The White Book of the 1978 Students' Struggle

On 6 October 1970 an ITB student, Rene Louis Coenraad, was shot dead on Jalan Ganesha, outside the campus, after a friendly football match between ITB students and cadets of the police academy, AKABRI Kepolisian⁷. The cadets who were questioned denied that any of them had fired⁷. The killing, known as the 6 October incident, set off demonstrations demanding a review of civil–military relations and a return to democracy⁵.

In October 1973 student protests in Thailand brought down Thanom Kittikachorn's military government. Jeffrey Winters writes that Indonesia's students were “further excited” by it¹⁴, and Benny Setiono that their protests grew “terinspirasi oleh aksi-aksi mahasiswa Thailand” (inspired by the Thai students' protests; translated here)¹⁵. On 15 January 1974 the Japanese prime minister Kakuei Tanaka's visit to Jakarta set off student protests that ended in riots, remembered as Malari⁶.

Who turned the protests into riots is still disputed. Writing in 1979, the editors of Indonesia noted that the authorities and some students blamed the student leaders, while “many others believed the riots were instigated by government agents provocateurs”¹³; Setiono writes that the crowd was “konon” (reportedly; translated here) engineered by Opsus, Ali Moertopo's special-operations group¹⁵.

Aimed first at Japanese cars and the Toyota Astra showroom, the riots turned on Chinese Indonesians: Setiono describes the looting of ethnic-Chinese shops in Glodok and, that night, the looting and burning of the Proyek Senen shopping centre¹⁵, and Mattias Fibiger writes that rioters “targeted Indonesians of Chinese ancestry”¹⁶. Tirto reports 11 dead, 807 vehicles burned, five newspapers banned and 775 activists arrested⁶; Tosa gives 700 arrested, of whom 45 were charged⁵.

Tosa writes that many leaders of the 1977 movement had entered university before Malari, watched the movement that led to it, and drew on its lessons⁵.

On 13 September 1977 students set up a “provisional parliament” to criticise the legitimacy of parliament; Tosa names among its founders three ITB students, Roeli Sanre, Ali Hilal and Ramles Manapang⁵. Sudomo, the commander of Kopkamtib, called it unconstitutional⁵.

The statement of position of 14 January 1978 demanded that the MPR fulfil the students' demands in the Ikrar Mahasiswa Indonesia, the Indonesian Students' Pledge, of 28 October 1977³. The Cornell translation calls it the “Indonesian Students' Manifesto” and prints the date as 23 October¹; the Indonesian original reads 28 October³.

The pledge came out of a meeting of student councils from across Indonesia. The University of Indonesia's student council recorded that “Bandung expressed its willingness to act as host. The meeting produced the Indonesian Students' Vow”¹³, and Indro Tjahjono told his court that every student representative signed the meeting's resolutions¹⁰.

Its text is dated Bandung, 27 October 1977, at 3.30 in the morning, and signed “Dewan Mahasiswa/Senat Mahasiswa”¹². The text comes from Musni Umar, one of its signatories, who retyped it in 2015 from a photograph of the signed original¹²; in a 2012 column he quoted the second point in different words⁴.

On trial in 1979, Indro said the pledge “hanya berisi permintaan agar MPR meminta pertanggungjawaban presiden” (only asked that the MPR call the president to account; translated here), stopping short of withdrawing his mandate, and that the prosecution used it as evidence against him¹⁰.

Tosa records that on 27 October the University of Indonesia's student council asked for a special session to question the president directly on departures from the 1945 Constitution and Pancasila, citing Kompas of 28 October⁵. That is the pledge's second demand, on the day its text is dated, but Tosa does not name the pledge. On 28 October, the anniversary of the Sumpah Pemuda, the Youth Pledge of 1928, large demonstrations were held in Jakarta, Bandung and Surabaya⁵.

On 16 January 1978 about 1,000 students rallied in Bandung and read out a statement opposing a third term for Suharto, and the White Book, the ITB Student Council's systematic critique of the government, was handed out in large numbers⁵. The statement of position at its head is dated 14 January¹.

