18 May – Since the day of his arrest, May 1st until May 16th 2018, our comrade Brian Valentino who were beaten and tortured have been denied of his rights for legal advocate or lawyer. Ever since he was arrested its already 15 days of interogation without the company of a lawyer or advocate.The police or the legal aid havent gave us a clear reason about this, therefore we are not sure that whether the police or the legal advocate who refuse to help him.
To be clear, we received information from Brian Valentino’s dad who have just visited him after a week and he make sure that Brian was the only arrestees who haven’t given any legal aid for 15 days since arrest.
Therefore we urge to the comrades national and international to strengthen solidarity with Brian Valentino, our dear anarchist friend, who have been refused of his rights for legal aid. We are not limiting the solidarity, it can be legal or whatever. But for donation to the family and defendants:
‘Solidarity with Yogja Comrades May Day Setiap Hari ( May Day Every Day )’
On May Day in Yogyakarta 69 comrades were arrested. There has since been a huge crackdown involving raids and more arrests based on flimsy evidence. At present there are 11 comrades still locked up in Yogyakarta Police Prison, they are isolated and not allowed any contact with comrades outside.
This has only strengthened the resolve of the comrades to keep up the fight against the feudal system ruling Yogja and the Kraton (palace) of the so called sultan.
There is a fundraising drive to raise money for legal assistance which has been largely local however there is a paypal account here for donations outside Indonsia. https://www.paypal.me/TobiVBonano
15 May – Yangon Region Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein has met several farmers evicted from disputed land on Saturday after a bloody confrontation with police in Kyauktan Township during which two people were shot.
The chief minister met four farmers, local lawmakers, and representatives of the township, district and region land management committees at his office in Ahlone Township yesterday morning to discuss the dispute with military company Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited.
The meeting came after Kyauktan police violently evicted farmers and workers from land near the Thilawa Special Economic Zone. Officers fired four shots during the confrontation, including three into a crowd. Two people, Daw Moh Moh Lwin and U Aung Naing Soe, were shot and are receiving treatment at Thanlyin Township Hospital.
The confrontation received relatively little media coverage because it coincided with several other major news events, including attacks by ethnic armed groups in Muse, northern Shan State, and a peace protest in Yangon.
The police also arrested three people on Saturday and charged them with abetting and voluntarily causing hurt to deter a public servant from his duty. All three were released on bail on Sunday evening.
Students take part in a rally demanding peace at the war-torn Kachin State in Yangon, Myanmar May 12, 2018.
12 May – Riot police in Yangon used batons on Saturday to break up a protest in support of victims of fighting in the northern Myanmar state of Kachin, arresting several of the organisers.
Authorities had refused permission for the protest in Myanmar’s main city and when police prevented some 300 people from marching they staged a sit-in, chanting anti-war slogans and waving light blue flags to symbolise peace.
Scuffles and fistfights between several dozen riot police and protest organisers and journalists covering the event broke out shortly after the organisers ended the sit-in. Several protesters were detained and driven away in a police van.
Myanmar police officers detain a student who takes part in a rally demanding peace at the war-torn Kachin State, in Yangon, Myanmar May 12, 2018.
More than 6,000 people have fled their homes since an army offensive against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), an ethnic rebel group and rescue workers say hundreds are still stuck in danger zones.
Leading the protest organised by Yangon’s youth activists was Maung Saung Kha. The poet and former political prisoner was jailed for six months for writing a poem about tattooing an image of a former Myanmar president on his penis.
“We had just said that we would disperse and end the demonstration and then the police started beating us. They broke police ethics and the rule of law. Nine people from our group have been arrested,” Maung Saung Kha told Reuters.
Police spokesman colonel Myo Thu Soe confirmed that the police arrested some of the protesters.
“They didn’t follow the peaceful assembly law so we had to arrest some of them, he said, adding that the authorities had not decided what to do with those who had been arrested.
The burgeoning anti-war youth movement has exposed frustrations with de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s struggle to fulfil her promise to end decades of ethnic wars in Myanmar’s lawless borderlands.
The protest in Yangon blocked one of Yangon’s busiest junctions for more than an hour, before the riot police left.
“I took photographs of the arrests in front of the police truck. They (the police) told me: ‘Stop! Stop!’ And one of them hit me with his hand,” Aung Lay, a 22-year-old local journalist who was bleeding from his lip, told Reuters.
3 May – Yesterday, 44 of our comrades were arrested accused of property destruction, provocation, and fighting with the police. Night legal team tried to reached them but still cant make it, as they have been isolated (02.05.18)
– One of the Legal Aid was arrested and beaten.
– Until now our 12 comrades are still imprisoned and the police continuing the witch hunt.
