Jakarta – Hundreds of demonstrators from the People's Democratic Party (PRD) demonstrated on Monday against US plans to attack Iraq.
They began gathering at the Hotel Indonesia roundabout then moved off to the British Embassy where they held speeches for around 10 minutes then moved off to the United Nations offices.
After holding speeches at the UN offices they went on to the US Embassy and gave speeches for around quarter of an hour.
PRD chairperson Haris Rusli Moti, PRD general secretary Natalia Scholastika and the chairperson of the Indonesian National Front for Workers' Struggle (FNPBI), Dita Indah Sari, took the opportunity to present a statement to a representative of the US Embassy.
From the US Embassy, the demonstrators moved off to the presidential palace. At 2.45pm the demonstration ended. There were no incidents during the action.
In Haris' speech he warned the people to be on guard against three types of global imperialists politics which are driven by the US, intellectual colonialism, political colonialisation through foreign debt and military aggression.
Haris explained that through the power of its intellectual domination, US global imperialist power is striving to destroy nations, the prime target being developing nations which have large significant amounts of natural wealth.
"They poison target countries though their theories of development which are used to drain the wealth of the nation concerned while building permanent economic dependence on the imperialist countries", said Rusly.
Furthermore, though the politics of foreign debt, the imperialist nations create an increasing level of dependence by the target countries. "These imperialist countries trick the target countries by forcing them to pay interest which is many times the amount of the original loan to the target nation", explain Rusly.
"After the target nation is caught up in debt, the imperialist nation force the victims to sell state assets and reduce subsidies to pay for the interest on the debt", continued Rusly.
He express the view that when those two types of colonialist politics by the imperialist countries fail, the US or Britain resort to armed aggression as they are doing with Iraq.
"So what in fact is happening now is a war of capital between the imperialist countries and Iraq. The US and its allies want to take over their wealth by using issues of religion and terrorism", he explained.
Therefore, Rusly in the name of his organisation pleaded with the Indonesian nation – including the government and representatives of the people, not to be trapped by issues which are engineered by global imperialist powers.
Responding to the rejection by countries of the European Union of US military aggression against Iraq, Rusly said, "This issue should be used by nations in the Asia region to broaden an anti-war alliance". (win)
[Translated by James Balowski.]