.
Millions of people agreed to participate in this election even though it was run by the old regime. We believed we had to follow where the masses go, even though some of the PRD cadres were against participation, otherwise we would be isolated.
Even for me, I thought at the time 'Why? We don't need to join the elections'. But then I realized that if we hadn't joined the elections we wouldn't be as big as we are now.
We now have 200 branches, before the elections we only had 50. Lots of new cadres came into the party. This is because for the last nine months we had an opportunity to speak openly to people.
How do you see the connection between the crisis in East Timor and the Indonesian revolution? Will the military be able to strengthen their hand?
I don't think the military are becoming stronger. They are still there, the dual function is still upheld after the fall of Suharto, but their sins have now been published in the press.
People have begun to learn about the real face of the military and it has put the military in a difficult situation.
This is especially true in the East Timorese case where a mass of international pressures has emphasised the role of the military in the militias. The military really feel humiliated by having to give up East Timor to UN forces.
This situation creates factions within the military itself. Many of the military feel betrayed by Habibie. But the result of the referendum and the pressure from international sources means that there is not a lot the military can do.
Of course they can still kill people, but it won't be legitimate in the way that it was under Suharto.
There is therefore a tendency for the military to want to make a coalition with civilian political forces. The main target for a the military to make a coalition with is Megawati's party.
She has welcomed the military into her official structure -- she never directly opposed the dual function. The military needs more time to consolidate themselves after all the problems they have had to confront.