Resisting Dictatorship

Vince Boudreau’s book compares the relationship between state repression

and social resistance under the dictatorships of Burma’s Ne Win,
Indonesia’s Suharto and the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos. In each case
the dictator faced distinct social challenges and responded with specifically
tailored repressive strategies. These strategies shaped dissidents’ resources,
social bases and opposition cultures, and so influenced the entire pattern
and effectiveness of dissent and political contention. The author considers
his first-hand research in the countries in question in light of the social
movements literature to analyse the long-term interactions between the
regimes and their societies in the wake of repression, and during the
democracy movements that followed. This thought-provoking book offers
one of the first truly comparative studies of dictatorship, resistance and
democratization in Southeast Asia. As such, it will be invaluable to
students, policy makers and commentators on the region.

VINCE BOUDREAU is Associate Professor of Political Science at City

College of New York. His publications include Grassroots and Cadre in
the Protest Movement (2001).
Resisting Dictatorship
Repression and Protest in Southeast Asia

Vince Boudreau
The City College of New York
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521109611

© Vince Boudreau 2004

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2004

This digitally printed version 2009

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Boudreau, Vincent.
Resisting dictatorship: repression and protest in Southeast Asia/Vince Boudreau.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 521 83989 0
1. Burma – Politics and government – 1962–1988. 2. Indonesia – Politics
and government – 1966–1998. 3. Philippines – Politics and government –
1973–1986. 4. Dictatorship. I. Title.
DS530.6.B68 2004
321.9´0959 – dc22
2004041852

ISBN 978-0-521-83989-1 hardback

ISBN 978-0-521-10961-1 paperback
To my first teachers: Grace and Gordon.
 Contents

List of maps viii

Acknowledgments ix
List of abbreviations xi

1 Introduction 1
2 Protest, repression and transition in Southeast Asia 17
3 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise 37
4 Protest in socialist Burma 84
5 New Order repression and the Indonesian opposition 103
6 The Philippine new society and state repression 134
7 Repression and protest in comparative perspective 152
8 People power and insurgency in the Philippine transition 176
9 Protest and the underground in Burma 190
10 Indonesia’s democracy protests 215
11 Democracy protest and state repression 238

List of references 255

Index 282

vii
 Maps

1 Southeast Asia 5
2 Burma (Myanmar) 38
3 Indonesia 52
4 The Philippines 63

viii
 Acknowledgments

It would be hard to imagine a single country specialist, as I have been,

undertaking a comparative work of this nature without generous and
substantial help from many people. I have been fortunate to receive
such assistance, in more ways than I can detail here. A great many of
my debts to individuals stem from a larger and more fundamental debt
I have to George McT Kahin, and Benedict Anderson, under whose direct
influence a cohort of remarkable young scholars formed at Cornell
University in the early 1990s. These people thought new thoughts about
places like Indonesia, Burma and The Philippines, and, more important,
had been taught to treat one another as colleagues, collaborators, and
friends. Many of this number helped teach me about Indonesia and
Burma with grace, kindness, and more than a little indulgence. I am
grateful to this group of colleagues, but also understand that such a
group does not form by itself. We all benefited from the generous shadow
cast by Professors Anderson and Kahin.
Some of my deepest debts are almost certainly to those who helped me
in the field. In Indonesia, I would have been lost without the hospitality of
Sarah Maxim and Nobertus Nuranto, the great support of Benny
Subianto, and the deep insights of the wild and wonderful Douglas
Kammen. Others helped as well: Laksono, Father Budi, Made Tony
Supriatma, Joel Tesoro, Daniel Dhakidae, Amrih Widodo and Andrew
Abalahin. I spoke to many people in Indonesia, some quoted or refer-
enced in what follows, and some who provided me with background
information, insight, contacts of encouragement. Thank you all.
In the Philippines, I have more experience and a more varied list of
creditors. I married into a family replete with activists, many of whom
helped shape my ideas about Philippine protest, which were my initial
foundation for these comparisons. Marivic Raquiza and Fidel Nemenzo,
Dodong and Princess Nemenzo, and my own Toinette have been teach-
ing me about Philippine politics for years, with no sign of letting up.
Others at and around the University of the Philippines also helped
shape this work: Maricris Valte, the scholars, at different times, in the
ix
x Acknowledgments

Third World Studies Center (where I first presented my ideas about these
cases) and at the Center for Integrated Development Studies come most
immediately to mind. My Philippine family – brothers and sisters-in-law,
nieces, nephews, my astounding mother-in-law, and an extensive and
wonderful barkada – helped make my two years of field work a walk in the
park.
My most poignant debts are to Burmese people, who spoke to me at
length though they knew me not at all – and who risked more than I can
calculate in those discussions. I cannot acknowledge you here, for
obvious reasons – and that is a bitter thing. Some day, I will be able to
say that the remarkable poet or activist or lawyer quoted in this passage, or
that, was named X. I have not forgotten any of you, and will be grateful
forever. The reason these people did talk to me – besides their great
kindness – was that the story of 1988, in the details they revealed, weighed
heavy on them. To carry this sort of news is an important and sacred
charge. I hope I have been up to the task. I did have one kind and capable
interlocutor outside of Burma, who I am able to name, though never
repay: Kyaw Yin Hlaing, my brother and friend, has done so much to help
me, I wouldn’t know where to start thanking him.
Many American academics helped me refine and sharpen this work,
but I owe particularly great debts to two people, who read this work at just
the right time, offering encouragement and criticism in just the right mix
to help me along. Mary Callahan helped me with her exceptional knack
for comparative thinking and her deep insights into Burmese politics. She
has been a net stretched beneath the high-wire act of my foray into
Burmese politics. I wonder if any acrobat was ever so grateful for a net.
Elizabeth Wood shared her generous insights about repression, protest
and clear thinking.
I have others to thank. Charles Tilly played innkeeper as the usual
patrons of his Contentious Politics Workshop stomped and stroked var-
ious sections of this work over the past few years. John Krinsky, Jeff
Goodwin, Linda Gordon, Roy Licklider, Elizabeth Remmick, David
Meyer, Francis Piven, Benedict Anderson, Christian Davenport, Mary
Katzenstein, Sidney Tarrow, Carol Mueller and Hank Johnston all looked
at some portion of this work at some stage, to my great benefit. Three
graduate students, Yujin Ha, Begi Hersutanto and Miriam Jimenez
helped me with data analysis crucial to developing the Indonesian section
of this work – much of it during an exhausting home stretch run.
And every day, Toinette has been prepared to encourage, criticize or
scold me, depending on what I deserved.
Thank you, one and all.
 Abbreviations

A6LM April 6th Liberation Movement (Philippines)

ABRI Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia (Armed Forces
of the Republic of Indonesia)
AFL-CIO American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial
Organizations
AFO Anti-Fascist Organization (Burma)
AFP Armed Forces of the Philippines
AFPFL Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (Burma)
AMRSP Association of Major Religious Superiors of the
Philippines
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
BANDILLA Bansang Nagkaisa sa Diwa at Layunin (The Nation,
Unified in Spirit and Purpose)
BAYAN Bagong Alyansa Makabayan (New Nationalist Alliance,
Philippines)
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
BCP Burma Communist Party
BIA Burma Independence Army
BISIG Bukluran sa Ikauunlad ng Soyalistang Isip at Gawa
(Federation for the Advancement of Socialist Theory
and Praxis, Philippines)
BMP Bukluran ng mga Mangagawang Pilipino (Association of
Filipino Workers)
BNA Burmese National Army
BSPP Burma Socialist Program Party
BTUC Burma Trade Union Congress
BWPP Burma Workers and Peasants Party
CBCP Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines
CGSC Command and General Staff College (Philippines)
CIA Central Intelligence Agency (USA)
CIDES Center for Information and Development Studies
CNL Christians for National Liberation (Philippines)
xi
xii List of abbreviations

CORD Coalition of Organizations for the Restoration of

Democracy (Philippines)
CPB Communist Party of Burma
CPP Communist Party of the Philippines
DA Democratic Alliance (Philippines)
DM Dewan Mahasiswa (Student Council, Indonesia)
DPR Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (People’s Representative
Council)
DSO Democratic Students Organization (Burma)
EDSA Epifanio delos Santos Avenue
FBIS Foreign Broadcast Information Service
FBSI Federasi Buruh Seluruh Indonesia (All-Indonesia Workers’
Federation)
FFF Federation of Free Farmers (Philippines)
FFW Federation of Free Workers (Philippines)
FLAG Free Legal Assistance Group
GABRIELA General Assembly Binding Women for Reforms,
Integrity, Equality, Leadership and Action (Philippines)
GAPUR Gerakan Pemyimpkan Uang Rakyat (Movement to Save
the People’s Money, Indonesia)
GOLKAR Golongan Karya (Functional Groups, Indonesia)
Golput Golongan Puti (White Group, Indonesia)
HMI Himpunan Mahhasiswa Islam (Association of Islamic
Students)
IBP Interim Batasaan Pambansa (Interim National Legislature)
IIRB the Indonesian Islamic Revolutionary Board
IMF International Monetary Fund
IPMI Ikatan Pers Mashasiswa Indonesia (Indonesian Student
Press Union)
JAJA Justice for Aquino, Justice for All (Philipines)
KAK Komite Anti-Korupsi (Anti-Corruption Committee)
KAMI Kesatuan Aksi Mahasiswa Indonesia (Indonesian United
Student Action)
KAP Katipunan ng mga Anak-Pawis (Proletarian Labor
Congress, Philippines)
KAPPI Kesatuan Aksi Pelajar Pelajar Indonesia (Indonesian
Students’ Action Front)
KASAPI Kapulungan ng Mga Sandigan ng Pilipinas (Organization
of Defenders of the Philippines)
KEPARAD Komite Perjuangan Rakyat anti Dwi Fungsi (Committee
for the Struggle Against Armed Forces Dual Function)
 List of abbreviations xiii

KIPP Komiti Independen Pemantau Pemilu (Independent

Election Monitoring Committee)
KKN Komite Kabanggaan Nasional (Committee for National
Development)
KM Kabataan Makabayan (Nationalist Youth, Philippines)
KMP Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Movement of
Philippine Peasants)
KMT Kuomintang
KMU Kilusang Mayo Uno
KNPI Kesatuan Nasional Pemuda Indonesia
KOMPIL Kongresso ng Mamamayan Pilipino (Congress of the
Filipino People)
KOSTRAD Komando Cadangan Strategis Angkatan Darat (Army
Strategic Reserve Command, Indonesia)
LABAN Lakas ng Bayan (Strength of the Nation)
LAFM Light a Fire Movement (Philippines)
LBH Lembaga Bantuan Hukum (Legal Aid Foundation,
Indonesia)
LDC Least Developed Country
LSM Lembaga Swadaya Masyarakat (Private Social Organ-
izations – the Indonesian equivalent of the NGO).
Malari Malapetaka Januari (January Disaster, Indonesia)
MNLF Moro National Liberation Front
MPR Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat (People’s Consultative
Assembly, Indonesia)
MR Manila Rizal (Regional Branch of the CPP)
NAMFREL National Movement for Free Elections
NCHR National Committee on Human Rights
ND National Democratic (Philippines)
NDCP National Defense College of the Philippines
NDF National Democratic Front (Philippines)
NGO Non-Governmental Organization
NII Negera Islam Indonesia (Indonesian Islamic State)
NKK/BKK Normalasisi Kahidupan Kampus/Baden Koordinisisi
Kamahahsiswaan (Normalization of Campus Life/
Body to Coordinate Students, Indonesia)
NMFJP National Movement for Freedom Justice and Democracy,
Philippines
NPA New People’s Army (Philippines)
NU Nataduul Ulama (Indonesia)
NUF National United Front (Burma)
NUSP National Union of Student of the Philippines
xiv List of abbreviations

Ormas Mass Organization (Indonesia)

PD Presidential Decree (Philippines)
PDI Partai Demokrasi Indonesia (Indonesian Democratic
Party)
PDP Parliamentary Democracy Party (Burma)
PDP-LABAN Partido Demikratiko ng Pilipina-Lakas ng Bayan
(Philippine Democratic Party-Strength of the Nation)
PDSP Philippine Democratic Socialist Party
PETA Pembela Tanah Air Defenders of the Fatherland
(Indonesia)
Petrus Penembakan Misterius (Mysterious Shootings, Indonesia)
PI Perhimpuan Indonesia (Indonesian Association)
PKI Partai Komunis Indonesia (Indonesian Communist
Party)
PKI Perserikatan Kamunis di India (India Communist Party)
PKP Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (Communist Party of the
Philippines)
PMII Pergerakan Mahasiswa Islam Indonesia (Movement of
Islamic Students of Indonesia)
PNI Partai Nasionalis Indonesia (Indonesian Nationalist
Party)
PPBI Pusat Perjuangan Buruh Indonesia (Indonesian Center
for Labor Struggle)
PPP Partai Persatuan Pembangunan (United Development
Party)
PRD Partai Rakyat Demokrasi (People’s Democratic Party,
Indonesia)
PRP The People’s Revolutionary Party (Burma)
PRRI Pemerintahan Revolusioner Republik Indonesia (Revolu-
tionary Government Of The Republic of Indonesia)
PUDI Partai Uni Demokrasi Indonesia (United Democratic
Party of Indonesia)
PVO People’s Volunteer Organization (Burma)
RAM Reform Armed Forces Movement (Philippines)
RC Revolutionary Council (Burma)
RIT Rangoon Institute of Technology (Burma)
ROTC Reserve Officer Training Corps
RPKAD Resimen Para Komando Angkatan Darat (Indonesian
Special Forces)
RU Rangoon University (Burma)
SAC Security and Administration Committee (Burma)
 List of abbreviations xv

SAMAKANA Samahan ng mga Malayang Kababaihan na Nagkakaisa

(The Movement of Free and Unified Women,
Philippines)
SBSI Sejahtera Buru Seriket Indonesia (Prosperous Workers’
Union of Indonesia)
SD Social Democratic (Philippines)
SI Seriket Islam (Islamic Union, Indonesia)
SLORC State Law and Order Restoration Committee (Burma)
SMID Solidaritas Mahasiswa Indonesia untuk Demokrasi
(Student Solidarity for Indonesian Democracy)
SMPT Senat Mahasiswa Perguruan Tinggi (University Student
Senate)
SOKSI Seriket Organisasi Karyawan Socialis Indonesia (Union of
Indonesian Socialist Karaywan Organizations)
SPSI Seriket Pekerja Seluruh Indonesia (The All Indonesia
Workers’ Union)
STI Seriket Tani Nasional (National Peasants Union,
Indonesia)
SUF Student United Front (Burma)
TGPF Tim Gabungan Pencari Fakta (Consolidated Fact-
Finding Team)
TFD Task Force Detainees (Philippines)
TPC Township Peasant Councils (Burma)
UG Underground
UNDP United Nations Development Program
UNIDO United Nationalist Democratic Organization
UR University of Rangoon
VOA Voice of America
VOC Village Organizing Councils
WOMB Women Against Marcos Boycott (Philippines)
1 Introduction

There are times and places about which nothing seems more significant
than the sheer energy and violence that states direct against basic free-
doms. The snippets of information that filter from these dictatorial sea-
sons – tales of furtive hiding and tragic discovery: hard times and uneasy
sleep – describe lives utterly structured by state repression. Authoritarians
bent on taking power, consolidating their rule or seizing resources fre-
quently silence opponents with bludgeons, bullets and shallow graves,
and those who find themselves in the path of the state juggernaut prob-
ably have trouble even imagining protest or resistance without also cal-
culating the severity or likelihood of state repression. Such considerations
surely influence whether individuals take action or maintain a frustrated
silence, and will over time broadly shape protest and resistance. They also
influence what modes of democracy struggle will emerge or succeed in a
given setting. Democracy movements arise against established patterns of
contention: their timing, base, and outcome reflect state-movement
interactions begun at the dictatorship’s outset and reproduced (with
adjustments) thereafter, in interactions between repression and conten-
tion. Institutions and repertoires of contention that survive, or are
ignored by, state repression inform important aspects of anti-dictatorship
movements, and influence the role that protest plays in transitions to
democracy.
Analysts, however, have seldom attempted to understand modes of
protest in authoritarian settings – or indeed elsewhere – via its relationship
to styles of state repression. More often, we have been concerned with
quantitative associations between the degree of repression and the extent
of protest.1 Such associations, however, may miss the strategic heart of
political contention, in which authorities try to undermine or capture
movement activists, discredit their lines of argument, interdict their
connection to supporters, and eliminate opportunities for mobilization,

1
Duff and McCamant 1976; Duvall and Shamir 1980; Rummel 1984; Opp 1989.

1
2 Introduction

while movement leaders build on whatever opportunities they have, and

endeavor to fit activity to specific sets of constraints. To grasp how
authoritarian states influence protest requires distinctions among repressive
strategies, and explanations of how these differences influence political
contention.
But how should one distinguish among repressive regimes? How does
one gauge authoritarian rule’s influences on social protest and dissent?
Quantitative answers imagine a more or less linear continuum from utter
dictatorship to pure democracy, and locate repression at some point
along this range. To fix a regime’s character, one gathers information
about its degree of openness or brutality. It makes sense, in this view, to
ask whether Nigeria or Cambodia is more repressive, and to develop
answers based on how often elections, political murders, or press closings
take place. In this approach, one can define repression independently of
its political consequences, and include physical violence, arrest, prevent-
ing assembly and expression, and perhaps even threats to do any of these
things. For those compelled to live under a specific repressive regime,
however, repression’s form may be as important as its extent. A formally
democratic state that periodically kills ethnic minorities profoundly
affects members of that group. Authorities who tolerate student demon-
strations but shoot up picket lines will encourage different contentious
forms than those that allow labor a freer hand but clamp down on campus
activism. Those who challenge authoritarians – particularly consolidating
authoritarians – face off against active, calculating and often cruel adver-
saries. Citizens cannot plan a strike, a demonstration, a boycott or often
even a poetry reading without concern for state reaction, and it makes
sense that labor leaders, activists and poets will seek to anticipate, and
somehow outflank, state repression.
Authorities facing actual or likely social challenge may attempt to
prevent, interrupt or punish dissident expressions in acts we call repres-
sion. Following others, we define repression functionally, as coercive acts
or threats that weaken resistance to authorities’ will.2 Defined in these
terms, repression runs a broad gamut from physically harming members
of society (i.e. summary execution and torture) to limiting activity (i.e.
close surveillance, threats, warnings). Our definition regards repression
contingently: we will see, for instance, that Indonesian officials often
issued threats to dissidents that were expressed in terms of outward
support or at least permission. On some universal scale of repression
based on quanta of violence or overt menace, such supporting remarks

2
Stohl and Lopez 1984: 7; Henderson 1991: 121.
 Introduction 3

would likely not qualify. Viewed in relation to the Indonesian historical

context of punishment and threat, however, they certainly do.
This work explores how particular modes of state attack encourage
specific patterns of political contention. Regime opponents anticipate
state activity, search out its pattern, and in light of that pattern, calibrate
movement practice to navigate between the innocuous and the suicidal.
Some movements abandon activist forms crushed by surveillance and
violence, others challenge prohibitions, or act evasively. Impending or
recollected repression warns protesters away from some acts, and pushes
them toward others, either because of the collective memory or more
direct menace. Some dissidents are schooled by older comrades; others
are haunted by their elimination. Apart from activists’ explicit percep-
tions and intentions, moreover, state repression influences protest and
resistance by changing movement organizations and oppositional cul-
tures. Repressive patterns sometimes emerge with relative clarity, and
I examine how and why this might be so. But even where state activity is
more erratic, dissidents will have little choice but to forecast and adjust to
state repression, because heedless mobilization carries such high costs in
authoritarian settings.
I compare the Burmese, Indonesian and Philippine cases to illustrate
the variety of repressive strategies available to states, and the connection
between each strategy and modes of collective action and resistance. In
defining the universe of cases in this way, I hope to persuade readers that
repression does not operate in similar ways across settings, nor does it
vary systematically between more and less democratic or developed
settings. Careful comparison among these countries persuades me that
case-specific interaction between authorities and challengers, identified
most starkly by different patterns of political repression, initiate path-
dependent sequences of contention. Naturally, contention in the cases will
respond to some common triggers. Philippine, Indonesian and Burmese
democracy movements, for instance, display some similar elements,
which may help to explain the occurrence of anti-regime mobilization.
A charismatic female leader led each, each unfolded during periods of
acute economic crisis, and each opposed a regime under increasing
international pressure. Still, important variations in the process and out-
come of struggle in each case reflect deeper and historically established
contentious patterns, patterns essential to understanding how economic
or political crisis play out.
The accounts begin with the rise of men who would become their
country’s most important post-war dictators – Ne Win, Suharto and
Ferdinand Marcos. Each developed initial strategies of attack to secure
and consolidate power, and these strategies provided templates for later
4 Introduction

state activity, although this activity also developed and evolved over time
for each. Repression in the cases sorts into three simple models. Ne Win
moved with swift and deadly violence against any open protest or dissent
in lowland Burma, driving resistance underground or to the country’s
frontier-based insurgencies. Suharto murdered an astounding number of
Indonesian communists in the PKI (Partia Komunis Indonesia,
Indonesian Communist Party) then rooted out or constrained other
opposition organizations, but less regularly had authorities attack demon-
strations, particularly in urban, or central areas. Ferdinand Marcos’s
contradictory efforts to terrorize opponents and legitimize his regime
required that he divide insurgents from moderate, less-organized and
semi-legal activists. From these beginnings, regimes and movements
tried to thwart one another by adjusting to new threats and opportunities,
learning from mistakes, adapting to new conditions.
Interactions between state repression and movement response (what
I will refer to as patterns of political contention) establish broader themes
in mobilization and demobilization by underwriting context-specific
ideas about what constitutes a political opportunity, what movement
goals will attract support, and what modes of struggle will likely prosper.
Roughly similar events in different settings – elections, newly restrictive
press laws, and economic downturns – produce radically different modes
of political contention. Over time, a relational logic emerges in the state
and social sides of political struggle that informs authorities’ views about
the difference between harmless and subversive mobilization, governs
what challenges provoke state attacks, and structures consequent political
contention. I work from these patterned relations toward a perspective on
the confrontations between state and democracy movement that ended
each dictator’s reign.

