Soripto: portrait of a revolutionary
By Karen Fredericks
SOLO, Central Java — The Solo headquarters of Indonesia's People's Democratic Party (PRD) is abuzz with young people painting banners, counting leaflets, drinking tea and smoking kretek (clove) cigarettes. Among the crowd is an older man, just as sprightly as the rest, talking politics with his younger comrades. He greets us with a warm smile. "I was tapol [a political prisoner] for five years", he says.
In 1971, when Soripto was 22 years old, six years had passed since the 1965 massacre of communists. He, like PRD members throughout the 1990s, became seriously interested in politics despite the danger posed by such a course. He studied dialectic materialism and participated in discussion groups led by Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) central leader Bego Pranowo, underground, in the mountains of central Java.
When I expressed surprise that he had became politically active at such a time, he simply said it was because of his feelings of "human solidarity" for the suffering of the Indonesian people, and especially for the people who struggled — the communists.
In 1972, after only one year of political activity, Soripto was arrested by the military in Surabaya and charged with being a courier for the PKI. He was sentenced to five years' imprisonment.
The first year was the worst, he said, because of the interrogation designed to force from him a confession of PKI membership and the names of other members. Each session lasted two hours, he said. He showed me burn marks on his arms from the soldiers' cigarettes.
He and the other political prisoners were beaten and given eclectic shocks. They suffered terrible injuries, and no medical treatment was provided; many of his comrades died as a result.
"The worst of it", Soripto told us, "was that they used our own comrades to interrogate us". He said that to this day he does not know whether the former comrades who participated in his torture and interrogation had betrayed him from the beginning or were tortured into submission following their arrest.
After the year in Surabaya, Soripto spent a further four years in the custody of the military, working as a cleaner and labourer in a military headquarters in Central Java.
"There were no international human rights organisations standing up for us back then", he said. They were allowed no books, and family visits were infrequent.
When he was released in 1977, Soripto's "human solidarity" was undiminished. He listened to BBC World Service and kept in contact with others who were still political. Of course, this part of their life was kept hidden from all but each other — deep underground.
"I had to wait for the right time to get active again", he told us, "and now is the right time".
In the early 1990s, he was operating a small café in Solo which a group of young people began to frequent. "I liked their talk", he said. "Their talk was about struggle, and I like struggle." His smile is infectious.
This group of students were the forerunners of the PRD. Today they, together with Soripto, can sit in the PRD office and talk politics with Australian socialists.
Soripto is not a member of the PRD, but he is a very active supporter. Some members and associates of the PKI have joined, perhaps the most notable being novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer.
"Since Pram joined, we have had many PKI people contact us", said PRD Solo branch organiser Ulin Ni'am Yurson. "But many people are still too frightened."
The PKI still exists as an underground organisation. It is completely separate from the PRD. In the Jakarta Post on May 17, PRD cental committee member Faisal Reza said the PRD is "developing its own brand of socialism called 'people's social democracy'". He told the newspaper that models of socialism pursued in China and the Soviet Union failed to deliver democracy, adding, "I don't think socialism can survive the 21st century without democracy ... We're experimenting with ideology, one that is really founded for the people."
According to the Jakarta Post, Reza "denied that the PRD was a communist party cloaked in socialism. Such accusations were strengthened after the party recruited renowned writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer, who served years of hard labor in the 1970s along with thousands of other members and supporters of the outlawed PKI."
"We joined Pramoedya not because of his PKI background but because of his strong commitment to freedom and his struggle against the regime that tried to silence him", Reza said. "We're not an embryo of a communist party. We're not even rooted in communism. We were born out of a student movement." However, Reza told the newspaper that the PRD respected communism and if anyone wished to establish a communist party, he or she should be allowed to do so in a democracy.
We asked Soripto what he thought of the PRD's tactic of participation in the election. "To be honest", he said, "I do not agree with the tactic of participation in the election, but I can see that the party is consolidating itself very well using this tactic, by getting the information about the party out to so many people".
When we thanked Soripto for sharing his experiences with us and Green Left Weekly readers, he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply on his kretek cigarette. "I didn't plan to come into the office today", he said "but I am so glad that I decided to come so that I could tell my story to the Australian comrades. Today I feel a part of the international party."