The statement of position opens with five considerations: that the people's lives were still far from the ideals of independence; that wrong policies and abuses of power by officials were to blame; that this showed the failure of the national leadership; that democracy needed every group to take part in choosing that leadership; and that “dinamika politik di negeri ini tidak dimungkinkan tumbuh bila jabatan presiden dijabat lebih dari dua kali berturut-turut” (political life in this country cannot grow if the presidency is held more than two terms in a row; translated here)³. Its second demand ties the book to the pledge of October: that the MPR carry out the demands of the Ikrar Mahasiswa Indonesia³. It is signed by Heri Akhmadi, the council's chairman, as the result of its deliberations of 14 January³.

Its preface says it was compiled by an editorial team of students appointed by the Student Council, drawing on newspapers, journals and government publications such as the Second Five-Year Plan¹. The copy of the Indonesian original we have read carries more than the translation does³. Its cover is stamped “Dicetak terbatas” (printed in limited numbers). A council ruling of 16 January says every white book it issued had to be stamped and given an edition code, and that anyone reprinting it needed the council's written consent, could not change its contents, and could be sued if their copy differed from the council's reference copy. A letter of 17 January invites ITB alumni, scientists and readers to send their responses to the council.

The book's case is that the policies themselves are wrong: “This White Book does not merely discuss negative incidents caused by administrative errors. We want to emphasize rather that the development policies themselves are wrong”¹. It traces everything to two causes, the national leadership and the development strategy¹.

On politics, it calls parliament “simply a spectator to all the irregularities that are taking place within the executive”, citing the Palapa satellite bribery reports, Bulog and Pertamina, and it declares “The 1977 MPR is unconstitutional!” because 61 percent of its members were appointed, not elected¹. On the economy, it charges the government with chasing GNP while 70 percent of foreign capital went to Jakarta and the people of Krawang were “reduced to eating water-hyacinths”¹.

The economic case also turns against the “non-natives”. The book never names an ethnic group, but it places them in Glodok and Pintu Kecil, which the Cornell editors note are Jakarta's traditionally Chinese quarters, and says “Those who contributed nothing during the war for Independence are now enjoying most of the benefits of development” and “Most government credit falls into the hands of non-natives”. It also names the cukong, which the editors gloss as “the vastly wealthy Chinese financiers of key Indonesian political figures”¹.

It turns on Suharto himself: his family's wealth, the Tapos ranch and the Mangadeg foundation, and a nepotism copied down to village heads, set against Sukarno, Hatta and Sjahrir, who never sought wealth for their sacrifices. Suharto, it says, “is becoming an ever larger stain on the Armed Forces' good name”¹. The students set two goals: “to replace Suharto via the general session of the MPR in March 1978 and to change the national development strategy”, and say they have “no intention whatever of creating anarchy”¹.

A second part sets out “indicators” of failure, ministry by ministry. On rice it finds that actual imports for 1978 exceeded the estimate by 400 percent, and that the Rp 240 billion subsidy on imported rice dwarfed the Rp 44 billion lent to Indonesian farmers through Bimas in 1974; it calls Widjojo Nitisastro, head of Bappenas, the “dalang” of Indonesian development¹. The book closes with an appeal to the wives of officials, “especially to Ibu Tien Suharto”, holding them “to a large extent responsible for the decay of our society”¹.

Writing in April 1978, the editors of the journal Indonesia said the book was banned “by the military authorities within a matter of days of publication”, as part of the general crackdown on dissent of 20 January¹. They did not say which body issued the ban, or under what law.

The law the Attorney General's office used to ban books was UU No. 4/PNPS/1963, on safeguarding against printed matter whose content may disturb public order². It was an emergency law from Sukarno's Guided Democracy, issued during the Confrontation with Malaysia, and the printed matter it covered included books, brochures and pamphlets². Neither source says whether the White Book's ban was issued under it.

The sources differ by a day on the crackdown itself. The Indonesia editors give 20 January¹, and Tosa Hiroyuki, writing in 1989, says Kopkamtib, the security command, decided on 20 January to ban six major newspapers and the student papers, and that the student councils were suspended⁵. TAPOL, writing in April 1978, dates the army's crackdown to 21 January⁸.

