Blackwell Reference Online

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In 1965, Indonesia's largest student organizations were those affiliated to the leftist Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI) and Indonesian National Party (Partai Nasional Indonesia, PNI), which were suppressed by the new military dictatorship. This left the field to the Islamic Students' Association (HMI), ideologically aligned with Masyumi and “non-political” groups, which forged an alliance in late 1965 as the Indonesian Students' Action Front (KAMI), which, backed by the army, campaigned against Sukarno and the PKI.It was the next generation of students who turned against the Suharto government, which had consolidated itself by 1967 when Suharto became acting president. There were small protests in 1971 and 1972, and the first clearly anti-Suharto student newspaper, Sendi, was published, until banned a few months later.In 1973, student protest began again but on a larger scale, organizing through student councils on major Indonesian university campuses. Students protested against corruption, abuse of power, rapidly expanding foreign debt, and foreign investor domination of the economy. The 1973 protests reached a climax in major demonstrations in January 1974 during a visit to Jakarta by Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka, and hundreds of students and academics were arrested. Three of them – Hariman Siregar, chairperson of the University of Indonesia student ... log in or subscribe to read full text