Private emails to and from Curtin University management made public via a freedom of information request show what student activists have long suspected: that the university is worried about pro-Palestine activism. The emails also show the degree to which the Student Guild has worked with the administration to contain the Palestine solidarity movement. 
All emails sent to or by vice-chancellor Harlene Hayne and previous chief operating officer Fiona Notley from October 2023 to July this year that mentioned Students for Palestine or two of the most prominent Students for Palestine activists were obtained from the FOI request. 
It was late April when Gaza solidarity encampments started sweeping the US, inspiring Australia’s first encampment at the University of Sydney and fear among university administrations everywhere. As one redacted emailer wrote to Notley on 28 April, “Today I noticed members belonging to the group Students for Palestine on campus which is very unusual for a Sunday. They were not partaking in any activity but my gut feeling say[s] we need to be alert. I just think we need to be prepared for the unexpected” Their suspicions were proven right, Students for Palestine WA initiating a Gaza solidarity encampment the following Wednesday, demanding that Curtin cut its ties to weapons companies arming Israel. 
The emails also show that the university tracked Students for Palestine WA’s social media posts. As one unknown emailer wrote to management early in the encampment, “Just noted the text added to the protest post for tomorrow—‘Protest Curtin Uni Council Meeting’. Attached is the post and the caption form the Students for Palestine WA Instagram. Also screen grabbed a photo shared to their story of them on the road yesterday. Been saving everything to this file”.
A major focus of the email exchanges is the media. Every press release published by Students for Palestine WA is shared, and university responses to media requests carefully crafted. Media commentary about Palestine activism at Curtin and across the country is circulated. On 30 April, “Dear all, please see media excerpts attached from this morning (ABC radio and online WAToday and syndicated)”. On 6 May, “please see transcript from Jason Clare interview today- attached.” On 7 May, “please see clip from 7.30 report last night focus on Sydney Uni encampment ... Commentary on role of Sydney Uni VC”.
When pro-Palestine activists received emails from the university at the start of semester two warning that postering and the use of the phrase “from the river to the sea” would be met with discipline, they were leaked to the media. A chain labelled “URGENT” discusses the need to respond quickly. The next email was to Hayne: “Dear Harlene, just providing a quick wrap of the media coverage on the Students for Palestine matter ... On socials - very little audience traffic/engagement: West has posted the article on X (23 comments since yesterday afternoon). Excerpt of comments attached. These have all largely been favourable to Curtin”. The attached screenshot of “favourable” messaging includes the comments “Activists, more that than students. Expel them all” and “Antisemitism should result in immediate expulsion and visa cancellation”. 
The emails further reveal the degree to which the guild and administration were in communication about pro-Palestine activism. The first in the list is one sent by the guild to Notley on 17 April, warning her that Students for Palestine, which is not a guild club (because the guild rejected its application), was planning an unauthorised event. Following the establishment of the Gaza solidarity encampment on campus, the guild worked with the administration to help end it. 
In the camp’s fourth week, guild representatives agreed to a memorandum of understanding with the university, behind the backs of the encampment. The MOU did not force the university to cut any ties with Israel, but did require the guild to pull out of the camp. In the wake of a building occupation by more than 100 students led by Students for Palestine, an email sent by Harlene Hayne expresses concern over the encampment’s disruptive escalation, but also notes, “[W]e have continued to work positively with the Guild to reach a Memorandum of Understanding to end the encampment”. Not only did this undermine the encampment’s attempts to pressure the university, but it led to confusion amongst students. 
The guild celebrated its “big win” in an all-student email, taking the wind out of the sails of the campaign to cut university ties with Israel. Interestingly, in a draft communication to students going into second semester, the university decided to cross out the line “[we] are very pleased to have worked with the Student Guild to a peaceful end to the encampment at our Bentley campus”. 
More positively, the final two emails from unknown sources sent to Hayne and Notley object to the repression of pro-Palestine student activists. “Schools no matter what level should be a space where students feel comfortable standing up for what they believe in, and speaking out against injustice. Especially those of higher education, this precedent you are setting of repressing freedom of speech is detrimental to future generations of students”, wrote one. 
These emails show that student action matters to university executives. They may have professional PR teams and disciplinary bodies on their side, but student activism can hold them to account and make social justice something they may oppose but can’t ignore.

Erin Russell

Private emails show impact of Palestine activism at Curtin University

In the past few years, whole towns have been wiped out by fire and flood, suburbs have been inundated by floodwaters or storm surges in Sydney and Melbourne, and extreme heat is putting more people in hospitals.
We need an urgent and coordinated response to prepare for heatwaves, rising sea levels and increasingly frequent floods. But governments and property developers won’t listen; they aren’t interested. 
Consultancy firm KPMG <a href="https://kpmg.com/au/en/home/media/press-releases/2024/01/38--of-australians-face-high-risk-from-extreme-heat.html#:~:text=According%20to%20the%202023%20ACOSS,also%20has%20severe%20economic%20impacts.">estimates that 10 million people</a> in Australia live in areas that face “extreme heat-related risks”. And a 2020 study published in The Lancet Planetary Health journal estimated that nearly 37,000 deaths in Australia between 2006 and 2017 were associated with heat.
Yet many homes and workplaces are not designed for extreme weather. While new buildings are required to meet specific energy efficiency standards, the standards are based on average temperatures from 1990 to 2015. Most buildings were constructed before the standards were implemented, so they need to be upgraded to meet higher standards. 
There are many ways to improve the temperature regulation of a building. Timber frames, double glazing on windows and proper insulation make a difference. Occupants should be able to move from one side of the building to the other with the sun’s movement and have access to a cross breeze. “Green and blue infrastructure”—such as plants grown on walls and rooftops, sustained with rainwater and recycled water—can also reduce a building’s heat without increasing water usage.
This is a critical issue for society’s most vulnerable, especially the elderly and people with disabilities, who are most affected by heat waves. A <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/CCInfrastructure/Report">2018 Senate inquiry</a> into the effects of climate change on housing, buildings and infrastructure found that improved housing energy efficiency would have reduced the number of excess deaths during one Melbourne heatwave from 375 to 37. 
But most working-class people struggle to pay existing bills. <a href="https://www.acoss.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Heat-Survey-Report_20230228.pdf">A 2020 Australian Council of Social Service survey</a> also found that more than 60 percent of low-income households struggle to keep their homes cool in summer. That was before the huge spikes in gas and electricity prices over the last two years. Forking out for building upgrades is beyond most people’s means. And renters rely on landlords, who are not known for their generosity. So it can’t be left to individuals.
Air conditioning helps. But energy costs are making it a luxury for a growing number of households. Then there is the issue of power outages during heatwaves, caused by both high demand and the impact of high temperatures on power generation. Governments could help by improving electricity equipment and shifting grids towards renewables and better battery storage. 
It is not just buildings that will have to change; cities will, too. There is a glaring need for more urban green spaces. The urban heat island effect is a serious problem. Built-up areas lacking vegetation and containing dark, heat-absorbing materials like asphalt can be 1-7 degrees warmer than surrounding areas.
According to the 2021 report “Temperature Check: Greening Australia’s Warming Cities”, commissioned by the Australian Conservation Foundation, green spaces have declined in every major Australian city except Hobart over the last decade. While Hobart had increased its green space, it did so by only 1 percent. Parks and nature reserves are not viewed favourably in the profit-driven housing industry, which views every centimetre of land as something to profit from.
When constructing new residential areas, developers often clear entire natural habitats before building on them. Even if trees are replanted, they take years to grow into a substantial canopy that creates a cooling effect. To prevent habitat loss, we should focus on building upwards in existing developed areas rather than continuing to expand the city fringes.
Another problem is that developers continue building in areas at risk of flooding and rising sea levels. While it may be satisfying to imagine the coastal mansions of the super-wealthy being destroyed, many regular people will also be affected and won’t have the means to relocate.
We must strategically plan a retreat from coastlines to prepare for future floods and rising sea levels. Building new housing estates in high-risk areas should be prohibited, and more seawalls must be constructed to mitigate the risks. Yet, as one contributor to the Senate inquiry put it: 
“If you ... need to build a sea wall, you cannot generate a return on a sea wall so there will be zero private sector incentive to build a sea wall. But at the same time, the whole area will benefit from increased resilience to storm surge. So then how do you build an economic model which incentivises investment into public infrastructure, which then creates private sector incentives?” 
The straightforward answer is to eliminate the need to consider private sector incentives by ensuring that more public development is carried out for human need rather than profits.
It has been six years since the Senate inquiry. The government finally responded to it on 2 May. To each of the 32 recommendations it gave the same response: “The government notes this recommendation. However, given the passage of time since this report was tabled, a substantive Government response is no longer appropriate”.
Another year, another report. This year we got the results of the “climate risk assessment report”, out of which a “national adaptation plan” is being developed. But after decades of both major parties kicking the can down the road, we should not be holding high hopes for the Albanese government to deliver the sorts of sweeping changes that we need.

