AUT: Indonesian Unions and the Security Bill

["rc-am" <rcollins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>> For immediate release, September 20, 1999
SBSI International Department
Jalan Pemuda No 289
Jakarta 13220
Indonesia
ph: 62 21 472 1618
fax: 62 21 470 7416
email: sbsi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx


 State security bill endangers civil liberties, says trade union leader
Pakpahan

Indonesian trade union leader Muchtar Pakpahan called a draft state
security bill "100 percent made by the New Order", referring to its
allowance for a return to Suharto-era militarism. His union, the Indonesian
Prosperity Trade Union (SBSI), will stage a demonstration against the bill
at parliament Tuesday morning. The law, unless halted, is expected to be
brought into force this week. Pakpahan, a former political prisoner and
chairman of the 1 million-strong independent trade union, pledged to
protest and lobby against the draft law at parliament, joining students and
journalists who have led
protests against the bill in the past few days.

The law grants the military (TNI) unlimited authority in a state of
emergency. The criteria for imposing a state of emergency is undefined and
left open to interpretation by the president and TNI. Amongst other
suspended freedoms, it allows for incarceration without trial and the
abolition of press freedoms. In its present form, the law closely resembles
the widely criticized subversion law of 1963, revoked last year in the wake
of Suharto's resignation in May 1998.

The bill, rushed through parliament at the military's behest, will be one
of its last items of business. It is slated for enactment September 23, the
day before parliament's final session. The military appears to be using the
bill to retrench its command position in politics before the new, largely
reformist parliament is seated on October 1. TNI will hold just 7% of the
seats, reduced from 20% one year ago.  There can be no doubt of TNI's
motives. If enacted, whether or not invoked, the threat of its imposition
can be used by the military to bully opposition. Unbowed by its
unpopularity, the military has succeeded, through deft political maneuvers,
at rising its political stock in recent weeks.

Armed forces chief Wiranto forced President Habibie to accept martial law
in East Timor, after such a proposal had been rejected by the cabinet. The
new Jakarta city council, to much surprise, elected a member of the
military faction as council speaker, despite clear reformist majority in
the council.
TNI took advantage of disagreement within the reform factions to cut the
deal. And past weeks have brought a return to unabashed military brutality
on Jakarta's streets. Student demonstrations have been violently disrupted,
and at demonstration of families of victims of violence on September 15, a
human rights lawyer was shot in the neck, at point blank, by a plastic
bullet.

These events suggest that the military is not voluntarily divesting itself
of its political power, as most Indonesians would hope. Indeed,
rumors-passively disputed by the armed forces chief-have circulated that
General Wiranto, not Habibie will be proposed by Golkar to be the next
president when the senate meets on November 1.  The draft state security
bill is a clear-and-present danger to Indonesia's fragile civil order,
reversing the trend to greater civil freedoms that has followed Suharto's
demise.


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