International solidarity for arrested comrades by whatever means necessary!
Communique
Although this is an exclusive communique towards Yogyakarta or Indonesians in general, we call for international pressure and solidarity against this rotten feudal system that still exist in this century!
Greetings to the beloved people of Yogyakarta, those who vilify our demonstration which was intentionally intended to censure the institution of Kraton in Yogyakarta.
Believe us when we say that we already knew, even since before we carried out our demonstration, that there would be an antipathy from the public towards our demonstration. It is very understandable. Feudalism creates this belief that kings and the royals are like half-divine beings; their authority is sacred and self-justified. Someone becomes a ruler in a feudal system because they happened to be born in the right family: the royal family. The whole feudal territory is the property of the king and his royal family, and the people are just occupants who can be evicted any time at the king’s will.
The system is perpetuated by, among other things, this irrational belief towards the feudal rule. In Yogyakarta, feudalism is what makes Yogyakarta “special”. Politically, this special status means Yogyakarta is not governed by an elected governor like other provinces in Indonesia. Instead, the region is governed by a governor who is also a Sultan. Socio-culturally, this special status has another meaning; it gives a false sense of pride to the people of Yogyakarta. Yogyakarta is special because it is ruled by a Sultan, and the people are proud about it.
How is being ruled by someone with an unchecked power something that you can take pride of? What is so proudful from being a subordinate of another human being, solely because they were born in the royal family?
Our demonstration was not meant to draw sympathy. If drawing sympathy was what we were aiming, we wouldn’t have done a demonstration that disturbed the reproduction of social values like what we did. No, our demonstration was not intended for that. We are not a political party, a“leftist” organization, an NGO, or the proponents of the incumbent rulers or their oppositions, who need people’s endorsement and sympathy.
WE ARE ALSO NOT PART OF PMII; FAIZI ZAIN AND HIS CRONIES WHO EXPECTED A RIOT TO LIFT THEIR AGENDA OF OVERTHROWING JOKOWI FOR THE BENEFITS OF THEIR POLITICAL MASTERS! THEY ARE POWER BROKERS! WE ARE NOT!
Our demonstration was meant to disturb the circulation of capital in Yogyakarta. We intentionally want to create a non-condusive situation for capital investment, be it national or foreign, that will intensify the development and gentrification that disenfranchise the middle and lower class people in Yogyakarta.
We had guessed that the public would be infuriated by our vandalism and provocative calls.
The destruction of one police post and the call to “murder the Sultan!” have massively angered the people of Yogyakarta. The anger is absent when the police repeatedly, with violence, is at the front line of conflicts between people’s interests and the rulers’, on the side of the rulers’ of course, like the one in Temon, Kulonprogo, where there is an on-going process of land-grabbing by the Sultan through the legitimization of Sultan Ground/Pakualaman Ground, a feudal land ownership system, on behalf of the expansion of tourism industry capital. The anger is also absent when the inhabitants of the urban kampungs (informal settlements, slums) have to deal with water shortage, caused by the usage of ground water by hotels and apartments, which construction is being intensified, under the blessing of the Sultan of course.
That call to “murder the Sultan!” that have angered some people of Yogyakarta, whether we wrote down the call or not, whether the call was literal or symbolic, has its own importance in rattling the authority of the Sultan in Yogyakarta, which is seemingly sacred and unquestionable; a power with no control mechanism because it is protected by “faith” towards the Sultan’s self-justified authority. This “faith” is responsible for the disenfranchisement of the people. Soon er or later, you who are reading this will probably be disenfranchised by the “development” in Yogyakarta too. A “development” for the interests of the Sultan and his cronies; local and national corporations; domestic and foreign invetors.
Yes, the Sultan is one of the main orchestrators of many problems in Yogyakarta; eviction, land-grabbing, gentrification, and the development that disenfranchise middle and lower class people. The Sultan and his royal family, and also his cronies, are the ones who dominate every economic aspect in Yogyakarta.
Yogyakarta is one of the most economically unequal provinces in Indonesia. The development in Yogyakarta is not carried out for the interests of the people, but for the interests of the ruling class: the capitalists and the feudals. In Yogyakarta, the two vile sytems are having an affair, while crushing the people under; those who aren’t the royals and are the middle and lower class.
Mothers, aren’t you tired of having to visit your children at prisons, twice a week, who probably had to steal or rob people just to survive? And the reason why they are in these overpopulated prisons in Yogyarta is the deeply rooted poverty that is prevalent in Yogyakarta. Does your Sultan care?
And then, are we gonna keep fooling ourselves, thinking to ourselves that everything is fine? Or even, “special”?