Cities must be adapted for climate change

On the night of Labor’s 2022 election win, Prime Minister-elect Anthony Albanese delivered his victory speech with an air of triumphant confidence. Just a year and a half later, the same man was giving a different speech, this time with the teary-eyed face of defeat as he conceded the loss of the Voice referendum. 
Labor’s approval ratings tell a similar story. In the first week after the referendum, the Roy Morgan Poll showed that the Coalition was leading the ALP for the first time since the election, with ALP two-party support dropping 4.5 points to 49.5 percent. While this has since gone up, there is no doubt Labor’s support has slumped, as has their enthusiasm for talking about Indigenous issues. 
The No campaign spearheaded by opposition leader Peter Dutton was able to tap into racism and discontent with the cost-of-living crisis using the racist argument that Indigenous people have it too good and are getting unfair advantages. In the face of this, Labor had nothing to offer but milquetoast appeals to unity and respectful debate. 
In the weeks after the referendum, Dutton leapt from one racism-fuelled victory to the next. After the High Court ruled that the indefinite detention of refugees was illegal, Dutton seized on the opportunity to wedge Labor on an issue that combined anti-refugee racism and moral panic about crime. Claiming that “84 hardcore criminals have been released into our communities from detention”, Dutton called on Labor to do more to prioritise the supposed safety of Australians, to which Labor characteristically obliged, rushing through a bill that imposed draconian restrictions on those who had been illegally detained. Dutton and his allies also called for an audit of spending on Indigenous programs and railed against Indigenous welcomes to country. For all this, the Liberals have been rewarded handsomely in the polls.
Using racism to shore up or improve its electoral prospects is a tried-and-true strategy of the Liberal Party, one it has been heavily dependent on to win office in recent decades. Labor’s well-worn duck-and-cover response only reinforces the strategy’s success.
In 2001, Liberal Prime Minister John Howard made a hard turn to anti-refugee racism in the lead-up to the November federal election. When a small, sinking boat of 400 mostly Iraqi and Afghan refugees was picked up by the Norwegian cargo ship Tampa, the government entered into a high-seas stand-off in order to prevent them from arriving on Australian shores. The navy was sent out to intercept the ship and force it to re-route to the island of Nauru, where the refugees were thrown into an Australian-funded concentration camp. Labor’s response was to support the interception of Tampa and vote in favour of new laws making it harder for people to claim asylum in Australia. 
Then came the 11 September terror attacks, after which Howard doubled down on anti-refugee racism as his key electoral strategy, whipping up fear about the threat of terrorism from Arab and Muslim people arriving by boat and painting the ALP as unreliable defenders of national security. After going into the election seriously concerned about their prospects, by 10 November the Liberals had been able to win a sweeping victory. 
In the wake of the 2001 election, and in the context of the ongoing US interventions in Afghanistan and later Iraq, the Labor Party would proceed for years to come to engage in a race to the bottom with the Liberals over asylum seekers from Muslim and Arab countries. 
When the 2004 election came around, Howard once again brought border security to the fore. Labor leader Mark Latham had taken a hard stance against refugee rights to neutralise the issue, calling for even stronger borders and questioning why Australia doesn’t just “arrest the people smugglers and throw them in jail?”. But this hardline stance received criticism from the Labor left at the ALP national conference in Sydney. A resolution moved by none other than Anthony Albanese called for an end to temporary protection visas once refugees’ status was proven and opposed mandatory detention for refugees who had passed health, security and identification checks. While Latham had the numbers at the conference, Howard jumped on the debate to criticise Labor for being “weak and divided on national security and in the war against terrorism”. Once again, the Coalition was able to win after making racist arguments about national security the focus of the election.
The 2007 election bucked this trend to some degree. Over the two years leading up to it, a union-led campaign against Howard’s anti-union WorkChoices legislation had drawn hundreds of thousands of people into the streets on a class basis. While Howard had attempted to foment a racist moral panic with dubious claims of child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities, he failed to distract attention from WorkChoices sufficiently. Class issues remained central, and the Liberals lost the election. 
Unfortunately, this did not mean an end to the use of refugees as a political football in electoral politics. Soon after Labor’s win, the Liberals attempted to regain lost ground by attacking Labor over a moderate loosening of border protection and subsequent increase in asylum seeker arrivals by boat. When Julia Gillard replaced Rudd as prime minister, she quickly neutralised the issue by reopening the notorious offshore detention centres on Nauru and PNG’s Manus Island. Upon Rudd’s dramatic return to the prime ministership in 2013, and with another election approaching, he doubled down on a hardline stance towards asylum seekers. Under an arrangement with the PNG government, the Labor government announced that “as of today asylum seekers who come here by boat without a visa will never be settled in Australia”. 
In the wake of defeat by the Liberals under Tony Abbott, Labor’s opportunistic race to the bottom over refugees continued apace. When Abbott introduced even stricter anti-refugee laws through Operation Sovereign Borders, which had the Navy turning back boats carrying refugees into Australian waters, it received bipartisan support from Labor, now under the leadership of Bill Shorten. The 2015 national Labor conference endorsed boat turn-backs, and by the 2016 election the rhetoric of the ALP mimicked that of the Liberals. 
It is telling that even Malcolm Turnbull of the supposedly progressive wing of the Liberal Party was just as willing as arch-conservative Abbot to demonise “boat people” for political gain. A week out from the 2016 election, in a last-ditch attempt to boost Liberal support, Turnbull announced that the government had re-routed a boat with 21 asylum seekers on board. But as a report written after the Liberals’ re-election noted, by now the ALP’s approach to asylum seekers was so similar to the Liberals’ that it had barely been an issue of debate.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Liberal Party is quick to jump on racism as an electoral strategy. As the main party representing Australian business, it is in the Liberals’ interests to generate a sense of national cohesion that cuts against class consciousness and potential hostility to the employers. The more powerless the enemy against which the nation unites, the more effective the strategy. 
Racism also disguises the fact that the Liberals have little to offer the mass of people. Their policies are primarily about enriching the elite they represent, so beat-ups about crime, illegal immigration or vulnerable groups getting “special privileges” all help distract people from this reality and give the Liberals something about which to connect with broader layers. 
For the social layer they represent, racism is frequently in their immediate economic interests: they rely on super-exploitable migrant workers to generate ever greater profits or indifference towards Indigenous people to get control of land for mining or other money-making purposes. Corporate Australia might not always want to admit it openly, but racism is good business.
But what about the Labor Party? While the workers who vote for it have no stake in demonising refugees, as a party that wants to run Australian capitalism, the ALP does have an interest in upholding racism. Labor doesn’t want to offer the genuine reforms—like higher wages and better social services and welfare provision—that some of its base still expect, because such reforms would antagonise the bosses and threaten their profits. Squeezed profits and a capitalist class intent on sabotaging an unfriendly government are not good for Australian capitalism, or the ALP’s electoral prospects. 
So Labor is as keen to jump on issues that distract from inequality, poor working conditions and inadequate social services as their opponents are, if for slightly different reasons. If a choice must be made between taking a principled stand against racism and risking electoral defeat or taking the easy road to electoral support, for the Labor Party it’s a no-brainer.
The Voice referendum only reinforced this approach. Labor hoped the Liberals would feel they had to fall in behind the proposal, as they did with Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations following the 2007 election. When they didn’t, and instead used it to drum up opposition to Indigenous people and the inner-city elites who back them, the ALP was immediately on the back foot, with disastrous results for both Indigenous rights and the ALP’s political fortunes. 
For those of us who despise racism, 2023 was an important reminder that the Labor Party cannot be relied on to fight it. To do so, we need to be equipped with the sort of politics that is not beholden to doing what is required to run capitalism, and that will not put electoral gains ahead of a principled commitment to standing with the oppressed.