Indro Tjahjono, tried in 1979, names the order that froze the student councils: Kopkamtib decree SKEP.02/KOPKAM/I/1978, signed by its chief of staff, Admiral Sudomo¹⁰.

His plea quotes the council's own chronicle: “21 Januari 1978 penangkapan-penangkapan mahasiswa secara besar-besaran di mulai. DM/SM se Indonesia dibekukan kegiatannya, Pers diberangus” (on 21 January 1978 the mass arrests of students began; the student councils across Indonesia were frozen, the press muzzled; translated here)¹⁰.

Rum Aly writes that the education minister, Sjarif Thajeb, dissolved the ITB Student Council, led by Heri Akhmadi, on Kopkamtib's orders¹¹.

On 23 January Sudomo explained the crackdown in the commander's name. The plea quotes him accusing individuals in the student councils of abusing freedom and democracy, “menjurus tindakan melawan konstitusi dan melanggar hukum” (tending towards acts against the constitution and the law; translated here)¹⁰. The plea lists the papers stopped, citing the same explanation: Kompas, Sinar Harapan, Merdeka, Pelita, The Indonesia Times, Sinar Pagi and Pos Sore¹⁰. TAPOL's February bulletin also counts seven, and 158 arrests by 27 January⁹; Tosa counts six⁵. Rum Aly dates the papers' closure to 25 January, two days after that explanation¹¹.

None of these sources gives a date for the White Book's own ban, or names the body that issued it^1,5,8. Rum Aly says only that the authorities “segera melarang secara resmi” (soon officially banned; translated here) the book¹¹.

The English translation in Indonesia was made by the journal's editors¹⁷, Benedict Anderson and Judith Ecklund¹⁸. The ban was one of their reasons for printing it: the book had become “a rare bibliographical item to which readers may not otherwise have ready access”¹. A year later the journal did the same with the defence pleas from the students' trials¹³.

On 21 January troops entered the ITB campus, saying they would arrest the Student Council's chairman and seal the campus radio transmitter, 8EH. The students inside refused both, because the troops had not first asked the ITB leadership's permission¹⁰. Rum Aly writes that the West Java security command sealed Radio 8EH that day, and that student leaders, most of them from ITB, were arrested at the same time¹¹.

On 28 January 1978 students called a strike to demand the release of the students arrested at ITB^5,11, and public figures including Adnan Buyung Nasution, W.S. Rendra and Mochtar Lubis called for the press bans and the arrests to be reconsidered⁵.

The council's chronicle records two occupations of the campus¹⁰. At 4 a.m. on 1 February a combined force of Kostrad airborne troops, military police and the Bandung garrison occupied ITB, carrying a list of 53 people to arrest, five of them lecturers; after checking student cards they detained 17 students¹⁰. At 2 p.m. on 9 February troops from Kujang I Kostrad, Kopasandha, the military police and the infantry surrounded the campus, herded the students to the basketball court and the staff to the football field, beat and trampled the students at the front, and carried off the Student Center's papers, typewriters and photocopier¹⁰.

Tosa writes that the 9 February raid left casualties, a word that covers the killed and the wounded alike⁵. A letter from the PPP group in parliament, quoted in the plea, describes students beaten and stabbed with bayonets, “luka parah” (badly wounded; translated here), and taken by truck to the regional security command; it adds that the rector Iskandar Alisyahbana's house was fired on by unidentified gunmen¹⁰. Neither source says whether anyone died^5,10. Rum Aly writes that the occupation of ITB and the other Bandung campuses lasted until 25 March 1978¹¹.

Tosa writes that the main legal basis for arresting students was the lèse-majesté articles of the criminal code, articles 134, 137, 207 and 208⁵. He adds that these clauses had been in use since Dutch colonial rule, with some amendments⁵.

On 3 April 1978 Sudomo and Benny Murdani pressed the education minister, Daoed Joesoef, to “normalise” the universities. On 5 December he formally instructed the rectors to do so, in the policy known as NKK, Normalisasi Kehidupan Kampus⁵.