Three state attacks and movement legacies

A dictatorship may impose itself on society most powerfully in grinding
daily encounters between authority and subjects. Nevertheless, author-
ities often etch the lessons, threats and warnings fundamental to the
regime in extraordinary moments of confrontation and repression. At
such times, the state wades into society to emphasize or rewrite its rules,
often via attacks that crush some opponents and eliminate some modes of
activism. Across time and space, moreover, authorities often choose
between clearly distinct patterns of repression. Human rights advocates
and journalists may dwell on regime brutality as unreasoning and
inhuman. Yet something more menacing than lapses in rationality or compas-
sion probably guides many attacks: a cold logic and methodology geared
Map 1 Southeast Asia
6 Introduction

to specific objectives that constitute clear political lessons and more veiled
threats to generations of dissidents. State attacks leave legacies of fear and
caution that realign authoritarian rule and social resistance for years.
Consider, the rough outline of three political and military coups.
Just over three months after seizing power in March 1962, members of
the Burmese military, or Tatmadaw, arrived at Rangoon University’s
campus to confront student protests. On that day, demonstrators stood
near the university’s student union-building, from where they denounced
military rule and protested General Ne Win’s coup. Several uncertain
minutes after the soldiers surrounded the building, students shook off
their initial apprehension, and some even shouted insults at the soldiers.
A uniformed figure separated from the uniformed ranks, gave a signaling
wave, and the troops opened fire. Many students were wounded, killed,
or arrested, while others took shelter within the union building. Hours
later, military personnel padlocked the building and dynamited it to the
ground – killing a still undetermined number hiding within.3 According
to many, the attack shocked Burmese observers, but so did the status of
the target in their national pantheon. Burmese students in the anti-British
nationalist movement had erected that student union, under British
auspices, after pitched struggle. It figured centrally in the independence
struggle, had sheltered students in the first nationalist organizations, had
been a nationalist womb and shrine for over thirty years.4 The shootings
and explosion constituted the opening moment in the new regime’s
campaign utterly to prevent protest in post-coup Burma; there could
not have been a more pointed or dramatic place to deliver the opening
salvo. In its aftermath, student activists one by one slipped into the
countryside to join insurgent and underground forces. Between 1962
and 1988, fewer than six demonstrations, clustered in 1968 and around
1974 to 1975, disturbed the urban peace Ne Win built that day; all ended
in bloodshed.5
A different sort of murder began in late October 1965 in Indonesia.
There, ABRI (Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia, the Armed Forces
of the Republic of Indonesia) set out to consolidate power after out-
maneuvering an attempted coup, most likely planned by junior officers
from Central Java. Seven of ABRI’s most senior officers died in that coup,

3
Accounts on the exact character of the attack, and the body count, vary. Smith (1997)
quotes The Times (July 9, 1962) that the death toll was in the thousands with students
inside the union. Lintner (1994, 1990) quite definitively asserts that students were inside
the building, while Silverstein and Wohl (1964) report fewer deaths, and an empty
building.
4
Moscotti 1974.
5
Lintner 1994.
 Three state attacks and movement legacies 7

and only General Suharto, then commanding the KOSTRAD (Komando

Cadangan Strategis Angkatan Darat, or Army Strategic Reserve
Command) seemed positioned to turn back the challenge. In this
moment (or perhaps sometime earlier) Suharto glimpsed an opportunity
to eliminate ABRI’s arch-rival for national power, the PKI; under his
leadership, the army stirred the flames of suspicion surrounding the PKI’s
role in the coup to full-throated outrage. By the end of October, soldiers
led a campaign to murder and arrest Indonesian communists, for which
they found willing allies in some rural, largely Islamic groups.6 Six
months later, between 300,000 and 1,000,000 people were dead, mainly
on Java, Bali and Sumatra.7 Soldiers carried out a great many of these
killings, but also provided logistical and intelligence support, as well as
ideological encouragement to civilian groups. It bears mention that the
American CIA also contributed intelligence to the operation.8 When the
killings stopped, no organized opposition to Suharto existed. Except for
separatist movements in Aceh, Irian Jaya and East Timor, the New Order
state virtually prevented organized opposition to its rule from that point
forward.9
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, elected once by popular vote
and once by massive fraud, decided in mid-1972 that he was through with
constitutional restraints on his power, and declared martial law. To that
point, his regime had already done much to concentrate traditionally
decentralized power in the national executive. Under martial law,
Marcos suspended civil institutions like the Supreme Court and
Legislature, and thereafter ruled via unilateral presidential decree. In
the days following the September 23 public declaration of martial law,
moreover, he imprisoned his parliamentary rivals and a broad range of
activists from campuses, labor unions and the recently organized
Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Four months later, accord-
ing to an Amnesty International report, some 30,000 people had been
detained.10 For a time, under state pressure, the urban sites of protest –
the Plaza Miranda, Mendiola Bridge, and the Liwasang Bonifacio – were
becalmed. In the countryside, invigorated military pursuit dealt heavy
setbacks to the armed CPP/NPA (New People’s Army) insurgency.

6
Anderson and McVey 1971; Crouch 1978: Schulte-Nordholdt 1987.
7
Collin Cribb provides a sensitive account of the difficulties surrounding any effort
definitively to count the number of people killed in the massacre. His survey of different
efforts to arrive at a final tally includes more than twenty attempts, which range from
low estimates of 150,000 killed to a high of 1,000,000, Cribb 1990: 12.
8
See Simmons 2000: 179–181; and Robinson 1984; Scott 1985.
9
Cribb 1990; Fein 1993; Robinson 1995.
10
Amnesty International 1977.
8 Introduction

However, Marcos was more dependent on US support than either Ne

Win or Suharto, and from the first he tried to legitimize martial law to
placate American policymakers. This effort gave elite oppositionists,
many of whom were soon released from jail, opportunities to position
themselves against the regime. Meanwhile, Marcos’s heavy-handed
counterinsurgency in the countryside was undermined by the dictates of
fighting the Muslim insurgency in the South, and by Marcos’s greater
attention to state building. Hence by 1975, both the urban protest move-
ment and the organized rural insurgency had rebounded, and remained
active (sometimes operating in tandem, often separately) through
Marcos’s remaining years as president.11
How should one think comparatively about these cases? The social
movements literature has often treated Third World cases mainly as
contrasts to industrial society.12 If we think along these lines, we may
well consider it appropriate to describe the three as similar: generic Third
World, authoritarian or even Southeast Asian examples of state crackdowns
on social opposition. Each state attempted to expand and consolidate
strong central power, and to that end threw off earlier post-colonial
regimes. We might note authorities’ apparently easy resort to violence, or
recognize that in the Cold War’s descending darkness, each attack (even in
socialist Burma) hoisted the pennant of anti-communism, and used it for
decades to justify some of the region’s most horrific abuses.
Yet perhaps more interesting comparative gains await those willing to
explore differences among Indonesia, Burma and the Philippines, and to
consider broad possibilities for how states may respond to opposition. If
we think about repression as strategic, we might ask where and how it
occurs, and with what legacies. We would soon discover important diver-
sity across the three cases, hints of larger comparative issues. The
Burmese military killed students engaged in urban protest, and then
devoted its greatest attention to eliminating any visible sign of dissent
from their society. After the 1962 student-union massacre shocked
Burmese society into silence, the government set to work eliminating
protest from Burmese society, and particularly from the cities. Most activists
evaded detection by taking great care and few risks. Some students with-
drew into an underground existence, and in 1964 joined BCP (Burma
Communist Party) cadres in their countryside bases. Authorities made
little effort to stop the student exodus, and seemed content to police
urban territory and quash the threat of new mass protest. The regime

11
Wurfel 1988; Thompson 1995.
12
Boudreau 1996; Ponna 1993.
 Three state attacks and movement legacies 9

was then also busy eliminating structures and institutions that supported
student protest (at first), and broader dissent thereafter. Throughout, the
shock of the campus murders underscored the deadly consequences of
renewed protest or open dissent.
Indonesian state violence eliminated the PKI’s entire organization –
first killing many of its members and then driving others into hiding or
silence. The slaughter reached the greatest heights in rural areas where
the communist party had strong support from rural farmers – which hints
at an important strategic decision. Forces working to seize and consoli-
date national power may first build countryside bases in preparation for
larger and more central battles – a classic guerilla strategy. But why would
a powerfully central institution like ABRI so strongly focus on provincial
struggles, and not concentrate most on wresting control from civil
authority in the cities (as the Tatmadaw had done in Burma)? Indeed, in
the midst of the struggle between an increasingly weakened Sukarno and
a rising Suharto, the General took an instructive gamble: he allowed and
encouraged Indonesian students to protest against the president.
Admittedly, these protests allied themselves with the military leadership.
Yet mass demonstrations are risky and unpredictable affairs, less con-
genial tools than others a hierarchical military might take up.
Here, then, we find two contrasts between the Indonesian and the
Burmese assaults: first, and most clearly, while the Tatmadaw eliminated
protest but allowed protesters to escape into the underground, ABRI
killed members of the communist organization, but allowed protest to
occur in the cities, even after those protests began to turn against his rule.
Second, the Burmese fought the students in the cities to claim that
strategic territory, but Suharto eliminated a rival organization – and
devoted most attention to areas where the PKI was strongest – even if
this meant taking the struggle to places like Bali and Northern Sumatra
with comparatively less strategic value. Indeed, in Java’s largest and most
central cities, he allowed the largest and most organized protests.
In contrast, Marcos’s martial law struck at both opposition organiza-
tions and protest, but with considerably less vigor or focus. Campaigns
against insurgent organizations and more moderate protesters betrayed
some equivocation on the new dictator’s part. Under US pressure, and
more a politician himself than either Suharto or Ne Win, Marcos was
unable to keep most parliamentary opponents jailed for more than several
months. Many had advance warning and slipped away to the United
States or into the countryside before or during the clampdown. The
military’s efforts against the insurgency never achieved the energy or
ruthlessness that Suharto mustered against the PKI, nor did Marcos
have existing anti-communist antagonisms in his society such as those
10 Introduction

that accelerated the Indonesian slaughter, for communism had shallow

roots in Philippine experience. Marcos, in fact, devoted less of his initial
attention to specific opponents than to reworking the Philippine state’s
legal and institutional foundations to expand his power. In contrast,
Suharto wiped out the PKI before constructing the New Order’s appar-
atus, and Burma waited twelve years for its socialist constitution.
What lessons do these comparisons yield? The scope of state violence
differs sharply among the cases. The Indonesian massacre far outstrips
anything in Burma or the Philippines, and Burma’s crackdown was more
violent than Philippine events. These differences do influence subsequent
patterns of contention, particularly in Indonesia, where the specter of
mass murder haunts all forms of dissent. But more than levels of violence,
sharper and more significant differences in the logics of violence and
repression distinguish the cases from one another. Burmese authorities
drove all dissent far underground, where it was preserved but encapsu-
lated in the form of armed insurgencies or secret cells. The Indonesian
campaign against the PKI began a consistent state effort to draw an
uncompromising line this side of organization: dissidents could protest,
but protesters could not organize. Hence the Burmese and Indonesian
state strategies exactly reversed one another. The Philippine effort fell
somewhere in between, for Marcos was able neither decisively to elim-
inate the armed insurgent organization or its underground party, nor long
silence less-organized, more moderate and open protest. After their
authoritarian onsets, actors in each state developed new plans to defeat
resistance and extend power, but generally built on and refreshed the
politico-institutional legacies of the original attack.
Of these legacies, which are most important? I concentrate on three.
The first is institutional and material. State repression killed, bruised,
imprisoned and terrified citizens, but seldom indiscriminately. Most
focused on specific targets, and so shaped the material and organizational
resources that survived, promoting political forms that escaped the state’s
most direct proscription. Often, forms that authorities judge least threat-
ening survived – as with student protests in 1970s Indonesia. Elsewhere,
forms survived because authorities had neither the capacity nor will to
defeat them – as with insurgencies in both the Philippines and Burma.
Activist forms and organizations, however, do not exist independently of
activists. Repression shapes the duration, direction and intensity of activ-
ist careers in ways that profoundly influence political contention. Where
activist forms and organizations survive state attack, generations of
experienced dissidents bring their accumulated wisdom and leadership
to the struggle, and provide a thicker and more complex network of
support for new protest. Elsewhere, authorities may eliminate entire
 Three state attacks and movement legacies 11

activist generations, and deprive new claim makers of experienced lead-

ers. Activists in well-elaborated movement structures that include an
insurgent army and overseas solidarity branches may sustain a lifetime
of struggle. Where repression crushed supporting institutions, activist
careers will be shorter, and either more precarious or less committed.
Deprived of activist organizations, for example, Burmese and Indonesian
dissidents could muster only short bursts of activity and ultimately had
little choice, as individuals, but to join the authoritarian mainstream.
The second legacy is tactical and interpretive. Although state attacks
target specific adversaries and challengers, they place entire societies on
notice, establishing patterns and expectations against which dissidents
assess any activity’s probable consequences. Here one finds an important
contrast with protest in industrial democracies. Activists under more
moderate regimes can focus on concerns about recruitment, publicity
and movement outcomes, for regime moderation narrows the general
possibility of direct repression. The observation, of course, is empirical
rather that categorical, and even liberal states sometimes attack demon-
strations.13 In contrast, movements under authoritarian regimes must
always anticipate state repression, and explicitly incorporate this antici-
pation into their plans. Movements that seriously challenge highly
regarded state interests may find themselves facing tear gas, gunfire,
arrest and summary execution. Some activists deliberately, or at least
with resignation, draw fire from the state – as we will see, Burmese
protests were cataclysmic and prone to violent escalation precisely
because most participants reasonably expected devastating repression.
Others plan to negotiate a line between utterly routine activity with little
effect and acts that will surely provoke repression. Sufficiently strong
movement capacities may allow activists to challenge state proscriptions,
while weaker movements may comply with them. Activist plans reflect
interpretations of past state responses to social challenges, and these
interpretations help establish which events constitute mobilizing
opportunities.
Third, historically patterned modes of contention create distinct move-
ment cultures in each setting. Often, the culture represents little more
than the combined effect of repression’s institutional/material and tact-
ical/political legacies. Yet operating within the constraints of these first
two legacies, activists work out ways of thinking politically, engaging
society and contesting authority. Even substantively moderate move-
ments in the Philippines adopted revolutionary forms and expressions,

13
Davenport 1999.
12 Introduction

while all Indonesian protest, including deeply repressed Marxist perspec-

tives, relied on circumspect and intellectualized assertions of moral sua-
sion. To describe such differences as inherently Filipino, Indonesian, or
Javanese, I argue, is less compelling than demonstrating how political
contention, and particularly the weight of state repression, worked to
change and shape activist cultures. In making the case, I look particularly
at how florid state violence at the dictator’s rise upset established patterns
and cultural expressions. Why do Filipino activists cherish ideological
debate, while Burmese protesters follow the flow of mass sentiment?
What accounts for the legalism of Indonesian movement discourse, or
the exalted place that public intellectuals hold in Jakarta’s reform move-
ment? The reckless violence of Burmese students, the obliqueness of New
Order intellectuals, the organization-minded radicalism of the Philippine
left, all emerged from the historical interplay of states and societies.
These three legacies combine to produce different patterns of political
contention, going forward, in the three countries. In Burma, protest was
a relatively rare but cataclysmic phenomenon. Cycles of rising, increasingly
organized protest occur at roughly decade-long intervals, triggered by
massive economic dislocation, marked by increasing organization and
coordination, and ending with escalating violence. Indonesian protest
was on the whole less rare, less violent, and more localized than
Burmese contention. Occasionally, protest produced massive rioting,
and authorities who responded to dissent with deadly force. Typically,
however, dissidents were tentative enough to avoid the starkest repression,
and unorganized enough for contention to remain atomized and sporadic.
Activist organizations dominated Philippine contention, sometimes steering
activity into electoral campaigns, sometimes directing efforts toward the
anti-state insurgency, but always in substantial control of when or where
protest would rise. These longer-term patterns of political contention,
moreover, shaped explosive democracy movements in each case, molding
both patterns of struggle, likely patterns of defection from the regime, and
movement outcomes. In each phase of the study, therefore, I am attempting
to identify and explain not mere repertoires of contentious forms, but
repertoires of contentious interaction.
The consequence of authoritarian regimes for political contention
requires such careful and individualized attention for several reasons.
First, they remain woefully understudied and under-theorized. It is diffi-
cult to begin making broad generalizations about authoritarian states and
social movements without first attempting focused analysis with firm
empirical foundations. My instinct in this endeavor brings me to carefully
focused comparison among these cases. Second, the authoritarian state’s
range of options may in fact be broader than those available to democratic
 On method and data 13

states. The openness of democratic societies, the relative ease with which
international media, organization and business penetrate liberal coun-
tries render them perhaps more similar and modular in their responses to
social movements. Secrecy and autonomy, however, the very lifeblood of
authoritarianism and cloistered states like those in Burma and Indonesia,
allow the coercive apparatus more leeway in repressive forms, producing
more varied patterns of contention. The expectation of variety
encourages a more open-ended approach to efforts at developing new
structural explanations for social protest under authoritarian rule. Where
clear patterns emerge from the comparison among careful case studies,
they may enable more certain and deft generalization. Finally, efforts to
develop connections between established theory and new cases often
encounter problems when analysts attempt a too literal transfer of indi-
cators and variables from one setting to another. Rather than mechanical
application, we need to reinterpret and sometimes translate theories for
application in new settings, in ways that preserve the original spirit of the
analysis.

On method and data

It does not take much field work in Burma, Indonesia or even the
Philippines before one is almost tempted to give up on social science
methodology. The problem is not simply that complete information on
protest is seldom available. Data are unavailable in different degrees
across cases, and similar collection methods seldom yield comparable
information. Even during martial law, Philippine demonstrations were
regularly recorded in national dailies, but the Burmese state entirely
controls the media and substitutes European football news for any infor-
mation about internal politics. Indonesian press restrictions wax and
wane in response to state pressure, and the media is often most devoid
of political stories when protest and strikes increase. Nor can one conduct
fieldwork in the similar ways in these countries. By the 1990s, Filipino
activists were quite willing to grant interviews with foreign researchers,
but Burmese who consented to be interviewed hazarded arrest and prison
terms. Most of the brave men and women I interviewed in Burma only
consented to talk provided that I did not record our conversations, and
even then risked so very much. (Yet many were also exceptionally eager to
reflect on 1988. I had the good fortune to arrive at Burma at a time when
movement participants were less interested in the polemics of the struggle
than in attempting to understand it, and that orientation enabled me to
have some remarkable conversations.) In Indonesia, I taped interviews
with activists and used press archives, but it was often, for reasons that
14 Introduction

directly bear on my argument, easier to find information on political ideas

than on events. Not surprisingly, then, interviews are perhaps least neces-
sary where they are most freely given. It is, of course, possible to get more
comparable data from external and secondary sources. Beginning in
1984, for example, wire reports became available via electronic Nexus/
Lexus services. For decades, the BBC and the US government’s Foreign
Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) have provided external data bases
for comparing protest across countries. Yet such sources surely labor
under the same constraints that hamper researchers, and so one again
expects the most complete information about Philippine protest and the
least complete and reliable on Burma.
At the work’s heart, perhaps unavoidably, lie differences in the empir-
ical foundations for each case: I hope to make amends for that inconsis-
tency with my comparative strategy, looking to uncover big patterns and
trends, rather than minute details of struggle in each setting. Even where
it may be impossible to reconstruct all details of any one struggle (or
counterproductive to recount only one case in detail) the broad compari-
sons among them help to build an argument about how analysts might
approach the study of protest in similar settings. In this objective, I am
encouraged by personal experience: in a decade’s study of Philippine
protest, I never understood how the armed and rural insurrection influ-
enced urban, legal and organizationally independent protest movements
fully until I examined first the Indonesian and then the Burmese cases,
both devoid of such interaction. Because the comparative objectives are
so central to this project, I make liberal use of secondary sources, and
often use my own fieldwork more to answer questions suggested by
comparisons among secondary accounts. Such narratives establish the
backdrop for my interview and archival research, and allow me to focus
on moments of new or heightened activity or state repression – asking why
things may have changed when and how they did – or why they did not. It
is in the comparative evaluations of answers to such questions that I hope
to make my biggest contribution.