The Liberals' and Labor's history of competition over racism and refugee cruelty

South Korea’s Great Workers Struggle of 1987 was an explosive period of working-class resistance. Millions of workers joined rank-and-file strikes, which swept through the country like wildfire. The uprising was sparked by a surprise announcement on 29 June from the chairman of South Korea’s ruling Democratic Justice Party that, after decades of military rule, the country would transition to free elections.
The announcement didn’t come out of nowhere. The preceding decades had been a time not only of dictatorship, but also of tumultuous student-led resistance. In early 1987, resentment towards the dictatorship was sharpened by the death of a student activist and the sexual assault of another, both at the hands of the police. And there was the decision of Chun Doo-hwan, the leader of South Korea’s dictatorship, to cancel negotiations with the opposition party over the undemocratic nature of the elections and instead hand power to one of his old classmates from the military academy.
As student-led protests spread across the country, what really scared the regime was the participation of much wider sections of society, including many workers from a variety of industries. The June announcement was an attempt by the rulers to dampen this resistance. Little did they know that they were dampening it with petrol.
Workers had many of their own grievances. In workplaces, they suffered from low wages, long working hours and authoritarian management practices. For many factory workers, this included compulsory morning exercises and strict dress codes. 
“Hyundai’s military-style disciplinary practices were quite well known, although certainly not unique in the bigger Korean manufacturing firms”, historian Hagen Koo writes in Korean Workers. “Workers were often stopped by security guards at the entrance to have their hair length measured, and if their hair was found to be longer than allowed by the company hair code, the guards used big scissors to cut their hair on the spot.”
When the announcement came that the country would transition to a democracy, many workers viewed it as an opportunity to organise and fight for dignity in the workplace.
Unlike previous periods of labour unrest, which started in Seoul and Kyungin, the Great Workers Uprising was kicked off by Hyundai factory workers in the southern city of Ulsan. Hyundai ran several companies in the region, which included ship, automobile and machinery manufacturing plants. In addition to its authoritarian workplace practices, Hyundai was known for its rabid opposition to unions. Company founder Chung Ju-young had reportedly said: “I will never allow a union until earth covers my eyes”.
Within two weeks, workers in every Hyundai firm were on strike. They joined central city demonstrations, which encouraged workers from smaller Hyundai-associated firms to join. It didn’t take long for the strike to spread to the other southern industrial regions of Pusan, Changwon and Masan. By late August, the whole country was aflame.
Three thousand workplaces went on strike over the three months from July to September, more than the combined number from the preceding two decades. While industrial workers had initiated the strike wave, workers from other industries eventually joined in too—including mining, transportation, dock and white-collar workers. As well as better wages and conditions at work, a key demand for many was the right to unionise to secure their gains into the future. Within a year, around 4,000 new unions had formed, and 700,000 workers had joined them.
The strikes were predominantly led by the rank and file and had an explosive quality reflecting the deep level of resentment, han in Korean, not only towards the bosses but also towards the company-controlled sham unions that existed in some workplaces. Some even occupied their factories, kidnapping hated managers and destroying company security offices.
Some of the most significant struggles took place in the Hyundai factories. On 8 August, representatives of newly formed unions within different Hyundai firms formed a united body, the Council of Unions of the Hyundai Group, to take on the central Hyundai management. When their demands for group-level wage negotiations and union recognition at Hyundai Heavy Industries were rejected, they decided to stand their ground and fight.
On 17 August, thousands of Hyundai workers marched from the Hyundai Heavy Industries factory towards the city. 
“At the front of the march were dump trucks, forklifts, fire engines, and sand-blasting machines”, Hagen Koo recounts. “Accompanied by drums and gongs, the crowd sang newly learned songs and shouted, ‘Down with Chung Ju-young!’ On the streets they were met by the riot police. The police fired tear gas at the protesters, but soon they found themselves fleeing in panic from the angry crowd.”
The following day, the demonstration grew. Around 40,000 Hyundai workers had travelled from across Ulsan, joined by 30,000 of their wives and children. The police were forced to allow the march to go ahead, which stretched more than 3 kilometres. The announcement that Hyundai management was to accept all the workers’ demands was met with an eruption of cheers. A leading worker activist later wrote: “August 18 was the day when Hyundai workers, or all the workers of the nation, were reborn, overcoming their han, into the masters of the nation, and a great solemn march toward the future of a truly human-like life”.
The struggle took on a new character from December 1988, when president Roh Tae-woo made a “Special Announcement on Maintaining Civic Security and Law and Order”. While South Korea’s capitalist class had been willing to accept a transition to democratic elections, genuine democracy in the form of workers’ self-organisation was a step too far. For capitalism everywhere, profits are the priority whether or not opposition candidates have the right to run in parliamentary elections.
So new laws were to be introduced to enable harsher crackdowns on strikes. But the fresh wave of repression by the police only intensified the anger among the workers. In January 1989, a police attack on the offices of a number of Hyundai union leaders was met with fury from workers across Ulsan, who joined a solidarity demonstration of 30,000.
Another police attack came later that year, this time on a factory occupation of striking workers at Hyundai Heavy Industries, who had been on strike for more than 100 days. Around 15,000 riot police were mobilised to invade the compound from all sides. But when they entered, the factory was empty. The workers had snuck out, homemade weapons in hand, to the Hyundai dormitory building. When the police attacked, the workers fought back with the utmost bravery. More than 1,000 workers from nearby Hyundai factories initiated solidarity strikes, and hundreds joined as street battles with the police broke out.
The next day, the workers were joined by students and local residents. Enraged by the violence of the police, many of their wives and children also joined the fight. 
“They blocked the police from entering their street alleys in pursuit of fleeing workers, they collected money and hid in their homes students who had come to assist the workers, and they collected empty bottles for manufacturing Molotov cocktails”, Hagen Koo writes.
After ten days, the street battle reached its end with the arrest of 52 union leaders and the sacking of 49 workers. Yet the high level of militancy and organisation achieved by the workers was a lasting gain.
A third significant battle took place in 1990, known as the Goliat struggle. Tensions with management were already high after workers had been barred from holding a union meeting during work hours, and from leaving work early to attend the court hearing of five union leaders arrested during the 128-day strike. They were further angered by the heavy sentences given to the arrested leaders, which came to be viewed as an attack on the whole workers’ movement. 
As a strike leaflet elaborated, this was “not simply a struggle of the Hyundai Heavy Industries union but a major fight with the dictatorial regime with the trust and pride of the twenty-five million workers at stake”.
So the Goliat struggle began with a strike at Hyundai Heavy Industries, pushed by rank-and-file workers, but this time taking on a more political character than earlier strikes by targeting the anti-worker repression of the state. A number of solidarity strikes took place as workers in several industries recognised that this was their fight, too. The newly formed National Congress of Trade Unions called a general strike for 4 May, which involved 120,000 workers from 146 workplaces. Yet the sympathy strikes lasted only a few days. Once isolated, the Hyundai workers had to retreat.
Despite the incredible feats of South Korean workers during the Great Workers Struggle, the momentum wasn’t sustained. A turning point came in the mid-1990s. Sweeping changes were implemented in many workplaces, including the introduction of new human resources departments, increased automation and the subcontracted hiring of more casual and part-time workers. 
While unions maintained their right to exist, new laws limited their militancy and bosses started to coopt their leaders. Union membership declined, particularly in small workplaces, and strike rates fell.
The Great Workers Struggle highlights the need for revolutionary organisation. For workers’ uprisings to go forward, to overturn the rule of the rich and the state machinery that upholds them, to replace that rule with workers’ democracy, the most militant and radical workers need to win over the rest of the class to the need to join the movement and, ultimately, to take over the running of society. 
Small scale versions of this sort of leadership could be seen in a few of the Hyundai workplaces. At Hyundai Engines, where the first union was formed in 1987, small groups of workers had been cultivating a sense of solidarity and arguing for the need to unionise for many years before the struggle erupted.
One of these groups was a study circle organised by Kwon Yong-mok, who had studied Marxism through his contacts with dissident intellectuals. Hagen Koo writes:
“Gradually, the group’s attention was turned to discussing the problems in their workplace and studying labour laws and Marxist literature. In 1986, Kwon and his colleagues succeeded in taking control of the labour management council and transforming it from a pro-management agency to a more worker-representative organisation ... Similar small group activities had been going on in other Hyundai firms in Ulsan, including Hyundai Motors, Hyundai Heavy Electrics, and Hyundai Heavy Industries.”
If radical workers and students had been organised across the country before the uprising, perhaps the incredible levels of militancy, solidarity and confidence seen at the Hyundai factories could have been carried into more industries and across all other sectors of society. For the movement to win lasting equality and democracy, more workers needed to be drawn into the struggle and into their own organisations, which could ultimately overthrow the repressive state.
Despite the movement winding down, the Great Workers Struggle was an incredible display of the capacity of workers to organise and to fight. In the words of Lee Soo-won, a historian of the Hyundai workers’ struggles:
“The twenty years at Hyundai Motors! In the sea of labourers that had ever been so calm, a huge mountain-like wave erupted suddenly. A solemn scene was staged in which the workers, who had been no more than mere parts in the continuously running conveyor belt, refused to be machines and proclaimed that they were human.”

