Indonesia: Victory to the Workers and Youth Uprising!
Indonesia: ¡Victoria para el Levantamiento de los Trabajadores y la Juventud!
Build committees of action and self-defence units! Down with the Prabowo regime! For a workers and popular government!
Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 02.09.2025, www.thecommunists.net
1. A revolutionary hurricane of popular insurrection is sweeping Indonesia. While the masses face tax hikes and the brutal consequences of President Prabowo Subianto’s austerity policy, the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR), the country’s parliament, voted to increase their members’ allowances – a pure provocation given the fact that their income is already 40 times the minimum wage in the nation’s capital, Jakarta. Mass protests erupted in 30 towns and cities across Indonesia under the rallying cry “Dissolve the Parliament’, with young workers, university and school students at the forefront. When the notorious police tried to smash the mass protests with brute force, killing the 21-year-old ojol driver Affan Kurniawan and arresting 1,200 people, the situation exploded. In response, the masses demonstrate day and night and courageously confront the police. They attack and burn homes of members of parliament, police stations and parliament buildings.
2. Currently, the regime fears a victorious popular insurrection and beats a hasty retreat. The regime withdrew the tax hikes as well as the increase of allowances for members of parliament. Police and army are restrained at the moment and try to avoid provoking the masses. President Prabowo cancelled his trip to the prestigious SCO meeting in Tianjin with state leaders of China, Russia, India and other countries.
3. In his book about the history of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky stated that “the most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the masses in historical events.” This is exactly what is happening right now in Indonesia and there is no doubt that a revolutionary situation has opened! This is a development of regional and global importance. Indonesia is the world’s fourth-most-populous country with over 280 million people and has the largest economy in Southeast Asia and the world’s 7th largest in terms of Gross Domestic Product (PPP).
4. Indonesia’s political crisis is closely linked to its social and economic crisis. The country is a capitalist semi-colony, marked by poverty and economic backwardness which is the result of imperialist dependency and super-exploitation. According to the latest estimations of the World Bank, 68% of Indonesia’s population, or 195 million people, are in low-income households on the brink of poverty. At the same time, Indonesia is plundered by imperialist monopolies and financial institutions. The country’s public debt is dramatically increasing to 40.1% of Gross Domestic Product in 2025, up from 29.2% in the year before. Today, Indonesia has the highest nominal debt in its 80-year post-independence history. In 2025, the country’s total debt servicing is estimated to have reached approximately 1.35 quadrillion rupiah ($83 billion) which is nearly half of the central government expenditures. Clearly, in order to allow an organic development of its economy, Indonesia must liberate itself from the financial chains of imperialism. Cancel the debt! Repudiate the payment of debt!
5. The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) fully supports the popular insurrection of the Indonesian masses! The crucial task now is to transform the spontaneous uprising into a victorious revolution. For this, the masses need to organize themselves in action committees in workplaces and neighbourhoods. Such committees should discuss and decide about the next steps of the struggle. They should elect delegates and coordinate themselves on a local, regional and national level. Furthermore, such committees should create self-defence groups to defend themselves against the police and, at the same time, to identify and neutralise police provocateurs. Likewise, such self-defence groups need to make sure that popular hatred is not directed against members of the Chinese minority (as it happened in 1998). Such action committees and self-defence groups can become the basis for full-blown organs of power – popular councils and militias.
6. The popular outrage against the police and political institutions reflect a healthy instinct of the masses. However, it is not enough to burn down the symbols of repression and corruption. It is necessary to take power and to replace the existing political and social system with one which is controlled by the labouring people and which serves their interests. Hence, the central task of the masses is to prepare a general strike and an armed insurrection to bring down the regime and to smash the key institutions of the repressive state apparatus, in particular the police and the army (TNI) which played a notorious role in the modern history of Indonesia. As it is well-known, the TNI carried out a bloody military coup in 1965 and killed about one million communists and other opponents. The resulting military dictatorship lasted until the revolution in 1998.
7. The goal of an armed insurrection must be the creation of a workers and popular government, i.e. a government of the working class in alliance with the poor urban and rural masses and which is based on popular councils and militias. Such a government should carry out the tasks of the democratic revolution which requires that it drives the revolutionary process forward and undertakes the tasks of the socialist revolution. It should replace the TNI with a people’s army; the big landowners must be expropriated and the land given to the small and landless peasants; full democratic rights must be secured tor the national and religious minorities (e.g. West Papua, Aceh, the ethnically Chinese minority, the Christians, etc.); and the corrupt state bureaucracy and justice must be replaced by popularly elected and controlled officials which get only an average skilled workers income. A workers and popular government must also nationalise the big corporations and banks under workers’ control. It should rupture the links with all imperialist institutions and Great Powers – the U.S., Japan and Western Europe as well as China and Russia.
8. In order to fight for such a program, the most advanced fighters need to build a revolutionary party. The RCIT urges those who agree with such a program to unite and join us in building a new Revolutionary World Party.
International Bureau of the RCIT
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