Chapter outline
After this introduction, chapter 2 develops this work’s theoretical per-
spective, particularly how institutional/material, tactical/political, and
cultural legacies of authoritarian state repression shape protest. In that
chapter I distinguish my framework from the structural approaches
developed in relation to advanced industrial societies on which I still
deeply depend, and consider how analysis of post-colonial states requires
adjustments in these approaches. The chapter concludes with a discussion
 Chapter outline 15

of social movements theory and democratic transitions, arguing that

democracy protest represents a particular kind of collective contention.
Chapter 3 sets forth, and attempts to explain the differences in state
repression at each dictator’s rise. The discussion traces social and pol-
itical legacies of colonialism and decolonialization to patterns of contesta-
tion, threat and fear between rising dictators and other social forces.
Discussion then moves to the political and authoritarian norms manifest
in the state attack consolidated in the new authoritarian regime. The
chapter ends by considering the three cases comparatively.
The rest of the book is organized as two distinct clusters of chapters,
each beginning with three case-study chapters that consider Burma,
Indonesia and the Philippines in turn, followed by a comparative chapter
that reviews themes from the case studies, and develops comparisons
between them. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 each describe protest and contention
under one of the three dictatorships, beginning with sporadic and cata-
clysmic Burmese protest, the more constant but scattered, localized and
circumspect Indonesian protest, and the Philippine model of steadily
accumulating and increasingly mainstream revolutionary, and revolution-
esque opposition. Each discusses modes of state repression and social
resistance, noting the ways in which interactions between the two change
over time. Chapter 7 compares and integrates the cases. The final four
chapters examine the democracy movements in each case. Working
chronologically, chapter 8 discusses Philippine democracy protests,
chapter 9 concentrates on the Burmese uprising of 1988, and chapter
10 details the movement against Suharto in 1998. Chapter 11 compares
the three democracy movements, and also serves as a general conclusion
and summary.
This mode of presenting the material hopefully emphasizes my two
central objectives. First I wish to make broad argument about contentious
politics in these settings. The repressive activities of an active authoritar-
ian state represent important and indispensable aspects of the move-
ment’s political context and broadly shape political contention. A larger
point looms beyond this argument: in the contentious and often violent
struggles between Southern states and societies, the terms of interaction
between state and society often come down to more particular fights.
Figuring out how movements work demands sensitivity to context and
history. Of necessity, the work I present stays fairly close to the interesting
ground of political contention in Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines.
But I also hope to demonstrate how one must approach these questions in
places like those I study.
Second, regarding Southeast Asia, I hope in each case, and among the
comparative set, more accurately to indicate the elements of the state–society
16 Introduction

struggle that have influenced protest and resistance. By stepping back

somewhat from the details of any individual history and contrasting
events across settings, I try to single out the influences that shaped
protest, and describe more general patterns of state attack and movement
response. I think that this context-specific and comparative interpretation
of contention provides a useful antidote to generic interpretations of
democratization that pay little heed to individual country histories, and
concentrate instead on external pressures and inducements. State repres-
sion, social resistance and democracy struggle are intimately associated
with, and indebted to, contentious patterns worked out between dictators
and their oppositions over the years.
2 Protest, repression and transition in
Southeast Asia

Ideas about social conflict underwent a curious change over the twentieth
century’s last decades. At the height of the Cold War, contentious domes-
tic politics seemed always pregnant with broader conflagration. People on
both sides of the ideological fence associated social unrest with worldwide
subversion (or proletarian victory), falling dominoes (or a triumphant line
of march), and the descent into anarchy (or world historical progress).
Middle-class American college students in the 1960s joined ‘‘the revolu-
tion’’ while US intelligence officers viewed peasants scrambling to subsist
as communist operatives. Many then had difficulty recognizing that social
movements often pursued limited objectives from autonomous positions
rather than as parts of a larger revolutionary process. Decades after
Saigon’s ‘‘fall,’’ however, we face an almost complete reversal: as theories
about social movements gain credibility and explanatory power, the fears
and hopes about revolutionary challenges to state power have quietly
yielded to broader assumptions that struggle seeks more modulated
influence and access within prevailing systems.1 Increasingly, analysts
examine movement radicalization and violence as signs that participants
have become frustrated or disappointed in originally more civil programs
of struggle, rather than as inherent aspects of the struggle itself.2 Of
course, attachments to either revolutionary or social movement images
have important empirical foundations: for decades world communist
organizations did often support revolutions, even where these revolutions
remained grounded in local conditions, and the Soviet Union’s dissol-
ution, combined with a spate of apparent transitions to democracy,
encourage more reform-oriented, less revolutionary protest.3
Something important fell into the space between these two approaches,
however. For decades, movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America

1
Van Aelst and Walgrave 2000.
2
Tarrow 1998; White 1989; Zimmermann 1998.
3
Hipscher 1998; Lee 1998; Giugni, McAdam, and Tilly 1998; Garreton and Antonio
1996.

17
18 Protest, repression and transition

struggled against dictatorships. In the interval, we could look on these

contests with a sort of analytical patience, for each at least held the
potential for eventual state crisis and social polarization to render them
intelligible as preludes to a revolutionary climax. Yet as revolutionary
explosions failed to occur and scholarship moved from the anticipation of
revolution toward a social movement perspective,4 analysts also imported
assumptions and expectations culled from Northern protest, including
domesticating perspectives about the extent of movement demands (they
are limited), the methodology of change (movements seek influence
within existing arrangements), or the likely influence of state repression
(repression demobilizes protest).5 In Ne Win’s Burma, Suharto’s
Indonesia, Marcos’s Philippines and many other places, these assump-
tions impair analysis. Regimes in each country resort to repressive strat-
egies far outside any reasonable civil parameter, and repression’s extent
and nature greatly shape other aspects of political contention. Movement
objectives in each case depend on wider and more variable patterns of
state and social power: state repression shaped institutional and political
options available to movements, and so some activists operated primarily
through armed and underground struggle, others through civil associ-
ations, still others via unpredictable waves of popular unrest. Indonesian
activists prevented from building large opposition organizations often
demonstrated to influence or support particular state actors judged sym-
pathetic to their demands. Filipino activist organizations could draw on
both civil and insurgent formations, and pursued objectives ranging from
acquiring patronage resources, through promoting reform to pursuing
a state-replacing revolutionary program. Burmese dissidents could only
frame demands (when they could) in state-replacing terms. These differ-
ences, I argue, reflect the distinct influences of violent and repressive
regimes working according to particular strategies to control their
societies.
The political process model, with its careful attention to the conditions
that trigger and shape mobilization provides important signposts for our
analysis, but we must still rethink how this processes unfolds in the
different contexts of the global South. In many cases, we would be
particularly misled by assumptions and indicators designed to account
for civil demonstrations in prosperous liberal societies. In what follows,
I retheorize elements of the political process model for application to the
Southeast Asian context, both to further my own thinking about these

4
Smith and Haas 1997; Opp 1989; Kitschelt 1986; Kriesi et al. 1992; McAdam 1982;
Tarrow 1998.
5
Boudreau 1996.
 The post-colonial state and social challenges 19

three cases, and as a model for those who wish to undertake similar efforts
in relation to other areas of the world. Scholars of state repression in post-
Soviet successor states will naturally need to figure out unique puzzles in
that area of the world, as would any comparativist or area specialist. While
state activity depends on context-specific contests for power, I hope to
demonstrate that basic elements of political contention in many places
plausibly emerge from the interaction of repression and resistance.6 The
usefulness of these Southeast Asian cases is not, therefore, in their utter
uniqueness, but rather that state repression and social resistance in
Southeast Asia interacted to produce particularly salient patterns that
may have broader theory building and comparative utility.

The post-colonial state and social challenges

Processes of state and social formation in Africa and Southeast Asia were
in significant ways unique.7 In many post-colonial countries, including at
least two under consideration here, successor states at independence
were barely distinct from other groups striving to control government.
Decolonization often so drained state resources that apparent national
leaders and challengers stood on relatively equal footing.8 Southeast
Asian independence struggles and World War Two mobilized social
demand and reduced central state capacities. In Indonesia, this process
created myriad local and autonomous militia; in Burma, it produced a
single but ideologically diverse national leadership, and sharpened ethnic
antagonisms. In the Philippines (where, among these three cases, the
most unified and institutionally coherent apparatus existed) it still pro-
duced leftist challenges and fiscal crisis. Over time, from the jumble of
mobilized nationalist movements, post-colonial authorities consolidated
power. It is tempting to read history backward, as if one band of robbers
or heroes had from the outset been destined to rule. In truth, however, the
outcome of these power struggles was seldom evident beforehand, and
early post-colonial politics were often more contests among rival social
networks than between states and societies.
The prior emergence, under colonial auspices, of social networks cap-
able of mounting advanced forms of national or proto-national struggles
posed particular problems for post-colonial states, problems absent from
the global North. Consider the more familiar sequence of European state

6
This interactive approach picks up principles laid out in McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly
2001 (see especially pp. 44–63).
7
Young 1994.
8
Randall 1998; Alatas 1997; Migdal 1988.
20 Protest, repression and transition

and social emergence. Much of the literature argues that styles of protest
and collective tactics (commonly, the collective repertoire) develop in rela-
tion to opportunities and ideas enabled or endorsed by emerging state
institutions and expanding social networks. Under such influences, people
invent new forms of collective activity, which are then reproduced and
diffused. Charles Tilly describes how Britain’s evolving national parlia-
ment encouraged citizens to demonstrate in the national capital rather
than make local and unilateral attacks on tax collectors, landlords and the
like.9 Emerging national institutions both opened new venues for political
contention, and more obviously linked grievances to national policy.
Broader social connections allowed populations to synchronize claims
and form common cause, thereby encouraging national social move-
ments.10 Still, the new state institutions pre-dated, and could settle in
before these modes of challenge gathered steam – and so authorities could
develop a politics of scale while society remained localized and
fragmented.11
Consider a contrasting post-colonial experience, where the imperial
state’s centralized institutions and processes provided a prominent target
for national protest rather early in the game. Indigenous elite networks
germinated within the colonial regime, seeded by contacts in schools, the
local bureaucracy, and (sometimes) representative assemblies. Colonial
institutions, although nationalist targets, also helped colonial elites and
other members of local society develop the ideas, power and networks to
challenge foreign rule.12 The subsequent collapse of colonial regimes,
and the labored attempts of local successors to resuscitate its remnants on
indigenous foundations (with vastly diminished resources) rendered
post-colonial states far more vulnerable to, and less distinct from, other
social contenders.13 Each of the three new states we are concerned with,
moreover, gained independence after profoundly damaging World War
Two fighting – both under the initial Japanese occupation and at the
allies’ return. In some cases, the damage mainly crippled the infrastruc-
ture and economy, as in the Philippines. In Burma, the fighting also
shattered the last possibility of coherent and civil relations among differ-
ent ethnic groups. War-ravaged and cut off from metropolitan resources,
astride perhaps precociously mobilized societies, and attempting to

9
Tilly 1995.
10
Tarrow 1998.
11
Badie and Birnbaum 1983.
12
Anderson 1983a; Lockman 1988.
13
Migdal 1988.
 The post-colonial state and social challenges 21

measure up to colonial standards for administrative scope, each needed to

reconsolidate central state power.
The project often faced threats absent from Europe centuries earlier,
for the anti-colonial struggle had politicized social networks within which
post-war Southeast Asian leaders jostled one another for power – and the
post-colonial state’s initial social base reflects that struggle’s character
and extent. The prolonged, mobilizing Indonesian revolution produced
an energetic and diverse social base, while the managed transition to
independence in the Philippines allowed a narrow colonial elite to main-
tain power.14 In Burma, when the nationalist struggle moved to the final,
more negotiated settlement phase, nationalist elites narrowed their social
base, and important divisions among leaders emerged more clearly.
Weakened or divided independence coalitions proved volatile. In case
after case, some coalition faction seized the upper hand and drove erst-
while comrades to insurgent and revolutionary challenges. The relatively
equal capacities of new states and non-state challengers produced more
balanced, and so particularly dangerous struggles among them. For all
these reasons, the new Burmese, Indonesian and Philippine states first
spread their independent wings during perilous seasons. Confronting
comparatively daunting social challengers, authorities never developed
the prior political hegemony in advance of social mobilization that
allowed European states to face national social movements from a pos-
ition of comparative strength, because the colonial state (rather than
conditions at independence) had already called forth and shaped these
social challenges.
The juxtaposition of embryonic states and mobilized social networks
produced peculiar contentious dynamics. Institutionally weak and
resource poor, post-colonial states had comparatively little prestige or
authority with which to meet opponents. The institutions of emergent
rule may have looked amateurish and flimsy;15 the state’s ideological
ramparts may still have been under construction and easily breached.
New political personages could seem under-whelming and unsettled,
particularly in relation to nationalism’s sweeping promises.16
Authorities facing social challenges found themselves hard pressed and
beleaguered, and often fell back on sheer fire power.17 In this inhospitable

14
Anderson 1988.
15
Tarling 1998.
16
This also reflects modes of transition. Anderson calls attention to contrasts between the
opulence of Philippine assembly members and the simplicity of Indonesian nationalists.
Anderson 1998: 279.
17
Dinnen 1999; Linz and Chahabi 1998.
22 Protest, repression and transition

climate, post-colonial state leaders probably did not think about protest
and resistance as votes won or lost, as friction dragging on a favored
policy, or even as redistributive threats to property. Rather, they had
reason to fear the loss of power, the anger of adversaries, death and
retribution. This fear motivated a more strategic way of engaging political
protest and social movements. In the comparatively high-stakes struggle
for national power, state actors laid plans to disperse their most formidable
opponents.18 Officials, moreover, probably did not equally fear all oppon-
ents. Some dissidents exercised restraint, had limited resources, or
resources that did not threaten the regime’s particular purchase on
power. Other challengers, however, may have wielded sufficient power,
in precisely the most dangerous currency, to upset officials. Perhaps they
possessed a strong organization, key links to international backers, or a
powerful popular base. Depending on the foundations of state power –
which naturally vary from case to case – one or another such opposition
movement may loom particularly large and inspire special modes of
repression. Authorities needed to decide whom to fear, to what extent,
and with what consequences.

The active state and social movements theory

Structural models of political contention concentrate on how both stable
and volatile environmental conditions influence social mobilization.19
Some analysts examine how the institutional legacies of long-term pro-
cesses like state building influence collective repertoires;20 others note
how volatile structural changes increase or decrease political opportun-
ities for mobilization.21 Discussions on either side of this divide, how-
ever, depict the state as oddly passive and dominated by institutional
features, rather than by strategy.22 Centralized states funnel protest in
national directions as a deep ravine forces water into narrow cascades,
and decentralized states encourage local and diffused expressions of
claim making, the way a delta dissipates a slow river. Even more dynamic
state programs and interests emerge in the language of architecture and
geography: a president’s sympathy may open new doors for a movement;
a woman’s promotion to the justice department may improve the terrain
for women’s struggles. Under some conditions, of course, this image may

18
Brown 1996.
19
Gamson and Meyer 1996; Tilly 1995.
20
Eisinger 1973; Tilly 1978; Kitschelt 1986; Tilly 1986; Tilly 1995.
21
McAdam 1982; Tarrow 1998; McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2001.
22
Hoover and Kowalewski 1991: 151.
 The active state and social movements theory 23

make sense: where officials are relatively secure, they may meet claim
making with lethargy and organizational routines, and not fret over their
hold on power. Even so, research on state repression in advanced indus-
trial democracies is replete with examples of exceptionally active states
taking explicit aim at dissidents.23
But even if descriptions of state lethargy appropriately capture institu-
tionalized and secure states’ responses to protest, they fail in connection
to more besieged Southeast Asian state actors in the immediate post-
colonial period. The Burmese and Indonesian states were particularly
fluid, composed of politicians, soldiers, revolutionaries and clerks all
trying to grasp the new roles into which they had been thrust. Especially
in the decades following independence, Southeast Asian states were every
bit as much in motion as their societies. How should we adjust our
analytic approach to explain how calculating authorities operating in
fluid state organizations respond to pressure from powerful social forces?
First, we anticipate that state survival, rather than mere police practice,
biases or cultures, drives repression. In strategic interplays between author-
ities and dissidents (involving state leaders’ ideas about their vulnerability
and peril relative to social challengers) security force orientations (or the
state’s degree of centralization, strength or openness) will not explain
patterns of repression.24 Those in power will probably think about dis-
sidents as people or organizations with track records for reliability, treach-
ery, power or weakness, and calculate repression accordingly. Hence,
analysts might profitably analyze repression as a response to specific
social challenges to specific authorities.25
Second, modes of repression and social resistance will perhaps be more
important than mere levels of either – a point not entirely embraced by the
literature to date. Some of the most established debates about repression
and social movements concern themselves entirely with relations between
levels of repression and levels of mobilization,26 or between levels of state
and social violence.27 But quantitative measures of state violence, democ-
racy, or strength sometimes describe incomplete pictures, for a generally
violent state may use force selectively, and a democratic regime may still
discriminate against certain social forces.28 We need, instead, a more
strategic reading of violence, democracy and strength cognizant of larger

23
Davenport 1999; della Porta and Reiter 1998; Koopmans 1997; Davenport 1996;
Davenport 1995; Francisco 1996.
24
Escobar 1993.
25
Jacobs 1979; Gartner and Regan 1996.
26
Mason and Krane 1989; Khawaja 1993.
27
White 1989; Lichbach 1987.
28
For an especially nuanced typology of different modes of repression, see Earl 2003.
24 Protest, repression and transition

state–society relationships: if the state is violent, in relation to what

challenges is it particularly so? If the state is undemocratic, to what sort
of voices is it most determinedly deaf ? If the state is strong or weak, in
relation to which social forces is this strength or weakness most manifest?
Authorities’ ability to shut off some modes of dissent or favor others – or
a movement’s ability to ignore or maneuver around such proscriptions –
may set the political table for years to come.
Even work that accounts for repressive modalities often seeks to explain
when and why different repressive modes produce variable levels of
protest. Both Francisco’s predator–prey model (which argues that author-
ities and movements adapt to one another) and Loveman’s fine work on
strategies of repression and embedded social networks ultimately explain
potentials for sustained collective action.29 The strategic logic so import-
ant to each argument, however, suggests that interactions between state
and society loom largest when fundamental issues of power (on both sides
of the contest) hang in the balance, and mobilization levels may only
partially help us understand these issues. Questions about how state and
movement interactions shape modes of contention and contestant power
should be more central to the analysis. Such a relational logic more closely
informs DeNardo’s work, which recognizes that state and social strategies
evolve in light of perceived advantage and vulnerabilities during strug-
gle.30 Similarly, Beissinger’s analysis of the Soviet Union’s collapse
describes both how state repression shaped and marginalized nationalism
in long ‘‘quiet’’ phases, and how ‘‘noisy,’’ active nationalist mobilization
transformed collective identities and strategies – and ultimately the state.
If the distinction between quiet and noisy politics is still described in
partly quantitative terms, Beissinger understands that ‘‘[M]uch of what
occurs in the ‘quiet’ phases of nationalism conditions what takes place
within the ‘noisy’ stages.’’31 The reverse, of course, is also true, particu-
larly when regimes begin with periods of noisy repression: patterns of
repression and resistance both provide an essential context for interpret-
ing what political contention, ultimately, will mean.
I begin my analysis with three critical moments of state attack on their
societies. Such attacks suggest whom authorities feared, and on which
flank they felt most vulnerable. Each attack helped a rising dictator hurdle
barriers to power erected by social and political rivals, but also indicated
which of these rivals seemed most dangerous to the new regimes, none of
which indiscriminately attacked its society. I regard these attacks as

29
Francisco 1996; Loveman 1998.
30
DeNardo 1985.
31
Beissinger 2002: 26.
 Strategic interactions 25

chilling applications of a calculus gauged to reinforce and extend emer-

ging state power, and explain them by examining the balance of forces
and histories of animosity transmitted from the colonial period through
independence. These attacks wiped some historical slates clean, but also
left new marks: a record of state actors’ anxiety, inscribed in a fresh
reordering of social and political relations.