The 1987 Great Workers Struggle in South Korea

Over the last two decades, the legal right to abortion in Australia has overwhelmingly moved in a progressive direction. 
Decriminalisation with gestational limits ranging from sixteen to 24 weeks has been achieved in all states except Western Australia, where full decriminalisation is on the government’s agenda this year. These have been welcome and hard-won developments. 
Yet what has become increasingly clear is that legalisation does not equate to accessibility. As one abortion provider put it in a <a href="https://srh.bmj.com/content/familyplanning/43/1/18.full.pdf">2016 study on the effects of decriminalisation in Victoria</a>, “To be perfectly honest, the law reform has not impacted that much on our practice”.
A host of barriers continue to exist for those seeking abortion in Australia. Cost is one of the most obvious. The cost of an abortion varies a lot depending on the method, location, gestation period, access to Medicare and whether you go through the public or private system. 
A medical abortion can be obtained up to nine weeks’ gestation and involves taking two pills: mifepristone and misoprostol. It can cost $40 with Medicare through the public system, but in some private clinics it can cost $500, with one private clinic in regional Queensland charging $840. While surgical abortions are free with Medicare in South Australian and Northern Territory public hospitals, in other states they cost around $500. After the first trimester, the cost increases incrementally and can reach upwards of $7,000. 
In a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S132602002301052X?via%3Dihub">2017 study surveying women who had received an abortion through a Marie Stopes private clinic</a>, in which around a third of abortions in Australia are performed, a third had found it difficult or very difficult to pay for the abortion ,and just over two‐thirds had obtained financial assistance from one or more sources to help pay for it, often a man involved in the pregnancy or family member. Just over a third had to forgo one or more payments to cover the cost, most often of bills or groceries. A Tasmanian woman <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010782419304974">in a different study</a> put it in stark terms: “I was living pay cheque to pay cheque. And [the cost of the abortion] was a pay cheque”.
One of the reasons so much of the cost is pushed onto women is that not all public hospitals and GPs provide abortions, so many end up funnelled into the private system by default. In NSW, only two hospitals provide abortion services. After Tasmania’s last private abortion clinic closed in 2018, the state government legislated for just three public hospitals to provide them, where—according to a government fact sheet—“vulnerable women will be prioritised”. 
In WA, only three private clinics provide abortions. So in 2018, fewer than 7 percent of all abortions took place in public hospitals, almost exclusively in rural areas. This pattern is reflected in <a href="https://www.publish.csiro.au/py/pdf/PY22194">a study that tracked the referral data of GPs through HealthPathways</a>—an online health information system.
Researchers found that “nearly half of the included HealthPathways had no publicly funded services for surgical abortion, and one-third had no public medical abortion services. Approximately two-thirds of available public services listed additional warnings around accessibility, suggesting that public services should be considered only as a last resort”.
This compares to the UK, where 99 percent of abortions are publicly funded across both hospital and independent sectors, and Ireland, where around 50 percent of public hospitals were providing surgical abortions only two years after abortion was legalised.
You would think that the hypothetical ability for GPs to prescribe a medical abortion would ease some of these issues. But in order to be able to prescribe it, they have to go through a special registration process that does not exist for many other medications of equal (low) risk. The same goes for pharmacies. 
Astoundingly, only 10 percent of GPs in Australia are registered. While some cite logistical or resource-related issues as a reason, for others it’s just plain stigma. In a <a href="https://reproductive-health-journal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12978-017-0303-8">2017 survey of GPs in NSW</a>, many raised not wanting to be known as “abortion doctors”, either because they were themselves against abortion and viewed it as an “unpleasant” service they didn’t want to provide, or they were concerned it would hurt the reputation of their practice.
<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9756820/">A 2021 study</a> estimated that 15 percent of Australian healthcare professionals are conscientious objectors, with some “deliberately delaying women’s access or attempting to make women feel guilty for seeking an abortion”. Another research team described: “We often hear women say that their doctors kept sending them for ultrasounds until they were twelve weeks pregnant and then told them it was too late for an abortion”. 
This sort of stigma is reinforced by the lack of training in abortion procedures that doctors receive in Australia. According to the abovementioned 2021 study, “after decades of exclusion from university curricula, abortion is now included in the curriculum of only half of Australia’s medical schools, where it is often non-compulsory and limited in duration, often comprising a single hour-long lecture”.
Every hurdle related to abortion access is higher in rural areas, which have the lowest rates of GP medical abortion registration. A rural GP in NSW recounted a horrific experience of an intellectually disabled Aboriginal patient who had become pregnant after being raped and requested an abortion: 
“Eventually I got one from ... one of the obstetricians here. I first of all had it declined and then I rang them up and it was only because I started crying that he agreed to do the termination because he’s known me for a long time. He basically sort of said oh, for God’s sake ... I’ll do it, but I’m not doing it again.”
There is evidence of women in rural areas attempting to end their own pregnancies at home to get around barriers such as a lack of local doctors and long waiting periods. One example comes from <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/pdf/10.3316/INFORMIT.202633581059377">a NSW study of rural women’s experiences</a>: 
“For Glenda and Zilah surgical abortion was a last resort after trying other ways to end their pregnancies. Glenda tried to medically abort her pregnancy through herbal mixtures whilst Zilah tried acupuncture to ‘release the baby’ as well as self-medication. Zilah asked her doctor what was in the ‘morning after’ pill and ‘figured out that if I had a whole sheet of a month’s worth of the pill then it would be equal ... so once or twice I’ve self-medicated’.”
Many have to travel for hours to get to a clinic, meaning extra costs for transportation and potentially accommodation, time off work and child care. While telemedicine services have become available in which medical abortion can be prescribed over the phone and delivered to a house, this isn’t a band-aid solution since mifepristone can be used only up to nine weeks’ gestation and women are still required to access ultrasound and pathology facilities. 
Since the Tabbot Foundation was forced to close in 2019 due to low funding, only Marie Stopes provides telemedicine abortions, so the cost is higher. It can’t be accessed in the Northern Territory, as by law provision is allowed only in a hospital.
That women face so many challenges just trying to receive basic health care in a wealthy country where abortion is supposed to be accessible on demand is criminal. While all of the overlapping barriers can seem complex, the solution is really very simple. Abortion should be available in all public hospitals, and medication abortion available in all GP clinics, with 100 percent of the cost covered by the government, including for those without Medicare (as was recently introduced in Canberra). 
This should be paired with a huge increase in hospital funding, free child care and paid time off. If the $368 billion set to be spent on nuclear submarines was put towards these ends, no woman in Australia would ever again be forced to attempt botched home abortions, put off buying groceries to pay for an abortion or be turned away from an emergency department while facing a medical emergency.

