America’s former agent, the man who butchered as many as two million Indonesian Communists, students and workers in a CIA-sponsored coup in 1965 is finally dead.
I remember three stories about Suharto:
1-When Suharto was overthrown in May 1998, I was then an exchange student at the University of East London (UEL). Leftists on campus, had already mobilized for an occupation to protest budget cuts and layoffs of lecturers the administration was planning to implement. We occupied one building after the other till we took control of the entire campus, raised a red flag on top of it, and changed the university’s name to AUEL: The Autonomous University of East London. We had the support of most of the faculty and the students, except those right-wing wankers who were studying Business Administration and Law… We ran the university for two weeks, organized the classes, formed security teams to prevent sabotage, took decisions democratically by voting in mass meetings in the occupied halls… before the occupation was smashed by the police and bailiffs shortly after we declared we were also holding and supervising the final exams with the support of a good number professors… We received the news that Suharto was overthrown in the midst of the occupation.. and I remember there was a thrill among British students, not just those who were politically affiliated with radical leftist groups. And I recall one student took a newspaper frontpage that had a headline saying “A Dictator Has Fallen” and stuck it up on the wall, together with the other posters we had.. Slogans were raised like: “If the students could take Suharto down, then we can take (then the university’s vice chancellor) Frank Gould down too.” It was amazing for me to see how people from different continents could draw parallels between different struggles.
2-Suharto’s last foreign visit before he was overthrow was actually to Cairo, to meet with his friend Mubarak…
3-Some, who are currently criticizing the staunch support given to the Palestinian resistance by the Egyptian left, tend to forget that it was the October 2000 pro-Intifada demonstrations that revived street politics and started breaking the taboo of Hosni and his family, neither 9/11 nor Bush’s hypocritical message about “democracy” to save his face as his troops were starting to get fucked in Iraq, 2004 onwards.. The 2000 protests were pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli, anti-US, but in essence they were also anti-regime, as Mubarak’s pigs cracked down with an iron fist on the protests. The slogan that was raised then during the demonstrations by the radical left, and was picked up quickly: “The road to Jerusalem passes through Cairo.” But not everyone who took part in the protests were ready to mention Mubarak’s name.. especially when we chanted: “Ya Mubarak ya gaban.. Ya 3ameel el-Amreekan (Mubarak, you are coward.. You are a client for the Americans).. Those who were not ready yet to chant against Mubarak used instead to chant “Ya Suharto ya gaban.. Ya 3ameel el-Amreekan“.. and everyone understood the meaning then.