Strategic interactions and four principles of analysis

The logic of conquest frequently sprouts into a logic of rule. Repressive
programs, enacted by authorities facing regime-endangering threats or
nurturing regime-building plans reveal ambitions and fears, and also
provide a foundation for new political arrangements. Subsequent policy
both institutionally reproduces and adapts initial repressive programs,
suggesting how and against whom authorities will use force and vio-
lence.32 As we will see, adaptation is not always perfect, and differences
between what a situation demands and what officials are accustomed to
do often opens opportunities for anti-regime mobilization. State attacks
also reshape social forces. Some do not survive authoritarian murders,
arrests, or intimidation campaigns. Repression may eliminate the media,
close university campuses and even constrain informal gatherings that
support or encourage movements. Political activists and dissidents
develop strategies based on how they understand repressive frameworks
and use surviving institutions; analysts should pay heed as well, and
attempt to discern the strategic dimension in early regime attacks, and
recognize both modification in that strategy that respond to unfolding
political events, and institutional mechanisms that extend established
modes of repression.33 These considerations prompt me to suggest a
four-fold adjustment in how we investigate state repression and its influ-
ence over social movements.
Principle 1: Authorities uncertain of their grasp on power will more likely
engage social movements strategically, to identify and neutralize their most
dangerous opponents. Analysis should search out this pattern. It remains
important to tally people imprisoned, killed or tortured, and many have
undertaken the task of examining what general conditions likely encour-
age such violence.34 Still, this accounting cannot substitute for efforts to
understand repression in terms of the targets and tactics that authorities
most insistently proscribe. Movement efforts to mobilize populations

32
Worby 1998; Hoover and Kowalewsky 1991: 152; Jenkins 1985.
33
Fatton 1991; Coronil and Skurski 1991; White 1989.
34
See, for example, Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Poe and Tate 1994.
26 Protest, repression and transition

likely respond to these patterns of repression, and by understanding

authorities’ orientation toward collective action, we can begin to figure
out the latitude available for different contentious forms. Claim makers
likely plan or adopt activity in the light of expected state responses. Under
auspicious material or political conditions, they may risk expressly
prohibited and repeatedly repressed forms of struggle. Burmese activists,
for instance, sometimes undertook such risks when widespread economic
crisis had already mobilized broad social discontent. Short of these rare
frontal assaults, claim makers may seek to avoid state repression by
adjusting their strategies, reorganizing their formations, or seeking shelter
and support from civic institutions or powerful allies.35 Movement
leaders, activists and cadres not only anticipate how a state might respond
to one mode of collective action or another (the attribution of threats and
opportunities)36 they also gauge the level of popular support that any
campaign or mode of struggle will attract.
To date, social movements’ literatures have tended toward two
important explanations of movement strategy: new contentious rep-
ertoires often emerge in relationship to long-term shifts in social and
state structures, and subsequently diffuse across populations and
time.37 The concept of the repertoire and its evolution, however, says
more about possible tactics at any moment than about those actually
selected by a given movement. Within protest cycles, scholars have linked
changes in collective tactics to the different stages in the struggle: activists
may use more mass mobilizing and moderate tactics during contention’s
ascending curve, and radicalize or institutionalize as protest peaks and
then declines.38 McCammon has argued that defeats are particularly
important in motivating movements to change tactics, while others link
tactical change to efforts to sustain their political initiative or retain their
mass base.39 Some examine how different levels of repression influence
collective forms.40 Important clues to movement strategy, however, may
be connected to how movement participants respond to the forms of state
repression they encounter or expect. States that squeeze off particularly
threatening modes of resistance frequently leave room for other

35
McAdam (1983) speaks of similar tactical innovations in the US black insurgency, as
civil rights activists adjusted to segregationist opponents’ moves to undercut them. I am
here more interested in a state–movement nexus, mainly because of the overwhelmingly
statist character of the movements I examine.
36
McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2001: 46–47.
37
Tilly 1995.
38
Tarrow 1998.
39
McCammon 2003; Gibson 1989.
40
White 1989.
 Strategic interactions 27

expressions – and this opens a new range of questions. How do patterns of

repression influence the resources and plans available to activists and
claim-makers? What imprints do different repressive forms leave on social
movements? Given actual and expected patterns of state repression, can
we begin to develop more nuanced concepts of political opportunity that
is contingent on repression-shaped notions of possible movement strat-
egy? Even in the less strategic or purposive realm of movement culture
and activist orientation, we can ask about the legacy of state repression.41
Such questions divide into three categories that together constitute the
remaining three principles of analysis. Principle 2: The range of legal and
illegal organizations that survive repression shapes the modes of struggle within
range of claim makers under authoritarian rule. Are legal urban organiza-
tions destroyed? Are underground organizations eliminated? How do
surviving organizations shape modes of struggle? An array of armed
insurgent organizations may accumulate capacities to displace a state,
but few faculties for urban-based reform campaigns. Prohibitions on
movement organization may only allow claim makers to mobilize limited
and immediately affected constituencies. Where both underground
insurgent organizations and legal protest organizations exist, a kind of
cooperation may evolve between the two, wherein combat victories force
regime concessions that encourage protest, and legal struggles secretly
recruit for the armed movement.
Principle 3: Movement participants’ selection of contentious forms occur
against larger issues of power, informed by risk hierarchies associated with
different modes of repression. Activists and claim makers, no less than
authorities, assess threats and opportunities.42 State acts that imprison,
kill or intimidate social challengers, also serve warning to future activists.
Authorities that routinely fire on urban demonstrations will likely do so in
the future; a military that hunted one party to extinction will not likely
tolerate a similar group’s emergence. A student march in one setting may
risk little; in another, it may risk all. Past contention provides a context
that defines which forms of struggle are routine and which more directly
challenge authorities. Because idiosyncratic and context-specific hier-
archies of risk exist among contentious forms, structural changes acquire
significance as political opportunities by changing a regime’s ability to
proscribe modes of collective action or claim makers’ willingness to defy
those proscriptions.43 Hence it may be more interesting to ask under what

41
See Tilly 1999.
42
Fatton 1991; White 1989; McAdam 1983.
43
Lichbach 1995; Moodie 2003.
28 Protest, repression and transition

conditions people mobilize in particularly subversive ways than merely to

ask why they mobilize.
Principle 4: Opposition cultures are at least partial consequences of inter-
action between authorities and society, and may serve to reproduce authoritarian
proscriptions even as state power weakens. Whether movements ‘‘typically’’
burn down police stations, give democracy speeches or recruit urban
workers to the armed struggle largely depend, I have so far argued, on
state activity, its legacies, and movement responses. Over time, these
possibilities become encoded into larger ideas about what is politically
possible, how one must live under a particular regime, and what kinds of
acts might change things. Tactical considerations may move from the
realm of explicit calculation to pre-strategic ideas about what one might
or should do. In the Philippines, many people of all classes came to
believe that the dictatorship would fall when organized and revolutionary
forces grew sufficiently strong, and ideas about coordinated opposition
struggle lurked behind most anti-regime efforts; in Burma, some regime
critics paid as much attention to auspicious cosmic alignments as to
insurgent plans, and even underground activists seldom imagined that
they could ‘‘make’’ the anti-Ne Win revolution. In defining large sweeps
of opposition imagination, cultural patterns go beyond mere accumula-
tions of institutional possibilities and cautionary tales learned, and
instead influence how citizens think about politics and their roles in it.
Repression often sharply rewrites some of these patterns, and subsequent
opposition cultures may prolong and reproduce repression’s influence.44
These principles suggest a strategy for contextualizing broadly useful
structural arguments. I have argued elsewhere that political opportunity
is contingent on movement demands and forms of struggle.45 Collective
action modes have particular political logics: some aim at a broader voice
within the state, some aim to amass power to displace the state, and some
combine the two. Since all structural shifts do not encourage all conten-
tious forms, we cannot define opportunity independent of a movement’s
tactics or objectives;46a state land-reform campaign may encourage
demonstrations but undercut a revolution’s ties to its mass base.
Movements angling for international support against an abusive regime
may only respond to opportunities that promise a significant foreign
audience. Efforts to identify opportunity structures outside places where
reform-oriented movements typically seek broader voice in liberal

44
See the essays collected in Meyer, Whittier and Robnet 2002.
45
Boudreau 1996.
46
See Moodie 2002: 49–51.
 Strategic interactions 29

regimes require that we rethink the relationship between structural

change, established patterns of state activity, and movement objectives.
Moreover, opportunity is not merely contingent on the form of
collective struggle, but also on the political meaning of specific collective
acts in the power balance between an authoritarian state and its society.
For long stretches, politics in Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines
operated under conditions that differ from those in the global North,
and political opportunities in each reflect assumptions about what
contention might achieve under those specific conditions. Different
forms of state repression also promote case-specific logics of opportunity.
Modes of repression menace some expressions and accommodate others;
authorities stake their reputations in some realms, but not elsewhere. Real
political opportunities undercut the state’s dominant strategy of control
and intimidation: to identify such opportunities, one must figure out
repression’s over-arching logic and also distinguish routine from subversive
collective acts. Authorities may allow, encourage, or even compel some
collective tactics, channeling them in directions that neither threaten
authorities nor especially jeopardize participants – but in what ways
should we consider exogenous triggers for anemic activism true ‘‘oppor-
tunities?’’47 Other conditions, other triggers, may encourage claim
makers to mount forbidden modes of activity in the very teeth of state
repression. Identifying the especially important opportunities that encour-
age such acts, and the circumstances under which these opportunities
can occur, requires careful attention to context, and a willingness to bring
interpretive skills to the effort.
This work follows the prescriptions of this perspective. Proceeding via
comparisons among the case narratives, I first attempt to discern and
describe patterns of state repression, and the contentious politics to which
they give rise. Working with what organizations and allies they can,
burdened by the shadow of state repression, movements were not merely
encouraged or inhibited by repression: they were sculpted by it. Activists
in each setting, moreover, needed to decide whether to work within state
prohibitions or to challenge them – each needed to decide how unfolding
conditions might alter the political balance sheet inscribed since the
dictator’s rise. Most approached these problems with some understand-
ing of how the state dealt with activists in the past; virtually all worked
from within oppositional cultures greatly changed by dictatorship.
Together, interpretations of how repression, surviving institutions, activist

47
Earl 2003. Earl relies on Oberschall’s (1973) concept of ‘‘channeling’’ in her exposition.
30 Protest, repression and transition

calculation, and oppositional cultures interact help explain patterns of

protest and resistance in these three Southeast Asian dictatorships.

Democracy struggle and social movements theory

This work culminates by comparing democracy movements in the three
cases from a social movements’ perspective: a logical theoretical pairing
which nevertheless remains in its infancy. By far, most scholars who are
interested in transitions to democracy have focused on long-term devel-
opments in the class and social structure,48 short-term realignments in the
authoritarian regime’s coalition,49 or international pressures, demonstra-
tion effects and diffusion.50 Few investigators focus on the collective
struggle itself, save descriptively, and this struggle may be an essential
influence on the decisions so central to many explanations of regime
transition.51 Admittedly, democracy movements rarely themselves bring
down governments, and we should be wary of claims that equate democ-
ratization with strong pro-democratic mobilization.52 More commonly,
pro-democracy activists influence regime transitions by paralleling or
accelerating initiatives originating within the regime, or by sparking
defections from the regime by acts of protest and dissent. Still, where
protest movements are most involved in the process, as in the Philippines,
we should perhaps ask why this is so.53 In what remains of this chapter,
I will clarify my understanding of the democracy movements’ particularity
qua movement by situating them in established contentious patterns.
In what follows, I argue that protest and struggle exercise an independ-
ent influence on regime transitions. Established patterns of contention
help us anticipate when, how and with what consequences regimes are
likely to break down and change. In some ways, the effort runs parallel to
recent arguments about the political and economic basis for regime
transition. In a telling critique of the choice-based literature of regime
realignment, Haggard and Kaufman strive to explain actor preferences,
rather than taking them as exogenous, as others commonly do.54 Their
corrective concentrates on political economic conditions, arguing in part

48
Lipset, Seong and Torres 1993.
49
O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986; Snyder 1992; Przeworski 1991; Karl 1990.
50
Huntington 1991; Pye 1990; Hill and Rothchild 1986; Haggard and Kaufman 1997;
Pion-Berlin 1997; Lee 2001; Becky 2001.
51
For exceptions, see Collier and Mahoney 1997; Bormeo 1997; and Adler and Webster
1995.
52
Glenn 1999.
53
Geddes 1999.
54
Haggard and Kaufman 1997.
 Democracy struggle and social movements theory 31

that economic performance and need shape political opportunities and

structure actor preferences. Elizabeth Wood’s explication of an insurgent
path to democracy argues that the escalating costs of protracted insurgent
struggle in El Salvador and South Africa divide the regime’s political and
economic elite from its security forces, making the former interested in
negotiated settlements even though the latter prefer to continue to fight.
Wood places contention at the center of her explanation by demonstra-
ting that patterns of insurgency encouraged the regime crisis and divisions
(which others have analyzed in isolation from social challenges).55
Bratton and van de Walle examine regime leaders’ decisions to reform
in light of the breadth, power and viability of opposition coalitions that
emerge in struggle.56 Histories of struggle also influence other aspects of
the transition process, shaping the possibility of alliances between former
regime members and activists, the possibility of defections from the
regime, and the politics of the transition itself.
To understand how repression may shape transitions to democracy, we
must first ask how contemporary democracy movements have often
worked. An important clue lies in their rather peculiar combination
of goals and tactics. For much of this century, rather clear associ-
ations existed between a movement’s goals and its level of violence.
Movements with broader, state-replacing objectives more regularly
adopted armed struggle, while reform-oriented movements sought non-
routine but generally less violent tactics. Mao famously wrote that pol-
itical power came from the barrel of a gun; the Russian anarchist
Kropotkin and the Algerian revolutionary Fanon both associated direct
challenges to the state with violence.57 In contrast, movements that have
sought to instigate some change within a political arrangement or regime
have adopted peaceful, and sometimes explicitly non-violent modes of
activity.58 Less commonly, essentially unarmed protests adopted regime-
displacing goals, as did the Indian struggle for independence, but until
recently, these were atypical events that required special understand-
ing.59 Moreover, Gandhi’s non-violent methods have most widely been
adopted by more programmatically limited movements, such as the

55
Wood 2000.
56
Bratton and van de Walle 1992: 436–438.
57
Kropotkin 1995; Fanon 1963.
58
Pollatta (2002) eloquently demonstrates the connection between movement objectives
and modes of activity.
59
Barrington Moore, for instance, explains the Indian movement’s non-violence in terms
of legacies left by British commercial practices, which destroyed an indigenous stratum
of entrepreneurs and drove them into the anti-colonial movement that reflected their
bourgeois orientations. Moore 1966.
32 Protest, repression and transition

moderate wing of the American civil-rights movement; self-styled revo-

lutionaries in that same movement gravitated toward more violent modes
of struggle.60 Since the middle 1980s, however, several democracy move-
ments have used primarily non-violent tactics like massed demonstrations,
boycotts and hunger strikes to support state-replacing objectives, and this is
puzzling.
In examining the question of how transitions to democracy work,
several analysts direct our attention toward the defection of officials
from the authoritarian regime to the opposition camp, for emergent
alliance between regime defectors and a democracy movement may
shake a dictatorship to its very foundations.61 Some analysts have pro-
ceeded as if inherent political affinities between reformers inside the
regime and without underpin defections and alliances.62 Others reject
such an essentialist reading of things, and adopt a more contingent
approach, asking how interactions between regime officials and democ-
racy advocates may dissolve old coalitions and produce newer, more
democratic arrangements.63 Accordingly, new political coalitions emerge
on a rather short time horizon, in response to eroding state positions or
particularly compelling protest.64 I am interested here in uncovering the
deeper roots of defection and pro-democracy alliance, which I suspect lie
buried in established patterns of regime repression and social response.
Accepting the importance of contingent influences on emerging alliances
during democracy movements, can we still theorize conditions that make
regime defectors and dissidents more or less available to one another?
I think that we can, on both ideological and existential levels.
Unlike revolutionary movements that thrive on regime weakness and
pose comprehensive alternatives to ruling arrangements, democracy
movements often do not juxtapose new ideas about governance with
those state actors espouse – a word I use in a strictly limited way. Often,
authoritarian regimes advocate democratic principles but fail to act
democratically: some present authoritarian rule as merely transitional,
while others redefine democracy as (faux) consensus, (enforced) social
harmony, or (alleged) equity while retaining authoritarian practices.
Attempts to package non-democratic programs as democracy suggest
that contemporary regimes are less able explicitly to invoke authoritarian

60
Zald 1988. Hipscher (1996) tells this story in reverse in her account of how the
increasingly moderate goals of Chilean social movements after 1990 led to increasingly
moderate tactics.
61
Beissinger 2002; Przeworski 1986: 56.
62
O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986.
63
Karl 1990; Tilly 2000.
64
Glenn 1999; Younes 2000: 122.
 Democracy struggle and social movements theory 33

principles than was previously the case. Deeply enmeshed in international

organization and business networks, governments must at least pay lip
service to increasingly universal principles of political democracy and
economic liberalism – even when they do so with reservations or violate
these principles in practice.65 The similarity between what democracy
movements demand and what established regimes profess suggests that
democracy movements may differ from other state-replacing movements
in their ability to use the dictatorship’s public ideological foundations as
political resources, particularly to build bridges to regime members and
to indoctrinated populations.66 That alliances can exist between activists
outside the regime and disaffected regime sectors based on shared ideas
marks these movements as significantly different from other regime-
displacing contention. Even divided authoritarian states may close ranks
in the presence of a strong communist challenge, and a socialist revolution-
ary force will have trouble recruiting even unhappy members of a state
built on capitalist foundations. But when an authoritarian regime
acknowledges principles of democratic participation and economic liber-
alism – as even repressive states in the increasingly globalized world have –
weakening central authority may embolden disaffected regime actors to
take reforming action, and even to justify defection as defending regime
principles against leaders who have slipped the rails.67
The point may grow clearer if we consider a comparison between
Eastern European socialist states and at least some fascist regimes.
Avineri argues that socialism’s ideological framework shapes anti-regime
movements. State socialism has difficulty justifying itself without refer-
ence to citizens’ social and economic circumstances, and this inadvert-
ently provides resources for people mistreated or disappointed by the
socialist apparatus, and helps economic dissatisfaction accelerate into
demands for regime replacement.68 In comparison, classical fascism
offered virtually no promise of citizen prosperity or social equity, and
depended on conquest and racialist strivings for ideological legitimacy.69
Having pledged so little, however, the fascist regime provides a corres-
pondingly slim internal framework for anti-regime mobilization.
Contemporary and internationally nested authoritarian regimes, in con-
trast, participate in a global capitalist system where admittedly minimal

65
Diamond 1999: 58.
66
Noonan offers an interesting parallel in her discussion of the relationship between
Pinochet’s ideological appropriation of women’s issues and the anti-regime women’s
movement (1995: 98).
67
Abrahamsen 1997: 147–151.
68
Avineri 1991.
69
Moore 1966.
34 Protest, repression and transition

promises of procedural justice still provide resources against corrupt, brutal

or patrimonial regimes.70 Regimes that guarantee equal protection before
the law and denounce corruption, but still plunder their own societies,
violate narrow principles of capitalist justice. Those that stage elections to
legitimize their rule, but prevent free participation in those elections, violate
narrow principles of procedural democracy. Either way, the regime provides
normative resources to anti-regime movements.
But why have reforming or dissident members of authoritarian states
frequently allied with or encouraged democracy movements over the last
several decades? In part, the answer can be found in the democratization
literature itself, which expects diversifying states with increased inter-
national linkages to be more open to democratizing impulses.71 Another
part of the answer rests in a historically particular conjunction of factors:
over the last century’s first half, as modern bureaucracies and armies
emerged outside Europe, dissidents inside these institutions seldom had
strong mass societies to support reforming positions, and often acted
through internal coups, or not at all. During the Cold War, ideas about
mass susceptibility to communist subversion made alliances between
social dissidents and state reformers unattractive to officials who were
not themselves leftist – unless they could rely on non- or anti-communist
constituencies (as Suharto would in 1965 to 1966). Only in the late 1980s
was mass society both available and judged free enough of communist
subversion for non-revolutionary reformers inside the state to consider
working in tandem with popular coalitions demanding democratic
reform, ‘‘at the very moment when (for the movement) notions of
alternative societies have vanished.’’72 Needless to say, the post-1989
climate also made capitalist governments freer in supporting these
alliances.73
In combination, these factors help contemporary democratization
movements imagine that a successful campaign to replace the regime
can consist largely in moderate protest, rather than in armed revolution
or insurrection – and explain how in some situations that campaign
succeeds. It also indicates the direction of a possible synthesis between
different theoretical approaches to democracy protests. Transitions do
not occur merely from realignments in the political coalition that sup-
ported authoritarian rule. Political mobilization can constitute a central
factor in forcing that realignment into areas the old order can no longer

70
Meyer 2000, Abrahamsen 1997.
71
Franck 1992: 59.
72
Adler and Webster 1995: 86.
73
Bratton and van de Walle 1992: 435; Chipman 1982.
 Democracy struggle and social movements theory 35
74
contain, and can provide opportunities for one faction of the state
against competitors.75 Cracks in the authoritarian armor also provide
political opportunities to counter-hegemonic movements, precisely as
political process models in the social movements’ literature predict.
Still, this presentation of how democracy movements may work says little
about when they will most likely occur, and with what outcomes. To make
these more precise judgments, we revisit considerations of established,
patterned relations between authoritarian states and their societies.
Historical (as well as proximate) conditions (particularly, I hope to
demonstrate, long histories of repression) influence the extent to which
state and movement reformers will be politically and existentially avail-
able to one another.76 Do prominent dissident movements exist to receive
and protect defectors from the state, or have these been wiped out or
driven underground by state violence? Will alliances between erstwhile
regime members and activists require improbable political adjustments
(to, for instance, armed struggle) or has dissent evolved to within range of
regime members’ imaginations? By shaping the contours of political
dissent, I argue, repression also influences the nature of alliances that are
possible or likely between opposition movements and potential defectors
from the regime (and so the timing and character of pro-democracy
mobilization).
Conditions most likely to produce successfully democratizing protest
often permit some connection between isolated, disgruntled, or con-
cerned members of the ruling coalition and social reformers and activists.
Patterns of state repression affect the potential for, and terms of, these
alliances. By shaping the institutions, practices and culture of the political
opposition, repression helps determine whether the disenchanted or dis-
gruntled regime official, in turning away from the state, finds plausible
allies in society. Repression also influences whether movement activists,
in grappling with the possibilities of regime change, view officials as
unambiguous enemies, or as at least potential confederates. As we will
see, Burmese state repression utterly marginalized social reformers, who
readily mobilized mass society, but could build no bridge to state actors.
Indonesian state attacks on activist organization divided social reformers
from mass society: constrained from building dissident organizations,
pro-democracy actors instead solicited support from elements of the
state – even if this meant foregoing the initiative in the realm of mass
politics. Bourgeois reformers in the Philippines built and controlled larger

74
Collier and Mahoney 1997; Adler and Webster 1995; Stepan 2001: 123–125.
75
Amenta and Zylan 1995.
76
Younes 2000.
36 Protest, repression and transition

and more institutionalized movement organizations, and used those

resources to position themselves as senior partners in the transition.
Different patterns of regime repression shape social institutions and
political practice in ways that both enable or forestall cooperation
between society and reforming state actors, and also dictate the relative
balance between state and society in the transition.
In this treatment, the social movements’ and democratic transitions’
literatures become indispensable to one another. Those seeking to
explain and predict when and how disenchanted members of the regime’s
ruling coalition finally move against the state must interpret established
patterns of political contention and relationships between dissidents and
authorities. Students of social movements may only be able to understand
how the process of anti-regime mobilization influence a democratic tran-
sition by examining how the activity of divided regimes helps accelerate a
period of protest into a full-fledged democratic attack on state power;
social movements scholars may also need to examine this shift in uncus-
tomary ways: i.e., not merely as mobilization opportunities, but as a
central element of the attack on the authoritarian citadel.
3 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

The first puzzles en route to understanding how state repression influ-

enced contention concern each dictatorship’s inaugural violence. I hope
to demonstrate that these attacks were strategic (not merely passionate)
responses to social opposition. Each undercut the most formidable or
apparent challenge to the new regime and established rules that played to
each dictator’s advantage. Authorities who faced specific, powerful
adversaries set out decisively to defeat that force – leading, for instance,
Suharto’s murderous anti-PKI campaign. Authorities with preferential
access to particular resources attacked those with access to different
resources – as when the Burmese military (Tatmadaw) eliminated public
politics. In either case, we understand the dictator’s attack within the
geography of power in the post-colonial regime. The discussion that
follows traces the social foundations of colonial rule and nationalism in
each case, asks how different transitions to independence influenced
those social forces, and then examines the engines of upward political
mobility in the post-colonial period. These three lines of inquiry bring the
terrain of contestation surrounding each dictator’s rise into sharper focus.
We begin with brief narrative descriptions of each case, and then move to
a comparative discussion.