Despite abortion being decriminalised, barriers remain

Prisoners inside Western Australia’s only youth detention centre, Banksia Hill, heralded the new year with an act of resistance—burning a building to the ground and climbing to the top of the prison’s perimeter fence. A look into the daily conditions faced by these young people, many of them Indigenous, shows why they would want to fight back against this horrendous institution.
Last November, the ABC’s Four Corners program put a spotlight on the mistreatment of inmates at Banksia Hill. It showed disturbing footage of guards brutalising children, holding them face down and bending their legs backwards in a position known as hog-tying or “folding up”. This practice has been banned in other states because it carries the risk of suffocation and death. In one recording, a boy can be heard crying out “I can’t breathe” while being forcefully held down by five officers.
Children at Banksia Hill are regularly placed in solitary confinement. A recent Supreme Court ruling against the WA government found that on 26 occasions a boy was unlawfully confined to his cell for more than twenty hours a day. 
One ex-detainee spoke to Four Corners about his torturous experience. Children who misbehave or try to harm themselves are sent to what is preposterously called the “intensive support unit”. He described hearing other inmates crying out “I want to kill myself” and getting no response. “You got no one to talk to, basically looking at four walls and after a while it will slowly get to you. The support for boys trying to harm themselves is the lowest it could be.”
There had been 32 suicide attempts within the year at the time of the report’s release.
Another ex-detainee talked about the blatant racism shown by guards, who called Indigenous inmates “b**ngs, black c***s, apes and monkeys”. Sixty three percent of inmates are Indigenous, despite making up only 3.3 percent of the Western Australian population. A 2018 study by the Telethon Institute found that 89 percent of youth detainees in WA had a severe cognitive impairment, and the rate of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder was the highest of any prison environment in the world. 
The whole system is designed to target the most disadvantaged children in society, punish them for lashing out and then traumatise them further. 
“The children of Banksia are our most impoverished, most traumatised children”, writes trauma recovery advocate Gerry Georgatos in an opinion piece for Independent Australia. “The majority were without a chance at a good life from the beginning—born into multiple disadvantages and cruel unfairness.” He describes Banksia Hill as “a corral of human misery”.
How has the Western Australian Labor government responded to the conditions in the centre? When riots occurred last year (a signal that detainees were suffering) the Department of Corrective Services sent the “worst offenders” to a maximum security adult prison. The government has continued to defend the decision despite widespread criticism. 
When Four Corners reporter Grace Tobin asked Corrective Services Minister Bill Johnston if he knew what folding up was, he denied any knowledge of the practice and distanced himself from the mistreatment of kids in detention, arguing: “I’m the minister. I don’t personally work in the custodial estate, I’m not a youth custodial officer. Of course it’s not reasonable for me to know the specific details of any allegations that might be made by a young offender”. 
The government has come under increased fire since the Four Corners program aired. In an effort to neutralise the growing criticism, Premier Mark McGowan announced a $63 million funding boost for Banksia Hill, half of which would go towards infrastructure upgrades, including the strengthening of security to control “high risk and difficult” detainees. The announcement was criticised by Aboriginal community leaders and human rights advocates, with the co-chair of Social Reinvestment WA and CEO of the Wungening Aboriginal Corporation, Daniel Morrison, dismissing it as a media stunt, telling the Guardian that if the premier “put half as much energy into actually fixing the issues, we would all be in a better place, including the children without a voice”. 
The events of new year’s eve confirm that the conditions have not changed. Where there are riots, there is suffering and desperation. Banksia Hill is a racist disgrace where the systematic torture of vulnerable kids takes place. Justice won’t be served until the whole facility is destroyed and those who run it are charged with child abuse.

Western Australian youth detainees set fire to prison after suffering abuse

David McBride, the former military lawyer who exposed Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, will face trial next year after Commonwealth lawyers intervened to suppress the use of crucial evidence that reportedly would have granted him whistleblower protection. 
McBride leaked documents to the ABC—known as the “Afghan Files”—detailing horrific acts carried out by Australian special forces (SAS) between 2009 and 2013, including several unlawful killings. One incident involved the shooting of an unarmed 14-year-old boy, Khan Mohammed, as he was collecting figs near his home in Kandahar province. Another was the shooting from a helicopter of three unarmed civilians in Jalbay after a suspected Taliban insurgent couldn’t be located. The documents also revealed evidence that Australian soldiers had been severing the hands of dead Afghans.
The leaks, which led to a police raid of the ABC headquarters, were central to the initiation of the Brereton Report—an investigation into the alleged war crimes. The report revealed a culture of brutality and cover-up among SAS soldiers in Afghanistan, including the unlawful killings of 39 Afghan civilians, the shooting of an unarmed intellectually disabled man in the back of the head, executions of unarmed or handcuffed detainees and the planting of AK-47s on dead bodies. 
Whistleblowers such as McBride should be commended. Instead, the government is persecuting him. The Commonwealth argued for the suppression of McBride’s evidence on the basis that its release would go against the public interest. McBride told reporters outside the ACT supreme court: “The government played the national security card to the absolute hilt”.
It is within the power of the attorney-general to intervene and end McBride’s prosecution. But <a href="https://michaelwest.com.au/labor-slammed-for-failing-to-protect-david-mcbride/">McBride told Michael West Media’s Callum Foote</a>: “The attorney-general’s office never looks at the merits of the case, they just get told that this guy is an enemy of the department, go for it. The attorney-general only changes tack under public pressure, such as in the case of Bernard Collaery”.
Collaery was charged in 2018 with disclosing protected intelligence information. The case relates to the Australia–East Timor spying scandal, in which the Australian government bugged East Timor’s Cabinet offices to gain an advantage during commercial negotiations to carve up the resource-rich Timor Sea. 
After concerns were raised by a deal struck between China and the Solomon Islands and after a public call by East Timor’s president to drop charges against Collaery, Foreign Minister Penny Wong visited the island. Soon after, the charges were dropped.
A similar situation appears unlikely for McBride. 
“Considering [the government] has ongoing whistleblower cases, despite having promised further protections in the National Anti-Corruption Commission bill, they’ve suspiciously left out a whistleblower protection agency”, He told Foote. “Why wouldn’t they do that? What downside for the government in legislating one? It’s hard not to think that they have bad intentions by not doing it, given they haven’t even explained why.”
Whether the new Anti-Corruption Commission commits to protecting whistleblowers is yet to be seen. McBride’s situation makes clear, however, that the Albanese government’s commitment to transparency is skin deep. 
McBride has performed a great service and should be protected.

