Tasikmalaya – Kodim (Komando Dearah Militer, District Military Command) III Siliwangi said yesterday (4/2) they were still searching for the maker and distributor of a leaflet who's contents discredited the New Order government and called for an election boycott. Around 6,000 leaflets were sized, 200 are believed to have already been distributed.
This was announced by the commander of III Siliwangi, Maj-Gen TNI Tayo Tarmadi at a function in Tasikmalaya, West Java attended by 600 Islamic scholars from Tasikmalaya and Ciamis yesterday.
"The contents of the leaflet discredited the New Order government and called for an election boycott", said the Commander.
According to Tayo, they are now searching for Maruli Hendra Utama who has been pointed out as the brains behind the act, along with other suspects. As well as the leaflet, documents, addresses and a number of ATM cards were also found. He was unable to confirm to journalists if Maruli was a student activists but evidence sized at the suspects house was a student boarding house at a university at Jl Pahlawan Bandung [see item following this article - JB].
According to the commander, the leaflets who's contents were political, does not close the possibility that there is someone playing a political role from outside the country, primarily in providing funding. "A receipt for funds sent from Singapore was found. We are still carrying out and investigation, as to who the sender was and the party the fund were from", said Tayo.
The leaflet was to be distributed to Islamic boarding schools all across Indonesia. According to Tayo, this pointed to a subversive act. In fact, he said, documents were found on the formation of a national and regional committees. For the national, KPP (Komite Pimpinan Pusat) and for the regional, KPK (Komite Pimpinan Kota).
The commander explained, up until now there was already 9 KPK formed as a basis of operation for the distribution of the leaflets including Jabotabek, Medan, Surabaya, Solo, Semarang, Yogyakarta, Palu, and Bandarlampung.
According to the commander, before finding the 6,000 leaflets, the security forces also found another leaflet, which clearly involved the name of an ex-parliamentarian and who is also the head of PUDI (Partai Uni Demokrasi Indonesia, Indonesian United Democratic Party), Sri Bintang Pamungkas. "The contents were not very different, and attacked the New Order government" said Tayo Tarmadi.
[Unabridged translation from Media Indonesia. The following article was submitted to Green Left for issue #265 but due to space restrictions, was unable to be included. The information was based on an action alert sent to ASIET by the underground PRD last week and the full translation was included in last week's ASIET Net news (#09) - JB]