Burma
In several ways, the Burmese Tatmadaw’s attack against student protesters
on July 7, 1962 is puzzling. Only months before, Ne Win’s new military
regime had used comparative restraint against initial, scattered protests
(in Mandalay, demonstrators blocked university entrances; in Rangoon,
they rallied at the Student Union building): soldiers arrested activists,
closed campuses for three months, and in several places fired teargas at
37
38 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

Map 2 Burma (Myanmar)

 Burma 39
1
demonstrators. Before reopening schools in June, the new Revolutionary
Council (RC) avowed leftist principles and issued the ‘‘Burmese Way to
Socialism,’’ an eclectic and in some way peculiar document that attracted
broad activist support.2 Many members of the large, leftist coalition that
had opposed the old government (the National United Front, or NUF
and its related Student United Front, the SUF) pledged to support the
new Burma Socialist Program Party (BSPP), isolating the Burmese
Communist Party (BCP), and more conservative opposition groups like
the Democratic Students Organization (DSO).3
This period of shifting alliances explains why student protesters in July
were mainly BCP members, and perhaps also why the regime decided to
act against them. But the ruthless and extraneous detonation of the
hallowed union building remains confusing. The BCP in 1962 was too
weak to pose any imminent threat of substance to the regime. From 1955
onward, it passed through a difficult period of internal conflict, military
loss and defections that significantly undercut its power and rendered its
urban sympathizers extremely vulnerable. Moreover, events following the
explosion make it hard to argue that communism per se provoked the
regime’s ire, for shortly thereafter, authorities initiated peace talks with
BCP insurgents, and when those talks broke down, allowed insurgent
leaders to return to their bases: unimaginable behavior, for example, in
Indonesia, circa 1965.4 What explains the explosion?
The answer, I think, is that students came under fire because they
pursued the mobilizing politics so central to the old regime. The 1962
attack only incidentally killed BCP supporters. It was aimed at a kind of
politics that the military had come to despise. Several important factors
pushed the Tatmadaw in this direction. British colonialism in lowland
Burma destroyed potential connections between local elites and mass
society. The path to independence, moreover, did not produce strong

1
According to a Mandalay activist from that time, ‘‘There was no front gate at the
entrance to the campus, so we felled some trees and made a barricade. The military
surrounded the campus, and talked to the students through megaphones from the other
side of the barricades, asking us to remove the trees. Eventually, we were dispersed with
teargas. There were some arrests, and then the campus was closed for three months.’’
(Interview B–4).
2
Critics often ridicule this paper, but one can’t understand the unfolding relationship
between Burmese society and Ne Win’s government without acknowledging its initial
popularity. See, Mya Maung 1991.
3
The NUF contained different socialist organizations, designated as Red and White
Socialists, as well as the Burmese Workers and Peasants Party. Smith 1999: 164.
4
Burmese authorities also worried that strong anti-communist moves might provoke
Chinese interference in domestic affairs. I am indebted, for this idea, to discussions with
Mary Callahan.
40 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

organizations linking leaders and soldiers, national elites and mass members.
Achieving Burmese independence required that anti-colonial elites build
nationalist associations and even armies, but never required concerted
and extended struggle that would have eliminated groups without strong,
functioning organizations. In ways that foreshadow Burmese parliamentary
politics, largely urban elites with weak connections to mass supporters
controlled the nationalist struggle. After independence, competing urban
politicians mobilized social support through patronage to mass organiza-
tions and to provincial strong men, efforts that freed officials from the
need to meet constituent demands through national policy: most
achieved sufficient support through segmented deals with clients, and
poor performance in office manifestly did not bar one from re-election.
This system allowed ethnic Burman5 elites, concentrated in large central
cities, to focus exclusively on parochial lowland politics. In this system,
the military’s growing organizational capacity and national perspective
were of little political use, and officers developed deep antagonisms
toward an open, mobilizing style of politics for which they had no feel.
After the 1962 coup, they first encountered these politics in the Rangoon
student protests.

British rule and the social base of Burmese nationalism

Ultimately, British colonial rule interacted with Burmese society to
produce an anti-colonial elite based in Central Burma’s urban areas and
only loosely connected to mass society, particularly outside the cities. The
British approached Burma as an ad hoc adjunct to its more defined Indian
colony, acquiring first lower and then upper Burma in the Anglo-Burmese
wars (1825–1826, 1852, and 1885–1886). After these wars, the British
ended the Burmese monarchy and eliminated hereditary local authorities,
the Myothugyis (literally, town big man/person). These moves took out a
geographically dispersed elite stratum, positioned between mass society
and central authority, and left only monks systematically connected to
mass society. To manage the state apparatus, the British extended the
Indian administration, with its Indian functionaries, into the new territory,
and founded Indian-style colonial schools to train non-elite Burmese for
low-level service.6 Outside central Burma, the British installed indirect,
flexible patterns of rule that worked through indigenous leaders.
Christian missionaries exerted the strongest colonial influence in these

5
Following Silverstein (1977) Burman will denote the ethnic/language group and Burmese
to denote the multi-ethnic population of the Burmese nation–state.
6
Furnivall 1941.
 Burma 41
7
parts, and their efforts produced recruits for the colonial militia. In the
main, however, the British had little ambition to rule Burma, and valued
the territory first for its strategic location between China and India, and
later for the food resources its fertile deltas could provide India.
Unlike Dutch or American colonial policy (or British policy in frontier
regions beyond central Burma) the British never used Burmese elites to
buffer other social forces – and indeed Indian troops that put down
pockets of resistance after the Anglo-Burmese wars sharply alienated
local populations.8 By abolishing the monarchy and other local elites,
colonists inadvertently placed local graduates in immediately leading
nationalist roles. Particularly once educational reforms 1917 and 1920
produced powerful student bodies, graduates were caught between the
colonial perspectives they were made to study and the nationalist mantle
they would inherit.9 Before those reforms, Buddhist monks and religio-
civic associations like the (British-sponsored) Young Men’s Buddhist
Association were better situated to spearhead anti-colonial resistance.
Religious leaders, however, missed the now-absent elite support, and
particularly after the British began reorganizing agrarian life to boost
production in the late 1920s, local populations were also provided fewer
resources to the Sangha. Rural resentment fueled by these new agricul-
tural policies exploded in the Hsaya San Rebellion, which tore across
fertile Irrawaddy Delta in 1930 (partly because no coopted rural elites
existed to moderate things as Malay Sultans or Javanese aristocrats had
done10). However, that rebellion was Burma’s last great explosion of
rural-based nationalist resistance.11
As religious mobilization lost steam, students and lawyers produced a
second, more secular nationalist surge. Local school graduates had begun
to compete with, and resent, Indians dominating the bureaucracy, particu-
larly given their role in colonial suppression and the proliferation also of
usurious Indian moneylenders.12 After World War One, moreover, the
British separated Burma from India to keep reforms promised to Indian
nationalists from spreading to Burma. This division reinforced nationalist
distinctions between Burman and Indian bureaucrats, and raised con-
tentious questions about the terms of the separation from India.13 This

7
Smith 1999: 41–44.
8
Cady 1958; Furnivall 1956.
9
Moscotti 1974.
10
Taylor 1974.
11
Herbert 1982: 5–13. Herbert, however, also stresses the importance of new associations
and organizations in the Hsaya San Rebellion.
12
Furnivall 1956: 116–121, 157–158.
13
Moscotti 1974.
42 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

second nationalist movement won new concessions like the Rangoon

University, the important Student Union, and generally strong provisions
for home rule in the 1935 constitution. Within this secular movement,
however, important differences existed. The lawyers were quite inter-
ested in obtaining positions in the new governmental structure, and
were naturally most qualified among nationalists for those positions.
Students leaned toward radical anti-colonial expressions like protest,
the martial display of paramilitary groups (tats) and the nativist ‘‘We
Belong’’ (Dohbama Asyiayone) movement.14
Two things distinguish this period in Burmese nationalism from the
pre-war ferment in Indonesia and the Philippines. First, provisions for
Burmese political participation (as distinct from the recruitment of ethnic
minorities into colonial armies) came so late that they encountered full
blown demands for self-rule, and could only divide some sections of the
nationalist movement (often lawyers) from their younger and more rad-
ical comrades; they did not, however, establish committed collaborators
similar to powerful and wealthy Philippine Assembly members under
American (1907) or the aristocratic colonial bureaucracy in Indonesia.
Facing this Burmese nationalism by 1936, Assembly elections carried a
stain from the start, and voter turnout never surpassed 18 percent.15
Second, students, bureaucrats and lawyers leading the Burmese nation-
alist movement were creations of an urban administrative and educa-
tional structure, with relatively few ties to rural society or to any mass
base. Even the formidable Hsaya San Rebellion was mainly the last gasp
of subsiding religious nationalism – the newer secular battles were led by
urban elites with no natural mass constituencies.16 The People’s
Revolutionary Party (PRP) the Sinyetha, and the Burmese Communist
Party formed in the 1930s and backed more frequent and sustained
strikes by 1938. As Linter notes, these associations drew from the same
small, urban membership pool of student and ex-student nationalists,
likely to join any (and so belonging to many) anti-colonial organization.17
Hence, at least until World War Two, formal structures mattered less
than the network of students, lawyers, and leaders from the Dohbama
Asiayone (the Thakins) present in most nationalist organizations. The
paramilitary tats mentioned above, for example, depended on prominent

14
See Khin 1988 and Donnison 1970.
15
In Fact, Khin describes Dohbama electoral participation as being designed all along to
subvert the constitution (1988: 38–40); see also Taylor 1981.
16
Moscotti 1974.
17
Linter 1990.
 Burma 43

individuals, often thakins involved in other nationalist organizations, but

remained local groups, without any larger, more formal structure.
World War Two moved Burmese nationalists toward firmer political
and organizational positions. By 1939, Marxism’s growing appeal among
nationalists, evident both in earlier associations and in study groups
(Rangoon’s Nagani Book Club, for instance, provided students with
Marxist and Fabian socialist literature) produced the BCP. The global
anti-colonial discourse had by then moved sharply left. Chinese and
Indian communist advances impressed the young nationalists, and con-
vinced some of communism’s particular anti-imperialist power. Across
South and Southeast Asia, local communist parties (but particularly
those linked to the Comintern as the BCP was not) participated in anti-
fascist United Front coalitions to force colonists into post-war conces-
sions, or at least to build anti-colonial organizations in the struggle. But
the BCP and other nationalists also needed to consider Japan’s potential
dynamism as well. Some had argued for association with the rightist
Kuomintang (KMT), and deemed an alliance with Japan an expedient
way to throw off the colonial yoke.18 These different opinions had for a
time coexisted in the nationalist movement, but the war’s steady advance
soon required that nationalists choose sides.
Given this background, some questions remain about the cadre of
young nationalists (called the 30 Comrades) who led the Burmese fight
in World War Two.19 Some believe that they decided to accept Japanese
support against the British, but it seems more likely that Aung San, the
clear leader, was seeking support from Chinese communists in Amoy, but
hadn’t heard that the city had fallen to the Japanese, into whose hands he
promptly stumbled. The captured leader soon found himself in Tokyo,
entertaining alliance proposals.20 Whatever his original intent, Aung San
sent for other top nationalists, who joined him in Hainan to train under
the Japanese. Over the next several months, they founded the Burma
Independence Army (BIA) under Aung San’s command, and in 1942
thay accompanied Japan’s imperial campaign back into Burma. It was,
then, Japanese power that set the British colonial administration to flight
and gave an initially small BIA the opportunity to recruit without either
fending off British attack or worrying about its own battle readiness. In
the calm behind Japan’s military breakwater, the BIA incorporated tats,

18
Moscotti 1974.
19
See for instance the official handbook of the World War Two colonial government in
exile (the Sinla government) which John Furnivall quotes at length in Furnivall 1956:
8–9.
20
Taylor 1987: 232–233.
44 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

dacoits, and rebels, and took over administrative positions vacated in

Britain’s flight, but the BIA soon outstripped its leaders’ managerial
capacities. Many local units used their new power to settle scores with
Karen or Kachin collaborators. Japanese officers, moreover, began to
treat Burma as a larder for campaigns elsewhere in Southeast Asia, and
their tightening grip aroused Burmese impatience for independence.21
As resentment in the BIA mounted, Japanese officers reorganized
Burmese forces in ways that gave younger nationalists a decisive upper
hand while establishing firmer, central control. Within these centralized
units, a sense of institutional coherence and capacity began to germinate:
Callahan describes how marches through newly ‘‘national’’ Burmese territory
and rigorous training created cohesion among soldiers that set them apart
from civilian supporters.22 Of these supporters, some of the older gener-
ation, including many lawyers, took top positions in village administrations
and in the central government (where they could claim to build power
and gather intelligence). Younger civilian nationalists undertook insurgent
activity (sometimes within Japan-sponsored organizations like the East
Asia Youth League)23 and assumed secondary administrative positions.
When Burmese nationalists eventually grew tired of their subordination to
Japanese authority, and formed the Anti-Fascist Organization (AFO) and
its Burmese National Army (BNA) in July and August 1944, the move-
ment was therefore importantly heterogeneous.24 As things developed,
older nationalists snapped up comfortable, urban positions that grew less
important as resistance to the Japanese progressed, and younger war fight-
ers behind Aung San seized unambiguous control of the movement.
The importance of political struggle and external events (rather than
war-fighting) in the anti-colonial campaign made nationalist parties, and
not the nationalist army, the new regime’s leading organ. Over the next
few years, the AFO fought the Japanese, sometimes cooperating with,
sometimes harassing returning colonial troops, but never putting together
coordinated, complex campaigns.25 Disagreements inside the British
administration, rather than battlefield accomplishments, were probably
most responsible for improving the nationalists’ standing. Lord Louis
Mountbatten, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, regarded the
AFO as the strongest ally against Japan in the larger struggle, while
Governor Dorman-Smith was more interested in re-establishing British

21
U Nu 1975: 102–113.
22
Callahan 1996: 159–163.
23
Guyod 1966: 296–298.
24
Callahan 1996: 228.
25
Dupuy 1985; and Lebra 1969.
 Burma 45

colonialism and punishing wayward subjects like Aung San. Mountbatten’s

defeat of Dorman-Smith on these issues paved the way for a negotiated
settlement, although when talks stalled, the AFO (renamed the Anti-
Fascist People’s Freedom League or AFPFL) organized disciplined and
largely non-violent demonstrations. Actual independence in 1947 followed
a negotiated agreement, and the strikes and protests that hastened that
agreement were all AFPFL actions.26Aung San ensured nationalists an
independent military capacity by regrouping some BNA forces (slated for
incorporation into British-organized forces) into a ‘‘veteran’s organiza-
tion’’ under AFPFL control called the People’s Volunteer Organization
(PVO), and ordering some of his followers to re-enlist in the army. But
political, rather than military developments dominated the transition.
Though ascendant, the AFPFL also had significant weaknesses, each a
direct consequence of this pattern of struggle. First, because international
involvement was decisive in achieving Burmese independence, no nation-
alist organ had ever fought the British or the Japanese across Burma’s
entire domain, or built a truly strong or nationally integrated anti-colonial
organization. It is not clear, of course, that had the young urban Burmese
nationalists needed to build such an apparatus, they could have – but
conditions they actually faced allowed success via rather insular political
vehicles. In consequence, the AFPFL built only weak links to mass
society, and rural forces in the resistance often stubbornly guarded their
autonomy.27 Post-war Burma was also armed to the teeth, and various
gangs used those arms to carve out areas of authority and power.
Independent forces established a variety of relations with the state – they
fought it, bribed it, threatened it, supported or ignored it – sometimes all
at once. Eventually central politicians needed to find ways of either
clearing out or accommodating these local pockets of power.28 Second,
and despite Aung San’s efforts to build minority AFPFL chapters,
nationalists had little support in minority communities. What ethnic
support the new regime had came largely from colonial military levies.
Even in the army, however, ethnic relations remained brittle and Karen-
unit defections in 1948 were clear signs of a nationalities’ problem that
still haunts Burma. Finally the AFPFL was a coalition among Socialists,
the BCP, the Communist Party of Burma (CPB, or ‘‘red flag’’ communists)
and the PVO. Aung San and the anti-Britain struggle, generated suffi-
cient bonds among these groups to hold the coalition together. When
Aung San was assassinated in July 1947, however, unities unraveled. The

26
Muscotti 1974.
27
Selth 1986.
28
Callahan 1996.
46 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

BCP rebelled against the AFPFL in 1948, triggering crippling military

defections from a variety of groups.29
The nationalist struggle, then, left power in the hands of an insular and
divided AFPFL. While the military had more organizational coherence, it
was peripheral to the final, negotiated settlement, and weakened by the
PVO’s formation and insurgent defections. Outside large Central
Burmese cities, autonomous organizations, pocket armies and warlords
resisted integration into national political parties, and needed to be
courted, conquered or mollified, often by side deals with national polit-
icians. Under these conditions, central Burman elites needed only to
compete among themselves for political power.