Drop the charges against David McBride

US prison company Management and Training Corporation (MTC) has signed a deal with the federal Labor government to take over the running of Australia’s refugee prison on Nauru. The company will be awarded $47.3 million to oversee the detention of 111 refugees over a two-month period. At a time when the ALP government is telling us all to tighten our belts, it will be spending $425,000 for each refugee to be detained for two months for the “crime” of seeking safety in another country. 
MTC is the third largest private prison operator in the US and has a history of negligence and human rights violations within its facilities. In 2006, a civil case was filed against the company after dangerous levels of understaffing led to the assault of a woman detained for drink driving. After being left alone in the booking area, where a minimum of four staff members should have been present, the woman mistakenly walked into a prison cell where several male inmates locked the door and sexually assaulted her. 
According to the Guardian, after reporting the assault to prison authorities, the woman was “interrogated, then put in an empty cell by herself for two hours before being taken to hospital for a medical examination. Upon her return to the prison, she was allegedly strip-searched by guards, an act described in her civil claim as ‘utterly useless and unnecessary’ which caused her ‘further humiliation and degradation’”.
A lawsuit has also been filed against the company over the unlawful detention of US citizen Carlos Murillo Vega for a 14-month period, almost all of which was spent in solitary confinement. The lawsuit, which describes Vega’s detention as “torture”, concludes that MTC “traffics in human captivity for profit”. The company was also taken to court in Mississippi over an ongoing scheme that involved paying bribes to state officials in exchange for department prison contracts.
It is in no way surprising that the Australian government would choose such a company to manage a detention regime renowned for its cruelty. Since the Australian government started detaining refugees who arrive by boat, the barbarity has progressively worsened. It was under the Gillard government in 2012 that offshore detention on Nauru and Manus Island was reintroduced, followed by Rudd’s promise in 2013 that “as of today, refugees who come here by boat without a visa will never be settled in Australia”. 
The hellhole conditions faced by refugees have repeatedly come out, with the leaked “Nauru files” reporting 2,000 incidents of harm or threatened harm to asylum seekers over a three-year period—frequent self-harm and suicide attempts, humiliation and assault by guards and the denial of proper medical treatment. 
Labor’s callous treatment of refugees laid the basis for Operation Sovereign Borders, introduced by former Prime Minister Tony Abbot and continued under successive Liberal governments, which towed refugee boats to Indonesia or back to where they came from, and the silencing of detention centre staff from speaking out about abuse.
In the lead-up to the last federal election, Anthony Albanese committed to the continuation of Operation Sovereign Borders under a Labor government. While the ALP has used its granting of permanent protection to the Murugappan family to paint itself as humane, the reality is that it is just as bad as the Liberals on refugees. As previous Manus Island detainee Behrouz Boochani wrote in the Guardian, “Nothing has changed until there are 200 more Biloela families returned to Australia from Nauru and Port Moresby, and until threats of deportation, re-detention, or return to PNG or Nauru end”.
The taking over of the Nauru detention regime by MTC is the latest iteration of bipartisan cruelty towards refugees. Not only is the company renowned for its mistreatment of inmates, but, according to government sources that spoke to the Guardian, the contract includes a “reduction in welfare services for refugees in the community”. 
Since the shutting down of the Manus Island detention centre after the PNG Supreme Court ruled it unlawful, Nauru has remained Australia’s only offshore processing centre. While refugees are allowed to live in community housing, they are nonetheless stuck on the island indefinitely in inhumane conditions, with services set to become even more inadequate. Any newly arriving refugees will initially be processed though the detention centre. The impact of this ongoing situation is reflected in reporting by the Guardian that many on the island are “battling chronic physical and mental health conditions that have made even applying for resettlement difficult”. 
It is no wonder that this announcement comes alongside a budget that will allow living conditions for workers to deteriorate further. The bipartisan torture of refugees has always been used as a way to normalise the brutal treatment of society’s most vulnerable and to blame those seeking a better life in Australia for declining standards of living. 
It is criminal that the government is spending more than $40 million to imprison 111 innocent people fleeing wars and persecution. This money should be spent on social services and wage increases, and every refugee languishing on Nauru should be allowed to live in freedom in Australia. Company profits should not be made out of human misery, and governments should not traffic in human captivity for political gain.