We have no interest in being admired. We are not a political party who need people’s votes on elections.
We are just people who are sick. Sick of everything that is going on around us and how the people are lulled by this false consciousness, telling them that everything is fine.
We’re calling to the middle and lower class people, intellectuals, artists, academics, those who claim to be liberals and moderates, and others who choose to be “neutral”. Do you remember the historical event that gave birth to the concept of modern nation-state? The period that you call the Enlightenment Period, where the kings, queens, and the royals were guillotined at the Place de la Révolution. Didn’t it create what you call as democracy?
We don’t mean to repeat or glorify history. The democracy that you uphold and sell out is not bringing us anywhere other than to poverty, ecological degradation, and disfranchisement.
We are the libertarians. We are what you call as anarchists. We dream of a world where people cooperate with each other, work together, rule over themselves, in a horizontal way, without rulers, the royals, political contract, social contract, or the capitalists. We want a life in its truest form, where human’s natural desires are in tune with nature; a life without class, racial, ethnic, religious, and other false divides.
We are what you call utopists.
We want a free society without oppressors. We want a society where people can have any beliefs, sexual orientations, or anything without fearing being persecuted.
Total freedom!
14 April – Libera Community Space (Coffee, Books, & Infoshop) needs your help!
Libera Community Space is organized by a group of anarchist-minded people in a horizontal and egalitarian way. We promote issues such as gender & sexual liberation, economic equality, and other socio-ecological issues, be it in forms of writings, arts, or social movement.We are openly egalitarian and not dogmatically ideological or religious. We are open for participation from all people, regardless of their backgrounds. However, we do not want to get involved with political parties, NGOs, or anything institutional. We are committed in making a true grass-root and self-organized community.
Background
In 2016, in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Libertas collective was formed. It initiates several discussion panels, anarchist classes, and is also involved in running one of anarchist websites in Indonesia, anarkis[dot]org. Then, one of the individuals in the collective decided to establish a small coffee shop and infoshop: Libera Community Space (Coffee, Books, and Infoshop).
Inspired by anarchist tradition, we decided to put our efforts, seize the moment, and get our own venue. We host a wide range of activities, such as a providing a meeting place for cultural and political initiatives, movie screenings, library running, and a building a stronger network of antifascist movement.
What We Do
In collaboration with several anarchist publishers—such as Ikarus Press, Pustaka Catut, and Nihilis Media—Libera also serves as an infohub for curious people who are interested in anarchist and radical thoughts.
During 2016 until 2017, there was an intiative to build antifascist network in Yogyakarta and Libera became the base for the initiative. Up until now, individuals who are active at Libera are involved in many projects such as:
– Antifascist organizing
– Book Publishing (Ikarus Press, Pustaka Catut, & Nihilis Media)
(We have translated and published books from wide range of anarchist thinkers, such as Emma Golman’s “Anarchism: What it Really Stands For”, Murray Bookchin’s “Ecology of Freedom”, Alfredo Bonnano’s “Armed Joy”, “On the Poverty of Student Life”, “Under the Black Flag: Anarchist Writings in Dutch-Indies”, and we are currently working on translating Alfredo Bonnano’s “Anarchism and National Liberation Struggle”.)
– Running a counter-info site: agitasi.noblogs.org
– “Dapur Nomad” Kitchen Cooperative
Since then, even with all of our limitations, Libera has been thriving. We have been hosting all different kinds of people: travelling and local anarchists, students, activists, curious people, even Marxists, trying to convert people to Marxism. Libera has achieved much, and we intend to achieve more.
Libera is not just an infoshop or a cafe, but it’s also a community space, a library, and a free internet access zone at which we always work to empower networking communities, broaden our network by outreach, and fight for our cause. However, since there has been growing number of anarchist circles within Central Java, we would like to rearrange our work place, cafe, co-ops, and provide a place for travelling activists/anarchists to crash at or for meetings with collectives and organizations from different cities.
If any of you friends are in Yogyakarta, our place can be easily found. You can just type “Libera Coffee and Book” on Google Maps. Of 6 individuals who are involved at Libera, we mainly work as freelance writers & translators, illustrators, and baristas.Most of us don’t have a college degree, but we have managed to allocate some of our personal income for the infoshop. I hope this short introduction can convince you to help us. Continue reading “Yogyakarta: Libera Infoshop Needs Your Help”
13 April – Solidarity with la ZAD from Wiradjuri country, in so-called NSW.
For almost a decade la ZAD in Notre Dame Des Landes has been an autonomous zone, liberated from the French republic. The zone is currently being attacked by a massive police operation intent on the complete destruction of this seed of another possible world, a world free from the logic of capital.