Post-colonial pressures
In 1948 alone, communist, Karen and Kachin troop rebellions diminished
Tatmadaw troop strength to less than 2,000 soldiers, and by 1949, vast
areas of the Irrawaddy Delta and suburbs of Rangoon fell to BCP or Karen
hands.30 Crime rates climbed precipitously.31 Amidst this chaos, former
PRP members inside the AFPFL formed the Socialist Party to consolidate
control over the coalition. They convinced upcountry strongmen not to
support or feed BCP and Karen rebels, and in this way slowed the insur-
gents’ progress. But socialists could not bully local leaders, and needed
instead to woo their compliance by offering arms and the recognition of
local authority. Unable to establish strong central control, Rangoon
politicians rode out conflict among local groups by remaining aloof, an
arrangement that substituted for the more extended organization-building
that groups like white and red flag communists carried out.32
It also set larger state–society patterns for the period. Electoral contests
between the AFPFL and other contenders remained insular, urban,
sectarian, and dependent upon patronage-driven connections with mass
associations.33 Labor associations for instance, were linked to electoral
parties (the Trade Union Congress of Burma, for instance, was an AFPFL
organ, while the Burma Trade Union Congress, or BTUC, was connected
to the Burmese Workers and Peasants Party or BWPP).34 One factory
worker outside Mandalay recalls how his organizing committee switched

29
Smith 1999.
30
U Nu 1975: 147–161.
31
Guyod 1966: 212.
32
Callahan 1996.
33
Taylor 1987: 244.
34
‘‘Red Socialists,’’ who broke with the Socialist Party in 1950, organized the BWPP. See
Badgley 1958: 339–340.
 Burma 47

from the AFPFL to the BWPP because the factory manager belonged to
the AFPFL, which in consequence would not pressure the manager to
meet worker demands. Still, the new relationship with the more activist
BWPP was, in instructive ways, limited:
At that time, the BWPP was sifting through the different labor organizing com-
mittee to find promising leaders they could recruit as party activists. This
wouldn’t necessarily mean that the labor leader’s organizing committee would
join the BWPP, but in fact, if the leader was a party cadre, the workers would
follow the BTUC line. In general, the organizing committees raised money for the
BWPP election funds and assisted in BWPP-called general strikes.35
Similarly, local farmers’ associations could expect patronage in exchange
for political support.
Student groups were also linked to electoral parties, and available for
party-related mobilization. College associations also organized high-school
branches (one former BWPP member recalls beating up high-school
classmates affiliated with the DSO at the suggestion of party activists in
college). Student politics were so integral to elections and other mainstream
political activities that state practice accommodated protest. Consider,
for example, how arrested student activists were treated in the 1950s:
To be arrested wasn’t a big deal. Students were considered B prisoners. C prisoners
were common criminals – crammed into cells, eating brown rice with the husks
mostly on, and vegetable curry. They were sometimes tortured and could not
receive regular visitors. For us, things were different. First, we got meat, white
rice, and brown bread. We had regular access to newspapers and books . . . We even
had butter and jam for our bread. It got to the point where we joked that we lived
better in jail than outside, because as students, of course, we were always broke.36
Students continued their studies from prison, and sat for university
exams in their cells, so protest was sustainable.37 In fact, some of the
strongest campus protests in the 1950s occurred when authorities

35
Interview B–5. More than either Philippine or Indonesian informants, Burmese who
agreed to talk to me took great risks. Many would not have our conversations taped, and
I made certain to transcribe taped interviews before leaving the country, and destroyed
all tapes. To capture untapped interviews, I always took notes during the discussions
and immediately, with the assistance of others who took part in the talks, reconstructed
the conversation in notes. I have developed a code system to help me identify and keep
separate these interviews. Because of the extreme danger discovery would pose to these
sources I only identify informants by a code, and will provide only sketchy descriptions of
these people.
36
Interview B–10.
37
Several informants (B–4, B–10, B–11) reported prolonging their studies in this manner.
As informant B–10 remarked: ‘‘Activists who wanted to work politically on the
campuses would fail on purpose – so they could repeat that year. This was never a
problem, and did not reflect badly on your record.’’
48 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

attempted to set rules expelling those who thrice failed a subject, for
this would remove many activists from college. Participation in campus
politics, even if it earned one indifferent grades and a police record, often
improved student prospects in subsequent political life.38
Student groups sympathetic to the BCP also remained active on
campus.39 When schisms in the socialist party (nationally) produced parallel
rifts among student groups, BCP sympathizers recruited some of the new
groups into the SUF. From the mid-1950s onward, SUF groups criti-
cized the government and held frequent demonstrations – often denoun-
cing warfare against rural insurgent force or criticizing officials who
seemed uninterested in resolving major social problems. More radical
student groups were often accused of communist affiliations, but activism
was important enough to the conduct of politics that such charges seldom
produced sustained penalties, repression or prohibition.
The Tatmadaw handled the insurgencies, and countered Chinese KMT
incursions, suffering great hardship at first.40 These efforts spurred the
military to reorganize itself in ways that shook off civilian oversight and
strengthened the Tatmadaw’s Rangoon war office. Structures of com-
mand and control improved, and by the middle 1950s the Tatmadaw had
finally fulfilled the wartime BIA’s promise: to be independent Burma’s
first centralized but national institution.41

State crises and authoritarian response

Burma’s movement from political crisis to authoritarian response in the
late 1950s partly reflects the balance between civilian and military institu-
tions. Inside the AFPFL, working within the socialist party, Prime
Minister U Nu recklessly juggled commitments and compromise, and
seemed willing to trade grants of autonomy for minority support. By
1956, such moves contributed to his faction’s image as corrupt and
unprincipled, and further fragmented a deeply divided AFPFL. The crisis
for U Nu’s government came in 1958, when he tried to turn the AFPFL
coalition into a unified party. When the party split in response to these
moves, U Nu temporarily stepped down as Prime Minister, and turned
power over to a military caretaker government under General Ne Win,

38
Informant B–4: ‘‘DSO members received money from the government and were
supported by U Nu. When DSO students graduated, they always had positions waiting
for them, and had logistical support from the government when they mobilized.’’
39
Shwe Lu Maung 1989; see also Aye Saung 1989.
40
Taylor 1973. For a more narrative account see Maung Maung 1953.
41
On military efforts against the KMT see Taylor 1973; for the Tatmadaw reorganization,
see Callahan 1996.
 Burma 49

which stressed non-sectarian policies reflecting the Tatmadaw’s new

institutional cohesiveness.42 Six scheduled months of military rule stretched
to eighteen, but the Tatmadaw did stem lawlessness and corruption,
although urban elites despised the sweat brigades that made manual
public service mandatory.43 Civilian government returned to power
after elections in 1960, during which one AFPFL faction, U Nu’s Union
Party (formerly, the AFPFL’s ‘‘Clean’’ faction) roundly defeated the
AFPFL’s military-backed ‘‘Stable’’ faction.
Given U Nu’s record in the late 1950s and the army’s comparative
success, these electoral results surprised many, and raised Tatmadaw
resentment. The military’s anti-insurgent mission placed a premium on
national unity and sovereignty – and U Nu’s style of rule (as well as
apparent popular support for that rule) offended both values.44 The
military caretaker period (1958–1960) provided soldiers the opportunity
to assess their capacities against those of a bungling civil administration,
and discussions of parliamentary rule’s failures circulated within the
Tatmadaw.45 Having restored some order to Burma’s political and social
scene, the army clearly hoped that the ‘‘stable’’ AFPFL faction would
defeat U Nu’s Union party.
But U Nu’s Union Party faced virtually insurmountable problems.
Squabbling broke out between three of its internal groups, and the new
government resumed patterns of corrupt, inefficient and parochial rule.46
Students and other popular organizations denounced socialists’ failings
and the civil war, and strengthened alliances with BCP activists. Mass
organizations, even those that had worked to support the AFPFL, grew
impatient with the pace of socialist transformation, and anti-regime
demonstrations escalated during 1961. Rumors also circulated that Shan
leaders would exercise their constitutional right to demand independence.
By the end of 1961, the ‘‘Shan Principles Paper’’ was making the rounds –
reputed to confirm this intent, but more likely representing a minority
position. Such rumors probably originated among military personnel
seeking to promote a new crisis, but U Nu’s Nationalities Seminar, called
to settle the matter in February 1962, highlighted the contrast between
sectarian political perspectives and the military’s vision of unity and
sovereignty. By early 1962, frustrated soldiers would therefore have

42
Smith 1999: chapter 10.
43
These ‘‘sweat brigades’’are described in Dupuy 1961: 428–440.
44
Steinberg 1982: 71–72.
45
Callahan 1996: 478 cites ‘‘Some Reflections on our Constitution’’ read at the Tatmadaw
conference on October 20–21, 1958. See also Steinberg 1982: 71–72.
46
Maung Maung 1999: 21–22.
50 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

perceived that civilian rule had neither the capacity nor the will for
efficient, unified policy making, and as long as brokerage and patronage
were central to electoral competition (and populations resented sacrifices
like the caretaker-era ‘‘sweat brigades’’) elections would not favor military
interests or power. Soldiers probably also knew that the Tatmadaw was
unrivaled in its institutional reach or capacity.
In their March 2 coup, military officers arrested fifty-two participants
in the Nationalities Conference (including the president, Premier U Nu, his
cabinet and eleven parliament members) and then formed a Revolutionary
Council (RC) to wield power. The military did encounter some early protest,
but responded with relative leniency while recruiting popular support
among leftist groups. As one university student council leader recalls:
In 1962, when the revolutionary council took power, we thoroughly supported it,
as did many of the other student groups, because the original moves toward the
Burmese Way to Socialism were so interesting. Only the BCP did not support the
new government – and, of course the rightist group.47
Ties between the military and urban activist groups isolated BCP
activists, who also represented something generally odious to military
eyes: the programmatically flexible and mass mobilizing politics of the
parliamentary period.
As we discuss in chapter 5, RC efforts to build mass support were but
the first steps in a process that soon narrowed, and then eliminated,
participation in government. Between March and July, however, the
RC ensured that the initial clash with political participation engaged
a narrow and isolated group, rather than broader fronts or coalitions.
When campuses reopened under new curfews and dormitory regulations,
BCP supporters among the students had prepared more organized
demonstrations.48 In Rangoon, these centered on the Student Union
building; in Mandalay activists drifted toward Buddhist monasteries,
where monks on the political right and left also mistrusted military rule.
In both cities, however, the opposition’s base had so narrowed that the
Tatmadaw could directly move against BCP protesters. When soldiers
blew up the student union building in Rangoon, it sent shock waves
across the country, scattering student activists. Mandalay students took
refuge in monasteries – especially after the military dismantled their
union building, as they did every other free-standing Burmese student

47
Interview B–5.
48
It is curious that most sources disagree on what, exactly provoked the demonstrations.
Maung Maung (1999) says that students were compelled to retake exams, and for that
reason protested. Silverstein and Wohl (1964) attribute the protests to new dormitory
regulations. Others argue that activists were denouncing the coup (Lintner 1990).
 Indonesia 51

union. In Rangoon, activists hid on campus. Everywhere, the explosion

irredeemably changed politics.

Indonesia
ABRI’s response to the September 30, 1965 coup attempt, launched by
mid-level Indonesian officers from Central Java to protect Sukarno
against a rumored rightist plot, was to exterminate the PKI and a sig-
nificant part of its membership. The murders began in October 1965, and
lasted for some six months, during which time members of ABRI and
Islamic groups affiliated with the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) executed some-
where between 300,000 and 1,000,000 communists (and some Chinese).
The New Order’s own account suggests around 1,000,000 deaths.49
Never did anyone seriously discuss rehabilitating individual communists
during the massacres. Prison camps separated deeply committed PKI
members from sympathizers, but nobody seems to have doubted that the
latter must die. Where local authorities were reluctant to get on with the
slaughter, ABRI officers often chided them into more vigorous action.50
The apparatus assembled around these murders (concentration camps,
membership lists, informants, interviews, mass assemblies and executions)
suggest foresight, planning and commitment. Questions still persist
about how the slaughter got underway, and how many it consumed; but
apart from these questions, we might also ask why the anti-communist
massacre was designed so relentlessly to eliminate the PKI. If the killings
were mainly tools to established ABRI’s political control, why did the
military mobilize popular, often unruly, participation in them? Given that
the PKI was on the defensive from the first, and made only scattered,
futile attempts at counterattack, why did the butchery move relentlessly
past mere victory to extermination? The New Order’s corporatist struc-
ture absorbed parties like the PNI. Why not the PKI?
The answer, I think, lies in the certifying role that organization played in
ABRI’s drive for power. Indonesia’s nationalist revolution triggered
broad and deep social mobilization across the archipelago, and enough
sustained fighting to spawn armies and militia nationwide, but produced
fundamentally weak political institutions. Since independence, but
particularly in the early 1960s, the military regarded itself as uniquely
qualified for national leadership because of its organizational capacity,
and the modernizing echoes that capacity stirred. Given the balance

49
For a compelling essay describing difficulties determining the actual casualty figures, as
well as a survey of different estimates, consult Cribb 1990.
50
Robinson 1995.
Map 3 Indonesia
 Indonesia 53

between institutionally strong military and weaker civilian institutions,

McVey argues that perhaps the principal question about Sukarno’s
Indonesia is how the president thwarted military ambitions for so
long.51 He did so partly because his charismatic hold on the idiom of
revolution allowed him to mobilize direct popular support, and partly
because he often played central and regional commands off against one
another. However, during Sukarno’s latter authoritarian period (called
Guided Democracy, and stretching from 1958 to 1965) he increasingly
maintained power by balancing ABRI against the PKI – the only force
apart from ABRI with a strong organizational machinery – or the reputa-
tion of one. ABRI’s approach to the PKI certainly had ideological and
historical roots, but it thrived as competition between the only two
potential sources of organized political power. Despite its mistrust of
political Islam, ABRI could unleash more scattered Muslim groups
against the communists, and would not rest until the communist network
was annihilated.52 As with Burma, clues to this rivalry’s origin lie in the
structure of colonialism, and in the process of liberation.

Dutch rule and the social base of Indonesian nationalism

In the early twentieth century, important events changed colonial admin-
istration and society in the Dutch East Indies. Until then, the Dutch ruled
indirectly, with European officials working alongside local aristocrats.
Administrative positions provided local elites with economic security
and an explicitly ennobled niche in the colonial structure,53 while elites
mediated between Dutch rule and local society. By the end of the nine-
teenth century, however, changes in cultivation regulations, designed to
boost production, placed Dutch managers and overseers in more directly
supervisory roles over plantation labor.54 This change, plus increased
civil servant arrivals from the Netherlands, reduced the colonial state’s
need for local intermediaries. As available administrative positions dimin-
ished, however, local school graduates expecting civil service positions
increased. Colonial officials, Kahin explains, feared the spread of pan-
Islamic thought into the colony after the Suez Canal’s opening in 1869
eased travel to the Middle East for study. To counteract this perceived
threat, the Dutch opened First Class Native Schools in 1893, and local

51
McVey 1971; and McVey 1972.
52
For the role of Muslim groups in the killing, see Cribb 1990: 26–29.
53
Sutherland. 1979.
54
In particular, the state-mandated Cultivation System ended at the end of the nineteenth
century. Kahin 1952: 41–42; see also Stoler 1985.
54 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

education rapidly expanded thereafter.55 Soon local Islamic movements

like the Muhammadiyah (1912) and the Taman Siswa movements (1922)
established vocational schools and more tradition-based institutions. By
the 1920s, jobs did not exist for all school graduates, who began to
compete with aristocrats and Dutch migrants. Education placed non-
aristocrats in line for positions similar to those that aristocrats held, and
created initial tension between the groups.56 As university degrees
became the standard for professional capacity, however, these divisions
blurred57 and dissatisfaction at declining job opportunities acquired a
broader social base in Indonesia than in Burma or (as we will see) the
Philippines.
Increasingly direct Dutch economic and political control, therefore,
diminished the aristocracy’s capacity to buffer mass resentment precisely
as elite dissatisfaction itself rose. This combination allowed nationalism
to develop important bases at all social strata. When in 1917 the Dutch
organized a local representative assembly (the Volksraad) it provided an
institutional foundation for elite nationalists, particularly when parties
eventually formed in the 1920s.58 Still, Volksraad politics remained
relatively moderate, in contrast to developments outside the assembly.59
In that realm, changing economic and social relations prompted the
organization of Islamic and increasingly nationalist organizations. The
end of the Cultivation System in the early 1900s altered relations between
indigenous traders (including some of society’s most orthodox Muslims)
and Chinese competitors, prompting Muslims to found trading associ-
ations to counter what they viewed as a new pro-Chinese bias.60 New
associations like Muhammadiyah (1912), concentrated on essentially
religious debates, but by 1917 the Seriket Islam (Islamic Union) formed
behind more powerful nationalist positions. The Perhimpuan Indonesia
(Indonesian Association or PI) emerged in 1922 from the more nationally
ambiguous Indies Association, formed in 1908; in 1926 under
Mohammad Hatta, the PI merged into the PKI (Perserikatan Komunis di
India, the Indian Communist Party) itself forced out of the Seriket Islam in
1921.
Such nationalist expressions integrated elements of the local society in
ways that contrast with the Burmese experience. The Burmese struggle

55
Kahin 1952; van der Veur 1969.
56
Van Niel 1950.
57
Legge 1988: 16–19.
58
Van Niel 1950.
59
Ingleson 1979.
60
Peltzer 1979.
 Indonesia 55

included (on its under-card) a contest between ethnic Burmans – anti-

colonial school graduates – and educated, non-Burman groups serving
the colonial state. With battle lines drawn in this manner, and reinforced
by inter-ethnic clashes from the 1930s through World War Two, the
contest narrowed nationalism’s integrative power. The anti-colonial
movement became a sometimes-dual struggle against the British and
against non-Burmans – hence the nativist specificity of movements like
the Dohbama Asyiayone. In Indonesia, the Dutch parallel administration
preserved antagonisms between the Dutch and all of the colony’s different
societies, and assured that even collaborators would mainly operate in
relation to members of their own regional and language groups. Tension
between the Dutch and portions of all local societies permitted an inte-
grating, supranational formulation of local nationalist aspirations: Indonesia.
This broad way of setting out the anti-imperialist opposition, moreover,
resonated with anti-colonial currents encountered by Indonesian students
in Europe.61
Yet Indonesia’s vastness made coordination between the movement’s
different centers difficult, and rendered its institutions vulnerable to
Dutch repression. Dutch proscriptions on the Seriket Islam’s central
organs, for instance, dissipated the movement by setting local chapters
adrift. Local and rural Indonesian religious and intellectual leaders, par-
ticularly those based at Islamic schools or Pesantren, were not integrated
into a larger national structure, and did not produce a national network.62
The communist party, possessed of perhaps the most capable organiza-
tional network in the 1920s, fell to Dutch attack after an aborted uprising
between 1926 and 1927.63 Later, when nationalism became a stronger
current in the Volksraad, the Dutch periodically banned groups that
demanded or organized behind independence, and stalled the nationalist
movement by arresting leaders like Sjahrir, Sukarno and Hatta.64 By the
advent of the Pacific War, the Dutch had imposed such control that
nationalism’s most visible expressions came in the cautious demands of
the older, diplomasi nationalists.65 Nowhere, however, could nationalists
construct effective movement organizations asserting their supra-national
vision of Indonesia.

61
See for example, the account of life in exile in Rose 1987.
62
This is suggested in a telling comparison in Harvey 1998: 71.
63
Kahin 1952: 85–87.
64
For a description of the exiled life of these nationalist leaders and their relationship to
the nationalist struggle, see Mrazek 1996: 41–65; Legge 1988.
65
Shiraishi 2003, Kahin 1952, Reid 1974.
56 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

The organizations of Indonesian nationalism and World War Two

As we saw earlier, Japan recruited and trained Burmese nationalist
youths already controlling their movement, and then set the British
colonial state to flight. In contrast, the Japanese met a far flatter nation-
alist organization in the Dutch East Indies, with different local groups
across the archipelago, but no accepted central hierarchy. Early in their
occupation, the Japanese returned arrested and exiled nationalists Sukarno
and Hatta from exile – partly because they found diplomasi nationalists
in the bureaucracy politically suspect – and provided them broadcast
facilities that allowed direct appeal to the population, without mediating
organizations.66 Nominally supporting Japan, Sukarno and Hatta spent
most of their effort encouraging a supranational idea of Indonesia, but
built no strong central organizations. Rather, the Japanese organized
local mass organizations and youth-based militia (Pembela Tanah Air,67
PETA). Under Japanese tutelage, the impetuous pemuda (youth) acti-
vists, long isolated by older diplomasi nationalists, advanced an emotional
and dynamic nationalism of struggle (perjuangan). As in Burma (although
less decisively) the Japanese forced cautious, older nationalists to make
way for younger activists. Unlike in Burma, Indonesian nationalists
had few central mechanisms, but many local organizations ready for
struggle.68
The entire nationalist structure depended on Japanese support and
shelter against colonial adversaries. Despite heavy Japanese impositions,
their relations with the Indonesians never deteriorated into open conflict,
and no anti-fascist alliance with the Dutch ever materialized, though the
colonial government did reject a nationalist–proposed anti-fascist alliance
in the late 1930s. The end of Japanese rule also came suddenly, in August
1945, and was entirely unrelated to losses inflicted on Japanese forces in
Indonesia. Hence significant time passed before colonial powers would
attempt to retake the archipelago, during which the Indonesian Republic
(founded on August 17) set down precarious and shallow roots (assisted
somewhat by Japanese soldiers marking time before their departure). The
new Republic had barely a month before British troops landed in
Jogjakarta on September 29.
From then until December 27, 1949, Indonesian nationalists
fought returning Dutch rule in a revolution that widened divisions
between central political leaders and local armed groups. The war

66
Reid 1974.
67
‘‘Defenders of the Fatherland.’’
68
Anderson 1974; see also Anderson 1966.
 Indonesia 57

began with the fierce local resistance of the baden perjuangan (militia)
and PETA units, barely coordinated by the weak and skeletal civilian
Republican apparatus that diplomasi nationalists controlled. These
politicians, however, were utterly out of step with the militias’
revolutionary thrust. Nine Republican governments resigned in rapid
succession after each negotiated concessions with the Dutch that
enraged revolutionary fighters.69 In the countryside, militia shared
wartime experiences that provided a foundation on which the national
army would emerge, and set war fighters apart from civilian leaders. But
through the parade of governments, Sukarno and Hatta retained control
of the revolution’s political voice, severing any necessary connection
between them and any one government. Both stood between the
faltering structures of central rule and the growing power of the
armed revolution. The Dutch met defeat after they arrested the
civilian leadership’s most important figures, and freed the dynamic
and violent baden perjuangan from Republican restraints.70 The fur-
ious fighting that followed combined with international pressure on
the Dutch compelled the colonists to relinquish all territory except
West Papua.
The war left powerful political legacies. First, the Japanese occupation
forces had provided support and training for a fairly significant range of
local organizations, from the PETA to a collection of important Muslim
organizations (the Masjumi) to different sections of the PKI.71 Each of
these groups would play important roles in Independent Indonesia.
Second, guerilla warfare forged several political forces crucial to the
post-war environment. Although decentralized, the army produced
strong personages atop heroic mythologies – and with civilian leaders in
jail, soldiers forced the final Dutch defeat. But the PKI also figured
prominently in the battles, and used wartime exploits to rebuild its
organization and prestige (although it badly overplayed its hand in a
1948 Madiun uprising before the revolution’s end, seeking to seize control
over other revolutionary forces).72 Third, civilian leaders had established
but the barest outline of a governing structure, depended on Sukarno’s
dazzling rhetoric to mobilize mass support, and exercised notably thin
control over the army.