The new corporate face of cruelty on Nauru

While student radicalism is most often associated with 1960s Paris or Vietnam-era US campuses, there is a similarly rich history of university student rebellion outside of the advanced capitalist countries. One of these rebellions took place in Indonesia in 1998, when students led a movement that ended the 30-year rule of General Suharto. The movement involved hundreds of thousands of ordinary Indonesians in a fight for democracy, encapsulated by the slogan reformasi total (complete reform).
Suharto came to power in 1965 through a military coup. The coup was a counter-revolution against the political liberalisation that had emerged out of Indonesia’s independence movement. The Dutch withdrew in 1949, but in the shadow of 400 years of colonial rule, opposing class forces brought forward very different visions for the post-independence nation. 
On one side was the mass of the population—workers and peasants—many of whom had started to organise in trade unions and peasant organisations to fight for improved living standards and against the remnants of colonial rule. 
On the other side were those who had developed a degree of power and privilege within the colonial system—owners of land or capital, intellectuals and politicians educated in the Dutch system, as well as Dutch-trained military officers including Suharto, a former sergeant in the colonial army. To this layer, the militancy and organisation that had developed among the Indonesian masses, led by an alliance of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and prominent left nationalist Sukarno, was a threat that had to be crushed. 
Suharto named his post-coup regime the New Order. For many Indonesians, this moment in history was to become known as “the tragedy”. As is common with counter-revolutions, a campaign of violent repression was unleashed against all those associated with the mass movement. The PKI, which had grown to become one of the biggest Communist parties in the world, was essentially wiped out. Somewhere between 500,000 and a million communists and sympathisers are estimated to have been killed. 
The slaughter and mass arrests were aimed not only at eliminating the organised left, but also at demoralising the population and destroying the legacy of protest politics—known as aksi. Oppositional media outlets and political parties were shut down. 
Suharto also opened up the economy to foreign trade, which helped to enrich a new layer of wealthy elites, and the military took over large sections of previously Dutch-owned industry. Through repression and these economic “reforms”, the regime was able to maintain its grip on political power over the next two decades.
Yet aksi could not be permanently wiped out. During the early 1970s, it was university students who started to criticise openly, and mobilise against, the regime. This was the continuation of an established tradition—students had organised anti-colonial discussion circles and led protests during the colonial era. While students opposed to Suharto were suppressed in 1966, a minority of pro-regime students were encouraged to protest against Sukarno and the Communist Party, university campuses becoming what Marxist historian Max Lane describes in Unfinished Nation as “a privileged arena, where political mobilisation was possible for at least thirteen years”. 
Students were depicted by the regime as an apolitical “moral force”, and many embraced that identity. But others rebelled and started speaking out against Suharto. They targeted their anger at the involvement of the military in politics, crony capitalism and the suppression of political debate.
Protests on university campuses took place throughout the country, reaching a peak on 15 January 1974 with a mass mobilisation in Jakarta that demanded sweeping political and economic reforms. These protests were met with repression, the regime banning all independent student organisations in 1979. 
There were weaknesses within the student movement, in particular the tendency of students to look to discussion groups and NGOs as key to social change, and to be relatively dismissive towards the masses. But radical currents were nevertheless able to establish themselves and grow. 
One such current was formed in the mid-1980s out of students who had left Indonesia to join the movement against Marcos in the Philippines, bringing back lessons in community organising and the understanding that students alone cannot win change. 
In 1994, the People’s Democratic Union (later People’s Democratic Party—PRD) formed, bringing together student, worker and farmer activists from around the country who shared an outlook that the masses of workers and peasants must be organised to challenge the regime. The growth of peasant protests supported by students—most notably in opposition to the forced resettlement of 20,000 people for the building of a new dam—spurred aksi among peasants and workers across the country, including sporadic strikes. All of this helped to win support for the newly developing radical groups.
While the growing protest actions were met with the usual repression, this time they had developed a momentum that could not easily be contained. Suharto’s regime faced a crisis, which sharpened in 1996. 
In the lead-up to the 1997 election, Suharto had become increasingly concerned with the political trajectory of Megawati Sukarnoputri, a leading figure in the previously tame Indonesian Democratic Party and daughter of Sukarno. The Democratic Party was permitted under Suharto’s electoral and political laws as long as it accepted the legitimacy of the regime. But in the mid-1980s, the party started to assert its independence, reflected in the leadership’s decision to run Megawati in the 1987 election, and again in 1997. 
Her popularity drew supporters to the party, particularly from the poorer sections of the middle and upper class who were becoming increasingly frustrated with Suharto’s unchecked political power. Suharto attempted to remove Megawati in June 1996 through a rigged party conference. But the manoeuvre backfired, leading to an eruption of protests, including 15,000 in Jakarta, which developed into rioting and clashes with the military.
Protests continued for the rest of the year, repression only intensifying people’s anger. In December, a strike of taxi and bus drivers merged spontaneously with a student demonstration, becoming an important moment of worker and student unity. 
By the start of 1997, there were protests somewhere in the country practically every day. Within months, they escalated to become the biggest since Suharto came to power. 
One of the factors in this escalation was the election. The regime had set days aside for each of the permitted parties to campaign legally. For the mass of discontented Indonesians, this was seen as an opening for their grievances to be aired publicly. On the days set aside for the Islamist United Development Party, huge crowds of the poor and working class took to the streets, bringing signs and slogans that merged their support for the opposition leaders with a drive to make change themselves. 
Despite the United Development Party leaders urging them not to, people continued to turn out in large numbers, reaching around 1 million across the country on 14 May. PRD activists successfully distributed hundreds of thousands of leaflets calling for the overthrow of Suharto, repeal of the dual function of the military and an end to corruption. As one leader described, “There was not one leaflet to be seen on the ground anywhere. Many housewives took them away and made more copies. When we started chanting ‘Mega, Star [the symbol of Megawati’s party], the people!’ the mass chant in reply was ‘The people are on the rampage!’”
A second factor escalating the protest movement was the 1997 Asian economic crisis, during which Indonesia’s currency plunged from 2,300 rupiah to the US dollar, to 10,000. The country’s debt skyrocketed to $142 billion. 
The initial impact of the economic crisis was to dampen the movement, hope giving way to desperation. But in 1998, students took the lead and gave the uprising a new energy and political focus: the fall of Suharto.
Campus demonstrations took place all over the country, demanding that the government put price caps on basic commodities. The mobilisations grew in March, when Suharto was re-elected by a stage-managed People’s Consultative Assembly. Street fighting between students and the military broke out in Java after protesting students managed to force their way out of the university, and again in April at the Gajah Mada University campus, which the military proceeded to occupy. At the University of North Sumatra, students threw Molotov cocktails at soldiers. 
In early May, an announcement that the regime would increase the price of electricity and fuel escalated the demonstrations even further. The military responded by opening fire and killing four students at the University of Trisakti. Over the next two days, rioting broke out across Jakarta, followed by demonstrations of students and workers in which mass meetings were held and government buildings taken over and occupied. 
Students took over radio stations and made broadcasts criticising the military. On 19 May, they began an occupation outside the parliament, declaring their intention to stay until Suharto was removed from power. The next day, hundreds of thousands of people in every major city mobilised in support of this demand. The military was powerless. Suharto’s circle started to turn against him. On 21 May, Suharto stepped down, with Vice-President Habibie replacing him as president.
It was an incredible victory for the movement. The mass of Indonesians, sparked by student protesters, succeeded in overthrowing a dictator of 30 years’ standing. But what was to come next was an open question. For the regime elites who had clung to power, the hope was that Suharto’s removal and the promise of a slow transition to democracy would be enough to quell the movement. A special parliamentary session was called for November.
On the days of the special session, huge protests swept the country, initiated by students but increasingly drawing in the urban masses. There was anger that the military had prepared for the student protests with sharpened bamboo spears and knives, despite promising democratic reforms. Reinhardt Sirait, a student participant, recounted, “The sound of exploding tear gas and rifle fire had resulted in people coming out of their homes, out of the lanes and the street stalls to make barricades to slow down the military’s movements. They attacked them with rocks and Molotov cocktails, defending the students”.
The demonstrations culminated in the students taking over and occupying the parliamentary compound. Yet within hours, the student leaders decided to leave.
This reflected that, behind the united call for reformasi, serious political divisions had emerged. What should reformasi look like, and how could it be achieved? Radicals in the PRD were calling for the formation of a people’s committee, for the organisations formed out of the movement to be made permanent and replace the government of New Order elites. But moderates within the movement looked to the mainstream opposition leaders like Megawati, who had mouthed support for the protests but did not want a radical transformation of the status quo.
One of the main figures wanting to calm things down was Amien Rais, a member of various moderate Islamic organisations tied to the New Order who had started to speak out against corruption when the movement gained momentum in the 1990s. While aligning himself with the protests, he sought to prevent their further escalation. 
Unfortunately, this approach prevailed. While protests against the military did continue for several weeks, the momentum had been lost. Many of the elites and military officials from the Suharto regime were able to stay in power. 
The movement that oversaw the downfall of Suharto won impressive concessions, including the right for political parties to operate freely, the right for workers to form trade unions and freedom of the press. And while elements of the regime and military continued to wield significant power in the country, the memory of reformasi is nevertheless a source of inspiration. The bravery of its participants can be felt in the poetry of Wiji Thukul, a trishaw driver and carpenter who became a leader of the PRD and was disappeared in 1998, likely kidnapped and murdered by the military:
warning 
if the people leave 
while the rulers deliver their speeches 
we must be vigilant 
perhaps they have lost hope 
if the people hide away 
and whisper 
when discussing their problems 
then rulers should beware and learn to listen 
if the people don’t dare complain 
then things are dangerous 
and if what the rulers say 
may not be rejected 
truth must surely be under threat 
and if suggestions are refused without consideration 
voices silenced, criticism banned without reason 
accused of subversion and of disturbing security 
then there is only one word: fight!