69
Kahin 1952; Reid 1974. A lot of this becomes more clear in retrospect, particularly in
how ABRI subsequently represents the revolution, and its role in it (see Bourchier
1992a).
70
Anderson 1974.
71
Anderson 1966; Reid 1980.
72
Swift 1989; McVey 1965; and Wertheim 1987: 115–116.
58 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

Post-colonial pressures, guided democracy and the contest of

organizations
Interactions among three important factors governed politics in newly
independent Indonesia. First, strong rivalries developed between governing
institutions, primarily between the army and parliamentary forces.
Second, political competition within the new national framework heigh-
tened rivalries between political Islam and communism, or between the
outer Islands and the Javanese centers, and undercut institution-building
processes like parliament’s efforts to stabilize its rule or military endeavors
to build an effective chain of command. Both institutional and factional
politics, however, receded in the face of a third factor: the charismatic
figure of Sukarno, at the revolutionary government’s heart, masterfully
wielding its mobilizing politics and symbols.
From independence until the late 1950s, the civilian government
strove to maintain power with weak institutions, a bureaucracy rife with
remnants of a collaborating elite, and flimsy revolutionary credentials – a
tall order, when one considers the vast territory over which the revolution
had mobilized an often demanding population. In this effort, Sukarno
faced challenges from both state agencies and society. Several military
attempts to grab power occurred soon after independence. In 1952, Java-
based leaders of the newly named ABRI, under General Nasution,
sought to force Sukarno to dismiss parliament, rule more directly and
rein in persistently autonomous outer-island security forces. In 1956, field
commands (given stronger operational and financial capacities to defeat
Nasution in 1952) and supported by more orthodox Masjumi chapters
and local militia remnants, rose (in the Pemerintahan Revolusioner
Republik Indonesia rebellion[PRRI, Revolutionary Government of the
Indonesian Republic]) against the crippled parliamentary system and
the central military command. Sukarno rode out both challenges, partly
by playing the military’s internal divisions against one another, but partly
by keeping Indonesian society astir with revolutionary invocations.73 In
1952, he appealed for popular support for the revolution, decried selfish
and counter-revolutionary military ambitions in Java, and enlisted outer-
island commands chaffing under ABRI’s centralizing efforts. In 1957,
Sukarno took the first steps toward building a more authoritarian and
centralized system by empowering ABRI’s central command under a
rehabilitated Nasution, and declaring martial law on March 14.74

73
McVey 1971; McVey 1972.
74
Feith 1962.
 Indonesia 59

That declaration empowered ABRI’s central command, but Sukarno

simultaneously encouraged outer-island lower echelon officers to displace
commanding officers.
Social tensions also grew during this same period. Daniel Lev describes
a tension at the revolution’s heart: its leaders needed to mobilize a poor
population without opening the floodgates of class conflict that would
sweep aside elite prerogatives.75 Sukarno attempted to solve this puzzle
by directing social energies against targets inside or outside Indonesia,
turning revolutionary enthusiasm away from frontal attacks on elite priv-
ilege. In this effort, he soon adopted his most sharply anti-imperialist
rhetoric, withdrew from the United Nations, and eventually launched
two confrontation campaigns – against remnants of Dutch colonialism in
West Papua, and against the British in Malaya – to direct domestic
energies into foreign policy objectives. Before those efforts however
(mainly in the 1960s) Sukarno deflected mass unrest by accusing electoral
parties and political Islam of subverting the revolution. Demonstrations
supporting these accusations renewed support for Sukarno, despite
economic decline, without moving against Indonesian elites.
Still, the twin pressures of a restive society and ambitious institutions
compelled Sukarno in 1957 to acquiesce to General Nasution’s design
for a more authoritarian and corporatist arrangement that was called
‘‘Guided Democracy.’’ The new system built on the idea that organ-
izational power was the best, perhaps only, way to control Indonesia’s
vast and often unruly society, and began by undercutting most political
parties and Muslim groups, and replacing these with a Working Cabinet.
Unlike former governmental arrangements, however, this cabinet did
not favor urban parties, but gave pride of place to institutions and organ-
izations that could control territory and populations. Accordingly, two
organizations with the greatest capacity and reach, ABRI and the PKI,
became centrally important. ABRI’s power, formerly constrained only by
divisions among officers, expanded after Sukarno declared martial law,
re-centralized ABRI, and placed military officials in charge of nationalized
Dutch firms (responsibilities institutionalized in the military’s doctrine of
dual political and security responsibilities, or dwifungsi). Since 1948,
the PKI steadily organized a mass machinery, but remained largely apart
from national electoral politics. It had worked in the (mainly Javanese)
countryside to build large organizations and would soon claim 25 million
members across a fairly broad social spectrum.76

75
Lev 1966b.
76
Mortimer 1974.
60 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

Had either force alone provided Guided Democracy’s organizational

power, it might well have overwhelmed Sukarno. With both on board,
however, their rivalry kept each in check, and Sukarno in charge. By
basing Guided Democracy on two organizations eager to outdo one
another, Sukarno navigated past organizationally powerful groups with-
out himself building any strong political machinery. Nevertheless, it was
an unstable balance, for both ABRI and the PKI undercut one another in
ways that destabilized the entire arrangement.77
The military contrasted with the PKI along two dimensions: the com-
munists’ relatively greater hold over mass society, and ABRI’s monopoly
of armed force. (ABRI also had a geographically broader reach, but the
centralizing resolution of the 1956 coup attempt emphasized its Java-
based machinery, and made the two groups more similar.) To undercut
communist advantage, ABRI began building its own mass groupings that
explicitly – even in their names – rivaled PKI associations: the Seriket
Organisasi Karyawan Socialis Indonesia (Union of Indonesian Socialist
Karaywan Organizations, SOKSI) countered PKI labor unions, for
instance.78 These measures matched PKI strengths and helped the military
establish positions within Guided Democracy’s corporatist structures.79
The communists at first engaged the rivalry cautiously, for party
leaders were caught between impoverished, restive constituencies and
a precarious national environment. For years, the PKI had been excluded
from parliamentary cabinets despite frequently winning electoral plural-
ities, and they consequently cultivated a compensating image as reliable,
moderate politicians. Their mass actions avoided explicit class confronta-
tion, and emphasized cooperative ventures, education drives, and the
party’s transforming modernity.80 The PKI also contained conservative
rural elites attracted by the party’s strong electoral performances, and
willing to ignore a class struggle line that seemed largely rhetorical.81 By
1963, however, these constraints began to loosen. The party had virtually
exhausted its ability to mobilize its mass base without challenging elites.
As social and economic conditions deteriorated and ABRI grew impatient
with Sukarno, the president drew closer to the PKI, and depended more
on its mobilizing power. This dependence provided opportunities for the
party, but also triggered more antagonistic relations with ABRI and other
social forces. The PKI’s campaign unilaterally to implement agrarian

77
Anderson 1983b; Lev 1963–1964.
78
Reeve 1992: 165–167.
79
Suryadinata 1989: 9–12.
80
McVey 1996.
81
Mortimer 1974.
 Indonesia 61

reform laws through land occupations in 1963 angered conservative Muslims

landowners (with their own history of friction with the communists and
Sukarno) and also military officers who had also begun acquiring and
developing lands.82
Still, the development that probably most aroused ABRI anxiety came
in 1965, when the PKI began to organize, with Sukarno’s approval,
a civilian militia. With this so-called ‘‘fifth force’’ the PKI set out to
acquire the single institutional capacity that was ABRI’s alone.83 From
the announcement of the militia’s formation until September 30, 1965,
relations between ABRI and the PKI rapidly deteriorated. In that inter-
val, the communists launched more active protests and demonstrations,
and more aggressively challenged property rights and elite privilege.
By September, rumors were rife of both a communist and a military
putsch, and the junior officers that attempted to take control in the
original coup d’état seemed mainly interested in blocking a power-grab
from more conservative quarters in ABRI.
In an important sense, Guided Democracy contributed to the
bloodshed in 1965. When Sukarno staked his authority upon mobilizing
revolutionary idioms, he virtually assured that at some point, these forms
would turn against elements of the state’s central alliance. Repeated
mobilization to defend Indonesia acclimatised people to the contention
that enemies (counter-revolutionaries, imperialists, colonial sympathizers,
and political Muslims) had slipped through the revolution’s skein, lodged
themselves in post-revolutionary society, and worked enough mischief to
jeopardize the whole project. This rhetoric legitimized internal witch-
hunts, and sanctioned the idea of popular and heroic risings to preserve
the revolution and its leader. Yet the unanimity with which Indonesians
affirmed the revolution meant that its particular stewardship – and hence
the definition of its enemies and heroes – was open to contest. Both the
September 30 coup attempt to protect Sukarno from rightist Generals,
and the rightist reaction to that coup, presented themselves as preserving
the revolution.
The main question, however, is not why either the PKI or the military
would move against one another in 1965, but why the counter-coup
completely eliminated the PKI, and established a regime that prevented
the organization of dissent, but not its expression. We will soon examine
this question in greater and more comparative detail. For now, I will
reiterate the short answer that this chronology suggests: as political

82
Lev 1966b; Feith 1963.
83
Anderson 1983b: 485.
62 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

power came increasingly to be contested between the only two forces with
significant organizational capacities, the principle of organization – both
in Guided Democracy and the New Order’s corporatist structures –
became the accepted means of establishing domestic control. Political
forces with weak organizational resources could not really threaten ABRI,
and did not call forth great violence. (The military could thus mobilize
Nahdlatul Ulama participation in the slaughter because Muslim groups
did not possess strong organizational resources.) The PKI, however,
had such organizational capacities that when Suharto thwarted the
September 30 coup attempt, he directly set out to eradicate the commu-
nists altogether.

The Philippines
Marcos declared martial law on September 21, 1972, after almost two years
of toying with the possibility, closing the legislature, the Constitutional
Commission and important media outlets. Soldiers swept through the
streets to arrest activists and prevent demonstrations – the very commun-
ists (apparently) against whom Marcos had warned for months. First,
however, security forces arrested opposition senator Benigno Aquino,
and then pursued other prominent politicians like Senators Jose Diokno
and Jovito Salonga.84 Seizing dictatorial powers was, of course, easier for
Marcos than for either Suharto or Ne Win because Marcos already held
executive office. Perhaps in part for this reason – but for others that we
will explore – the martial law regime exercised comparative restraint, and
for longer than Ne Win could manage in Burma. There were no massive
initial killings, and many activists escaped relatively unhindered into the
countryside. Martial law, to use David Wurfel’s phrase, did not eliminate
activists, but disbursed them.85 Most politicians imprisoned in those first
days soon found themselves released, and some of Marcos’s strongest
opponents (the Lopez family, Raul Manglapus, Heherson Alvarez) left
the Philippines before martial law – a strikingly different fate than that
suffered by those Ne Win and Suharto struck down. Marcos in some ways
seemed preoccupied with other matters – including drafting a new
constitution and building a strong state machinery.
Down the line, Marcos’s distracted pursuit of regime opponents
hurt his regime. Repression drove legal and moderate groups toward
radical positions, and many approached the Communist Party of the

84
Wurfel 1988: 114–153; see also Thompson 1995: 57–63; and Staff Report 1973: 1–4;
van der Kroef provides a list of those detained (1973b: 45).
85
Wurfel 1988: 226.
 The Philippines 63

Map 4 The Philippines

64 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

Philippines (CPP). Politicians freed from jail, and many that avoided arrest
altogether, found enough leeway in the new authoritarian dispensation –
particularly at the beginning, when Marcos seemed confident of his power –
to begin criticizing the dictatorship. The survival of both underground
armed groups and more open political resistance provided a beginning for
anti-dictatorship resistance that blossomed in the late 1970s and early
1980s. By underestimating these opponents when they were small and
scattered, Marcos allowed them to survive, and his pattern of repressive
policies assured that they would grow. Before they became formidable
opponents, however, these forces had become impossible to eradicate.
The opposition’s growth from 1972 onward will concern us shortly; for
now, we concentrate on explaining the comparatively gentle onset of
martial law – at least compared to Indonesian and Burmese events. The
short explanation, I think, is that unlike Suharto or Ne Win, Marcos
seized dictatorial powers without needing to defeat any specific adversary.
Suharto set out to eliminate the PKI while Ne Win struck against parlia-
mentarians who had just won a new mandate. Marcos, however, had
mastered the electoral system, and was in his second presidential term.
Unlike Suharto, he did not face an immediately threatening (specific)
opponent. Movement and insurgent challenges, on the other hand which
sought power in the different coin of mass mobilization, remained weak,
and so unlike Ne Win, Marcos faced no opponent with skills and capa-
cities he could not match. Rather, Marcos set out to overturn constitu-
tional constraints that limited his presidency’s duration and power, and
so needed less to cut down opponents than to hold them at bay. In this
way, the Philippine passage into dictatorship preserved an elite political
opposition, a radical underground, and civil institutions, and this pre-
servation shaped anti-Marcos resistance in fundamental ways. To
examine why, we must review the structure of American colonial rule,
and the process by which Filipinos acquired independence.

American rule and the social base of Philippine nationalism

The United States did not acquire its Philippine colony in consequence of
any clear expansionist plan, and its first decades of Philippine rule demon-
strate some ambivalence on the question of rule. Its greatest colonial
presence occurred during the Philippine–American war, and sharply fell
from a 1901 high of 71,528 to only 12,748 in 1903.86 Responsibility for
maintaining law and order passed to a new constabulary, in which by

86
Jose 1992: 15.
 The Philippines 65
87
1904, only 345 American officers led 7,000 Filipinos. As troop
strengths declined, the real colonial shock troops arrived in robust num-
bers: American newspapermen, entrepreneurs, bankers and lawyers
flooded Manila and streamed into the provinces. Taking advantage of
the conversion of Catholic Friar lands to private control, they sought to
meet global demand for sugar, copra and abaca, established the great
sugar centrals, mapped out strategies for broader export-oriented fruit
production, and accelerated timber and mining operations. In these
efforts, Americans worked with landed provincial elites – an alliance
rendered essential by restrictions on US participation in the Philippine
plantation economy.88 For Philippine elites, it was a time of plenty: credit
was abundant, new production strategies energized industry, and formerly
tight Spanish export controls yielded to preferential access to the large
American market and a generally more open orientation toward global
trade.89 By taking over niches previously dominated by the Spanish and
rapidly adapting to the more freewheeling and liberal American system of
trade and production, local businessmen made a killing.
The political system supporting this activity depended on two alliances
between American colonialism and Philippine society. First, American-
sponsored primary education (far more broadly available in the
Philippines than in Burma or the Netherlands East Indies) produced a
cadre of relatively poor but skilled administrators to work in the colonial
state. Most came from middle or lower class families, for whom knowledge
and skill provided important (if limited) avenues for social mobility.90
Second, landed elites, benefiting from the American-driven economic
boom, gained election to the new Philippine Assembly, from where they
protected their economic interests and soon fused into an identifiable
national elite.91 Nascent tension existed between these groups. In some
part, the strain resided in considerations of class and privilege, for

87
Jose 1992: 18.
88
As Rivera reports, ‘‘During (the American colonial period) a significant portion of the
assets and investments in major agro-mineral export industries (particularly sugar
milling and cordage, mining and logging/saw milling) had already come under the
ownership and control of a privileged landlord and merchant class. Further, commercial
agricultural export production was largely controlled by Filipino landlords and
compradores since earlier legislation limiting the size of land holdings for corporate
plantation agriculture dampened US capital investment in large scale agriculture’’
(1994: 25–26).
89
Doeppers 1984: 9.
90
Doeppers 1984: 59–68.
91
The electoral system’s literacy and property requirements initially restricted the
franchise to roughly 2 percent of the population. Municipal elections in 1902 helped
establish patronage machines for the first lower house elections in 1907, and broader
bicameral contests in 1916. Catilo and Tapales 1988: 139.
66 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

nouveau aristocrats in the Assembly had little interest in sharing power or

prestige with poorer, upwardly striving functionaries.92 But tensions
divided elected politicians from the state’s new employees. Assembly
elites typically did not use national positions to accumulate power, but
to preserve their standing in local arenas and against change or external
challenge; Assembly members were animated about regulations governing
tariffs, market quotas and monetary policy – but beyond that, wanted to be
left alone. Virtually everyone with a chance to win office also wanted to
keep the national apparatus weak, and this led to considerable suspicion
toward members of the state apparatus. Hence, unlike Burma or Indonesia,
where administrative postings provided opportunities for both established
elites and new (even poor) school graduates, land remained a stronger
and more excluding avenue to power and wealth in the Philippines.
This division helped prevent strong nationalist expressions. Landed
elites, of course, were largely happy with their fortunes under American
rule, and their tepid appetite for independence was sated by gradual
negotiations with the United States. The Assembly also attracted student
support and admiration, and provided such clear career paths for politi-
cally ambitious students that few attempted to organize more radical
nationalist associations.93 Nor, at first, was there much to fear from the
civil service, for career opportunities had never been better.
By the early 1920s, however, the administration was fully staffed and a
surplus of qualified college graduates existed. Officials began to pick and
choose among job applicants, and were better positioned to construct
patronage networks that would assure their dominance over the bureau-
cracy.94 It was among those who had been rejected by, or purged from the
bureaucracy that mass-mobilizing nationalism found its strongest leaders –
but they had reason to focus on criticizing Filipino politicians (their most
immediate antagonists) rather than American colonists. As the electoral
franchise expanded, independence debates became largely domesticated
campaign fare, guiding nationalism in directions that colonists could
accommodate. On the American model, for instance, Philippine labor
groups linked themselves to electoral machines through ties of patronage
and so politicians did not rely on their political programs to win over
supporters.95

92
Catilo and Tapales 1988.
93
For an example of this, see Tolentino’s (1990) account of the relationship that evolved
between student activists like himself and Commonwealth politicians like Quezon and
Roxas.
94
Friend 1965.
95
Scott 1983; Kerkvliet 1982; and Doeppers 1984: 124.
 The Philippines 67

Educational patterns under US rule placed students in national, rather

than international networks. While young Indonesians and Burmese
could acquire a passable administrative education in their home
countries, those who studied further typically traveled to Europe. With
the liberalization of local Philippine education under American rule,
established and new universities provided Filipinos with broader local
opportunities for study, and so fewer students were exposed to Marxist
anti-colonialism moving through Europe than other Southeast Asian
nationalists.96 University life in the Philippines helped solidify ties
among these future elites, and also built ties between bankable pools of
future leaders and the parties. Such party–campus links were also avail-
able to some of the non-elite students who began to arrive on campus in
significant numbers, diverting some of the most dynamic and potentially
radical candidates for the state bureaucracy into electoral politics. Hence,
despite periodic protests in the late 1920s, students directed their most
fervent attention toward electoral politics, and campus protests often
served the parties – in this sense resembling Burmese student politics in
the parliamentary period rather than other Southeast Asian nationalist
movements.
In combination, these factors allowed nationalism to become a safe
rhetorical position for Philippine political elites. Across Southeast Asia,
more pitched independence struggles required nationalist elites to seek
broad social support, and anti-colonialism’s main proponents commonly
found Marxism’s class line either attractive or necessary. Philippine national
elites engaged in independence negotiations didn’t need mass support (for
they had already been promised independence) and had no reason to
jeopardize their social and economic standing by forming radical alliances
with workers, peasants or students.97 The bureaucracy as an institution
thrived under American rule and suffered under Philippine elite restric-
tions; when a nationalist did emerge from the state machinery, he was
likely to reserve his fire for Filipino targets. Associations that former
bureaucrats organized usually had weak leaderships, willing to drop
radical posturing in exchange for a new job in government. More resilient
mass organizations (for example, the Socialist party founded by Pedro
Abad-Santos, and in the urban Katipunan ng mga Anak-Pawis [KAP, the

96
As I suggest elsewhere these differences are also a matter of world time. Philippine
nationalists working against Spanish rule in the late nineteenth century traveled to
Europe in significant numbers. Yet the nationalism they learned in these travels was the
Creole nationalism that mainly demanded representation within European
arrangements, not the independence that would dominate anti-colonial demands in
the following decades. Boudreau 2003.
97
McCoy 1988; Corpuz 1989.
68 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

Proletarian Labor Congress]) were more entirely working-class expres-

sions, and weak for that very reason.98

World War Two, independence, and the organized left

The Philippine independence movement’s particular timing rendered the
Pacific War a different influence here than elsewhere. Most Southeast
Asian Marxist-nationalists favored the Comintern’s anti-fascist United
Front, which called for politically ticklish alliances with colonial powers.
Other nationalists saw opportunities to use Japanese support against
colonial regimes, and in Burma and Indonesia, even leftists rejected the
anti-fascist front to secure some Japanese help against European coloni-
alism. In the Philippines, nationalists had already received assurances of
full independence after the war, and the question for elites was not how to
use the Japanese occupation in the nationalist cause, but how to survive
it.99 This puzzle produced extensive collaboration among elites, and it
was mainly groups with ambitious programs against entrenched or recal-
citrant adversaries, such as the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP,
Communist Party of the Philippines) or working in league with American
forces that initially formed substantial anti-Japan formations.100
After the war, as independence struggles across Southeast Asia entered
their critical phases, Philippine elites could concentrate on consolidating
their positions against local challenges to property and privilege, and so
they closed ranks. Nobody much objected when US-led troops disarmed
Huk soldiers, for the guerillas were viewed as threats to local property,
rather than as nationalist allies.101 When the Senate and Congress refused
to allow six winning candidates from the leftist Democratic Alliance (DA)
to assume posts they won in 1946 elections, the courts upheld the move,
and few voices outside the DA protested very strongly. Under some
American prodding, local elites agreed to view wartime divisions among
themselves as different strategies to power, rather than as patriotism
or treason.102 The military defeat of the PKP-led Huk rebellion in the
early 1950s decisively marginalized the PKP, and turned many potential
revolutionaries into bandits and extortionists.103

98
Kerkvliet 1992: 71–91.
99
Setsuho 1999.
100
Tolentino 1990. As in Burma, however, the often-brutal conduct of the Japanese
occupation also encouraged more and more Filipinos to join anti-fascist alliances.
101
Kerkvliet 1986; Constantino and Constantino 1978.
102
Steinberg 1960.
103
Kerkvliet 1986.
 The Philippines 69

On the other hand, the negotiated transfer of colonial institutions to

local control never required the political movements so central to Indonesian
and Burmese independence, or the national army so important to Indonesia.
The Philippine constabulary was never a national fighting force, and its
officers were subordinate to provincial politicians. The bureaucracy was
similarly weak, and expanded in the 1940s and 1950s through political
patronage rather than coherent state building. The thicket of patronage
ties prevented state institutions from developing autonomous power or
interests.104 In fact, wasteful patronage drove the government to virtual
collapse in 1949, and only a last ditch infusion of US resources stemmed
the crisis. Even then, however, elites viewed constraints on state capacity
as a generally good thing – and no state institution had the standing
effectively to disagree.