Reformasi! The Indonesian student movement that toppled Suharto

In March 1968, the Observer newspaper described an occupation of the Slavonic House in Prague by thousands of students and intellectuals: “Jammed with excited men and women, suffocation-tight all the way down the stairs and out to the pavement; questions on screws of paper coming down like snow-flakes from the galleries; speakers talking like free men. A woman, long imprisoned, denounced President [Antonin] Novotny for his part in the show trials. A playwright says the public prosecutor has eleven judicial murders on his conscience. A novelist says the Defence Minister has the mentality of a half-educated corporal.” Within days, Novotny was forced to resign as president of Czechoslovakia.
The Prague Spring, as it came to be known, was a flowering of free thought, creative expression and political daring on the part of the Czechoslovakian masses. It shook the eastern bloc out of a period of relative stability that began in the mid-1950s after a previous round of rebellions. Amid the global ferment of 1968, it showed a new generation of radicals in Western capitalist countries that their fight for equality and democracy was mirrored on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
In the decades after World War II, Czechoslovakia stood out as one of the most stable of the Stalinist regimes. The Communist Party headed a monolithic state machine that carried out purges and imprisoned critics with impunity. Its economy had benefited from its relatively advanced industry, which exported engineering equipment to neighbouring eastern bloc countries. Even the uprisings that shook much of the eastern bloc in the 1950s had barely any political impact. The material conditions of everyday life seemed to make the status quo tolerable for the mass of Czechoslovakians.
But this was not to last. In the early 1960s, the country’s export industry collapsed, throwing the economy into turmoil. Economic crisis began to erode the solidity of the regime.
Tensions emerged at the top of society over how best to deal with the crisis, creating fissures within the previously united ruling elite. An oppositional political faction succeeded in removing Novotny from his position as party secretary, replacing him with Alexander Dubcek.
But Novotny refused to step down as president, instead appealing to the conservative sections of the bureaucracy and military, calling on them to oust his rivals while also attempting to garner support amongst workers in the factories. The new “reform” leadership around Dubcek went a step further in retaliation, loosening restrictions on free speech to encourage public criticism of Novotny. But once the population had been stirred, it was no longer just a matter of factional crossfire. Criticisms of Novotny turned into widespread denunciations of the whole regime. What started as a factional struggle between sections of the ruling class leapt out of the grey offices of the party bureaucracy and took shape as a living mass movement in the streets and workplaces.
State control over the media completely collapsed. Old state censors resigned. Journalists began to speak freely, reporting on the reality of living under “socialism” in Czechoslovakia and grilling state functionaries on television for the crimes they had committed under the Novotny regime. One radio program, called Songs by Telephone, involved phoning ex-ministers and demanding they account for their past crimes, after which they would be subjected to a song that had been specifically chosen to mock them.
Open political debates started to appear in newspapers, which flew off the shelves and were widely discussed. Students held mass meetings that raged into the night. Intellectual journals disseminated open criticism of bureaucratic rule. The writers’ union published a manifesto titled “200 Words in Literarny Listy”, which made the following declaration: “We should demand the resignation of people who have misused their power ... We should find ways and means of persuading them to resign, through resolutions, demonstrations, demonstrative work brigades, collections for retirement gifts for them, strikes and picketing their houses”. The trade union publication Prace reported that it received 70,000 letters, which overwhelmingly supported the manifesto. There was a growing desire for committees to be elected under workers’ control, independent of the official state-controlled unions.
Amid the fervour, the official leadership of the democratisation movement quavered. Dubcek was certainly no radical. He had been a loyal party stalwart for most of his life, spending three years in a Russian “party training centre” and rubbing shoulders with the likes of Janos Kadar, overseer of the violent repression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Dubcek and his supporters did not want the bureaucratic state machine dismantled; they wanted to run it.
After the party lost control of the media, Dubcek spent months pleading with journalists and editors to rein in their criticisms and show responsibility, complaining, “It is anarchy to understand democracy as a situation in which everyone interferes with everything and does what he wants. That has nothing to do with real democracy”. The party executive condemned the formation of new organisations outside of party control, including any attempts to revive the Social Democratic Party. While publicly declaring in their Action Program that the party “does not realise its leading role by ruling over society”, the Communist Party went on to label any public criticism of it as “unacceptable” and internally explored new ways to cement its rule bureaucratically. The reformers were willing to allow limited freedom of expression for some groups, as long as they accepted the bureaucracy’s control over society. “Democracy” had to involve the exclusion of the majority of the population from any sort of decision-making power, a perspective shared across the factional divide.
As the movement spiralled out of Dubcek’s control, concern mounted in Russia. The Kremlin was not willing to tolerate another mass movement in one of its satellite states. Such movements undermined the Soviet Union, and Russia had proved itself willing to use force to put a stop to such rebellions.
Dubcek faced growing pressure to wind back the movement. Russia began issuing ultimatums, and the reforming leaders were caught in a bind. On the one hand, they did not feel confident to repress the rebellion outright, out of concern that the unpopularity of this move would lead to their downfall, creating a space for the conservatives around Novotny to return to power. On the other hand, they had no interest in refusing to obey the orders coming from Russia. While many of them may have truly believed in the project of “socialism with a human face”, their intention was to oversee the running of society with some minor reforms in collaboration with Russia. So when Russian tanks finally came rolling in on 20 August and Dubcek was arrested and taken to Moscow, the reformers put out a call for the population to participate in “passive disobedience” as a bargaining chip for negotiations.
Some armed resistance did take place, with protesters setting fire to a few tanks. But the death count was small in comparison to the 20,000 killed in Hungary in 1956, not exceeding 100. The majority of the population responded to the call for peaceful non-cooperation. Radio and television stations broadcast condemnations of the occupation and news of the resistance. Dubcek’s supporters held meetings and passed motions in opposition to the invasion.
But the reforming leaders had made it clear from the start that their goal was “establishing contact with the command of the armies of the five Warsaw Pact countries” involved in the invasion “with a view to bringing about a speedy normalisation”. It was not long before Dubcek capitulated, returning from Moscow after having taken part in “free and comradely discussions” with his kidnappers! Calls for passive disobedience were replaced with “normalisation”, and Russian troops were to remain for the duration.
Resistance to occupation can’t just be turned off like a tap, however. Protests and street blockades continued. Protesters argued with Russian soldiers about the invasion. Street signs and house numbers were taken down to disorient them. There was growing resentment of the official leaders for their capitulation. In the words of one of the student leaders, “The whole country had been feeling sick. It was the third month since the invasion. The old popular leaders were still the same, but the confidence people had in them, the blind unquestioning confidence in them as individuals, started to wither away”. A resolution of 40,000 Skoda workers called the reformers’ concessions “a shameful capitulation”. One student even set themself on fire in protest at the abandonment of the reforms. Mass, spontaneous demonstrations took place alongside student occupations, despite attempts by Dubcek and his supporters to rein them in.
Worker militancy also started to grow. Workers sent messages of support to the student sit-ins, with some sympathy strikes taking place in Prague, and other workers sounding their factory sirens in solidarity. Railway workers warned that “not a single train [would] move out of Prague station” if the government attacked the student occupation. A congress of 900,000 metalworkers threatened a general strike if Josef Smrkovsky, a popular reformer, was deposed from his position in government (something Smrkovsky himself discouraged!).
Print workers refused to print conservative media. British Marxist and historian Chris Harman described how at a printers’ conference, “Many of the 450 delegates whistled and jeered at Mr Vladimir Solecky, a magazine official, when he protested their ban on publication ... The union said under a workers’ censor the decision on whether or not to print an article would rest with their members in the printing works”. Committees continued to be elected in the factories, and a number of workers gained the confidence to strike over their wages and conditions.
However, the movement never went beyond what the official leadership was willing to tolerate. While students and workers were becoming increasingly frustrated with their concessions, the majority still saw their fight only as a defence of this leadership, particularly Smrkovsky and the official union leaders who supported democratisation. Without an alternative leadership that could argue for the strikes to continue and for the movement to challenge the whole ruling bureaucracy, the movement couldn’t go anywhere except backwards when the leaders abandoned the struggle.
The process of normalisation began in a serious way with the resignation of Dubcek in April and his replacement by the conservative Gustav Husak. Resignations and purges began, and censorship of the media and intellectual journals was reimposed.
The last mass protests occurred after Czechoslovakia beat Russia in an ice hockey match, and on the first anniversary of the Russian invasion. By the time the second protest came around, the movement had been wound back enough for the Czechoslovakian police to suppress it violently, arresting 3,900 protesters. A campaign was waged by the hardliners within the Communist Party to drive out hundreds of thousands of members who had been associated with democratisation, about 25 to 35 percent of the membership. Elements of the intelligentsia and media who had spoken against the bureaucracy were sacked and others offered lucrative positions to buy their submission. The minority still willing to voice their opposition were isolated further with an uptick in the economy, making it easier to win the population to a begrudging acceptance of the old status quo.
Despite its eventual retreat, the Prague Spring was a significant addition to the rebellions that challenged Communist rule in Eastern Europe, each one a chink in the armour of the Soviet Union, which eventually collapsed in 1991. It was a lesson for those fighting for democracy and freedom everywhere throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s: that this struggle was one that bridged the Cold War divide. This was demonstrated when anti-war protesters outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago held up placards that read, “Welcome to Czechago”. Today, while Russian tanks roll into Ukraine and are bravely resisted by the Ukrainian population, it is a reminder of the potential power of the working class to disrupt imperialist occupations and, in so doing, advance the struggle for freedom.

Private emails show impact of Palestine activism at Curtin University

Cities must be adapted for climate change

The Liberals' and Labor's history of competition over racism and refugee cruelty

The 1987 Great Workers Struggle in South Korea

Despite abortion being decriminalised, barriers remain

Western Australian youth detainees set fire to prison after suffering abuse

Drop the charges against David McBride

The new corporate face of cruelty on Nauru

Reformasi! The Indonesian student movement that toppled Suharto

Democracy movement faces off against Russian invasion: the 1968 Prague Spring

Other Media

Shop

Conferences

Manage Your Subscription

Contact Us