The constitutional regime

An emerging orthodoxy about the Philippine state emphasizes the oligar-
chy’s rent-seeking activity in relations between the weak state and the
strong society. Hutchcroft argues that families plundered the weak state
precisely because Americans supported the landed oligarchs and
neglected to build a coherent central administration.105 McCoy associ-
ates accelerating rent-seeking with independence, when elected officials
became more dependent on provincial elites to deliver votes.106 Both
advance compelling descriptions of a weak central apparatus, captured
and divided by powerful social forces. Yet to explain the rise of the
Marcos dictatorship, we need also to acknowledge significant changes
in rent-seeking patterns promoting new class interests.
After the war, the Philippines entered a new era of import substitution,
fueled by a reconstruction boom. Landed elites, however, accustomed
under American colonialism to accumulating wealth by using their local
dominance to exploit local opportunities, showed little interest in these
newer industrial and manufacturing propects. The state, therefore, initially
took a direct hand running new industrial concerns. Officials’ corruption
and ineptitude,107 however, soon spurred privatization that involved new
entrepreneurs, largely outside the landed elite (Chinese traders and money-
lenders, Filipino management professionals, lawyers and bureaucrats)108

104
For a discussion of this, see Hutchcroft 1993: 39–41; Anderson 1998.
105
Hutchcroft 1998; Anderson 1988.
106
McCoy 1993.
107
Golay 1971.
108
Kunio 1985.
70 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

and changing patronage and rent-seeking practices. Gary Hawes

explains:
What was vital to all entrepreneurs in import-substituting manufacture was access
to both capital and political favor, for the government controlled the licensing of
new import-substitution ventures, the granting of import permits, the right to
exchange pesos for the dollars needed to import, and the amount of hard currency
exporters would get after turning their export receipts over to the Central
Bank.109
New entrepreneurs often came to manufacturing with little besides
administrative skills, connections, and a taste for something new. Many
got initial capital, licensing and contacts from state sponsors. As licensing
became crucial to enterprise success, political and administrative profes-
sionals (as distinct from landed elites) acquired more influence.110
In time, some provincial elites invested in real estate and banking, but
most attempted to prevent or reverse the trend toward protectionist
policies that encouraged local manufacturing. By the late 1950s, import-
substituting manufacturing entrepreneurs openly competed with landed
elites favoring export-oriented policies.111 Elections produced periodic
swings between these two blocs, and so the state could commit to neither
an export-oriented strategy nor to import substitution: each required
more policy continuity than the patronage-riddled apparatus could
deliver.112 Marcos rose to power in the context of this competition: a
creature of neither camp (despite his initial base in the former) but of the
impasse between them.
Marcos thrived on his ability to work the state. He began public life as a
lawyer with a flair for public relations, and a facility with political organi-
zation and coalition building.113 As a young congressman in the 1950s,
he accumulated power by securing state license, resources, and especially
foreign exchange for entrepreneurs. His ascent marked a reversal in
established paths to power, when economic activity required little state
support, and bureaucrats were firmly subordinate to landed politi-
cians.114 As manufacturing grew more important, business required
more of the state, and those skilled in statecraft grew formidable.
Marcos was among the most prominent of these new politicians, enriched

109
Hawes 1992: 150.
110
Hawes 1992. (Hawes relies on Kunio 1985; and Baldwin 1975), see also Doronila
1992: 83–98.
111
See Boyce 1993: 7; Ofreneo 1984: 469.
112
Hawes 1992.
113
McCoy 1994: 16.
114
Anderson 1988.
 The Philippines 71
115
directly by state power, and in his first presidential term (1966–1970) he
consolidated that power by centralizing state institutions on a scale unseen
since Manuel Quezon’s Commonwealth presidency (1935–1944).116
Much of this effort concentrated on the military. Marcos initially
retained the Minister of National Defense portfolio and reorganized the
dispersed military structure to form Regional Unified Commands that
broke landed politicians’ ties to soldiers. He replaced officers’ old pro-
vincial loyalties with ties to himself, and built a national structure that
included police forces and constabulary under the Armed Forces of the
Philippines (AFP) command in 1967. At around that time, Marcos
formed Manila’s Metrocom anti-riot squad, entrusting it (and the
expanded Presidential Security Force) to his cousin and former driver,
Fabian Ver (a man who soon controlled the entire AFP).117 Through
promotions, salary raises and other incentives, Marcos constructed a
loyal security force with broad powers and substantial autonomy from
Philippine society.118 He also mobilized civilian graduates of leading
Philippine universities – men with only rudimentary ROTC training
(Reserve Officer Training Corps), but the skills to carry out new political
and surveillance tasks. Officers from the middle AFP hierarchy began to
study management and related fields in two new schools. The National
Defense College of the Philippines (NDCP) held its first regular class in
1966 (for senior military officers) and the Command and General Staff
College (CGSC) opened in 1969 (for lower echelon officers).119

Mass mobilizations and the central state

Apart from government inefficiency, Marcos’s main justification for mar-
tial law in 1972 was an overblown allegation of communist threat. As we
have seen, the mode and timing of Philippine independence meant that
the PKP could never strongly establish itself in the post-colonial arrange-
ment – particularly in comparison to the Indonesian PKI or even the
Burmese BCP. In 1968, young student activists broke away from the
PKP’s stagnant old guard to form the Maoist CPP. The new group would
prove far more dynamic, but remained small and weak in the early
1970s.120 Its really dramatic expansion occurred after martial law

115
Macado 1971; Gary Hawes 1992: 148; Valdepenas 1970; and Manapat 1991.
116
The centralization process had begun in 1962, under President Macapagal. Hawes
1992: 159; McCoy 1988.
117
For a discussion of Ver’s political rise, see McCoy 1999: 224–230.
118
Thompson 1995: 55; McCoy 1999.
119
Miranda 1990: 31–39.
120
Jones 1989; Weekley 1996.
72 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

foreclosed legal avenues for dissent. Some even suggest that Marcos
supported militant demonstrations on the sly in 1972 to create the
impression of leftist menace.121
Nevertheless, mass (if not communist) politics was on the rise in those
days, taking on new national and urban expressions. An expanding stu-
dent population launched the first protests around 1966 to denounce a
Manila meeting between US President Johnson and Southeast Asian
leaders. The protest echoed US demonstrations against the Vietnam
War, but had important local foundations. Some student activity began
in established campus organizations, like University Student Councils
and the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP), but
youth sections of the new CPP, such as the Kabataan Makabayan (KM,
Nationalist Youth) were also exceptionally active. Students were perfect
antagonists to the new interventionist state, for many traveled from the
provinces to the national center, bringing local grievances into an inte-
grated national focus. A proliferation of ‘‘university belt’’ campuses –
lower quality schools established as businesses to provide diplomas for
middle- and working-class students – injected a more easily radicalized
element into the mix. Social ties between these students and expanding
urban laboring communities (tied to the cash economy and deeply
affected by currency and commodity price regulations) were closer than
ever, and oil price hikes and fare increases hurt both groups. Vatican II’s
message of social activism inspired labor and peasant organizations, and
Church-supported groups like the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) and
the Federation of Free Workers (FFW) put together national networks
that featured Manila headquarters and provincial chapters.122
Expanding urban society also enabled activists to imagine an audience
apart from the state. Protest increasingly adopted symbolic expressions
designed to generate support from society: at violent Lyceum University
protests on January 28, 1969, students heaped grass into a grave-shaped
mound, knelt before it like penitents, and intoned grievances against the
Marcoses; at Congress’s 1970 opening, activists thrust a cardboard cro-
codile and coffin at Marcos as he left the Legislature.123 Supreme Court
pronouncements or Congress’s annual opening became demonstration
venues, and in 1970, the FFF camped on the Senate steps for weeks to
protest against the government’s agrarian policy.124 Such contention
departed from earlier modes of more direct and localized struggle –

121
Rosenberg 1974–1975: 479; van der Kroef 1973b: 30–34.
122
Youngblood 1981.
123
De Dios 1988.
124
Wurfel 1988.
 The Philippines 73

rebellion, land occupations and theft. By the late 1960s, mass politics
played to larger and more attentive national audiences, and benefited
from parliamentary support and press coverage.
Hence, Marcos’s efforts to extend his rule encountered more broadly
mobilized resistance. Demonstrations demanded a fair Constitutional
Commission in 1971, and then broadly denounced the Marcos regime.
Three days after Marcos received his cardboard crocodile, students
clashed with police outside Malacañang, leaving six activists dead. By
February, protests raged at all the capital’s universities, and new activist
organizations ran teach-ins at public plazas. In March, transportation
workers struck, and a combined force of students and laborers staged a
‘‘People’s March’’ that ended in violence. These events formed the flash-
points of the First Quarter Storm: the Philippines’ first urban movement
to make national, integrated demands. Even after protests receded, they
left residues in Philippine society: Jose Lacaba, for example, recalls arriv-
ing at the Pinaglabanan Church for Independence Day celebrations on
June 12 to find middle- and upper-class university students singing leftist
songs in an open public ceremony.125 Yet these new leftists were distinct
from others across Southeast Asia. New radicals in the late 1960s were
not recruited into a strong, established party with a long insurgent history.
Rather, they sprang from the same modern, centralizing and urban forces
that produced Marcos himself. Some came from the new, restless middle
class, others from expanding bureaucratic and educational elites. They
might never have adopted insurgency had martial law not criminalized
acts of formerly legal dissent.
Marcos would not declare martial law for a year and a half after those
March 1971 demonstrations. Between 1971 and September 1972, the
most decisive changes in Philippine politics did not involve, as he
claimed, communist menace, but constitutional limits on his presidency.
The judiciary remained independent, and had since the late 1960s issued
decisions diminishing American standing in the Philippine economy – and
Marcos depended on American support. In 1972, the 320 Constitutional
Convention delegates (chosen in a November 1970 popular election)
were favoring a parliamentary system in which Marcos and his wife
could not hold executive office. The press, moreover, printed stories
alleging that Marcos bribed or pressured delegates to influence the
draft.126 Fueled partly by the broader protest movement, and partly by
specific demonstrations demanding electoral reform, the Liberal Party

125
Lacaba 1970.
126
Pineda-Ofreneo 1988.
74 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

defeated Marcos’s Nacionalistas in 1972 elections, making him the first

post-war president to lose such a contest. With his opponents apparently
poised to take the presidency, Marcos needed to prepare either to leave
office, or to circumvent constitutional regulations.
The 1971 to1972 political crisis was hence not a crisis for state institu-
tions, but for their incumbents.127 With the language and methods of
anti-communist authoritarianism globally accessible, Marcos saw that he
would gain international support for authoritarian rule by claiming a life
and death struggle against leftist insurgency; he abetted the impression by
faking attacks on his officials, and staging explosions around Manila.128
In an incident that captured the spirit of those days, two grenades
exploded at the Liberal Party’s August 21, 1971 Meeting de Advance at
the Plaza Miranda, wounding several senators and killing at least six
onlookers. Following that attack, Marcos suspended the writ of habeas
corpus for one month, in what may have been a dry run for martial law.
Starting in March 1972 small bombs periodically exploded across
Manila. In July, the government intercepted an arms shipment from
North Korea, unloaded from the ship Karagatan and intended for the
small but growing New People’s Army (NPA) insurgency. Through
August, the explosions occurred more frequently, and in September, an
alleged attempt on Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile’s life (in reality a
clumsy affair staged by the government) provided the final excuse for
martial law.129
Still, Philippine left did not inspire some version of the killing blows
that fell in Indonesia and Burma – although thousands were arrested in
martial law’s first weeks. The CPP was, as we have seen, organizationally
weak, and not entirely responsible for the growing unrest. Marcos was cut
from the same sociological cloth as many movement leaders, and valued
the same educational and social institutions that shaped many radicals.
Ne Win and Suharto moved strongly against communist opponents
sharply different from themselves; Marcos, were he thirty years younger,
might have joined student radicals on the streets. Indeed, Marcos’s main
trepidation seems to have focused on America’s possible reaction, and he
sent an envoy ahead of time to allay US anxiety, and then took pains to
proceed in ways that wouldn’t disturb liberal America.130

127
Hawes 1992.
128
Staff Report 1973: 32; van der Kroef 1973b: 40.
129
Goodno 1991: 65; Wurfel 1977: 7.
130
Bonner 1988.
 Comparisons 75

Comparisons
In their rise, Ne Win, Suharto, and Ferdinand Marcos wove shrouds of
domination that overcame rivals and reconfigured the terms of future
rivalry. Repression in each country molded society and citizens to favor
each dictator’s power resources and shield his vulnerabilities – and would
thenceforth draw social challengers into fights the dictator anticipated
winning. Four main points structure our analysis of these processes. First,
differences among the social foundations of colonialism and nationalism
influenced who had capacity for or interest in state power, and so shaped
the array of rivals a dictator had to best. Second, transitions from coloni-
alism influenced state institutions’ orientations, interests and strength – all
fundamental factors in post-independence conflict. Third, rising dictators
in each case challenged initial post-colonial arrangements from specific
institutional or class positions, and their senses of vulnerability and
opportunity reflect these foundations. Finally, the character of power
embodied in the dictator’s challenge to post-colonial arrangements influ-
enced the shape and ferocity of state repression.

The social base of colonialism and resistance

Colonial states in the three cases recruited and trained their local colla-
borators according to different models, producing variations in imperial
relationships to local society. In deposing Burma’s monarchy and geo-
graphically diffused aristocracy, the British pre-empted alliances between
rural elites and agrarian society, leaving only insular and city-bound
graduates of colonial schools to pick up the anti-imperialist thread.
Nationalism therefore eventually emerged as an urban, cosmopolitan
force, led by lawyers and students (the important rural Hsaya San
Rebellion notwithstanding). Burmese nationalists, like the British, con-
centrated in the cities where different sorts of people (British, Burman,
Indian, Karen, Communist) strove to control state power. Britain’s
divide and rule policies exacerbated competition among these groups,
and so nationalism’s demand for local rule touched off immediate dis-
putes about who (among the diverse local inhabitants) would rule.
The Indonesian situation produced a more broad-based and mass
mobilizing nationalism. Colonial interactions with local society brought
forth a multi-layered leadership structure that incorporated the old aris-
tocracy, newly educated bureaucrats, some Pesantren clerics, their stu-
dents and PKI cadres. Dutch-run plantations made imperial domination
a tangible target of attack from the working class up. Pemuda nationalists,
fortified by Japanese support, pursued their struggle in local formations,
76 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

militia-style, on a grid already marked by Indonesian bureaucrats and

aristocrats making their own nationalist efforts. Hence as Sukarno and
Hatta’s electrifying wartime radio broadcasts instilled the idea of
Indonesia across the archipelago, the movement developed local roots –
quite in contrast to Burmese events. Local nationalism arose as syncretic,
rather than divisive parts of the whole, and one would never think of the
movement as a limited circle in any one city.
Like the Dutch, US colonists in the Philippines recruited provincial
collaborators, landed Filipino elites who were expected to assume
national political roles, received significant economic incentives, and
promised independence early on. Under American tutelage, Filipinos
embarked on a slow, negotiated transition to independence, mainly
designed (in elite minds at least) to preserve existing status hierarchies
and avoid dangerous, unnecessary mass mobilization. Within elite poli-
tical parties, therefore, nationalism was a tepid, mainly rhetorical device
for bounded electoral competition. Non-elites periodically mounted
more militant nationalist protests, but had difficulty attaining any signifi-
cant scope precisely because they lacked cosmopolitan, integrating lea-
dership. Hence, no Philippine nationalist movement since the Katipunan
had either Burma’s committed cosmopolitan cadre or Indonesia’s broad
reach – and the structure of powerful class privilege survived the transi-
tion intact.
With no local economic elite, political power in Indonesia and Burma
grew within institutional arenas, reflecting the power and resources that
office or experience provided. Burmese school graduates, whatever their
backgrounds, could establish standing in the nationalist movement, while
an Indonesian clerk had a level shot at revolutionary heroism. In the long
run, the colonial state’s dispersal in Indonesia and concentration in
Burma produced important differences between the two cases – but in
both, power reflected institutional positioning. In the Philippines, the
institutional terrain was itself less important than class positions. Even
the most skilled colonial bureaucrat had limited power, and electoral
office was effectively closed to non-elites. Not surprisingly, challenges
to postcolonial government in Burma and Indonesia emerged from
disgruntled members of state institutions, but from new social forces in
the Philippines.

Modes of struggle, paths to independence, and post-colonial change

The mystique of revolutionary struggle pervades post-colonial Indonesia
and Burma. Two decades along, Sukarno could tap its legacy to summon
mass support, while Burmese still gild the 30 comrades’ memory with
 Comparisons 77

near-religious reverence. Nevertheless, of the two, only Indonesian forces

actually fought a sustained war against colonialism, and this difference
influenced the balance between their respective post-independence mili-
taries and civilian governments. More obviously, both Indonesian and
Burmese transitions contrast with Philippine events, where elites needed
no leverage against a departing American state. These paths to indepen-
dence influenced the character of post-colonial states and societies, and
the fault lines within each.
Burmese nationalist advance against the British depended initially on
Japanese military support and subsequently on the Pacific War’s shifting
fortunes. Hence, at independence the Tatmadaw had rather thin fighting
experience, rudimentary command and control structures, and an urban
organization that was a secondary player to the political movement. In
Indonesia, militia engaged returning Dutch forces in a decentralized war
that lasted five years, and soldiers could regard victory as mainly their
achievement. Wartime fighting experience might have set up the armed
forces as Indonesia’s dominant institution at independence, but the
revolution wore Marxist, nationalist, Islamic and Republican masks:
while everyone struggled for an independent and free Indonesia, that
struggle produced a military that was more divided and heterogeneous
than the Tatmadaw. Consequently, both Burmese and Indonesian mili-
taries began independence subordinate to weak civilian regimes.
Soon after independence, however, each developed new strengths.
Faced with insurgencies, defections and KMT incursions in the north,
the Tatmadaw undertook self-triage and determined institution building
that produced more clearly national and territorial orientations, as well as
more robust logistical and institutional capacities. Hence it was a stron-
ger, more capable and self-consciously national army that looked with
dismay upon the civilian regime’s descent into corruption and chaos in
the 1950s. By the caretaker period, political parties could defeat the
Tatmadaw in urban, electoral arenas, but perhaps only there. Isolated
from political squabbling and demographically and experientially coher-
ent, the military was more capable of powerful united action than any
other political force. In 1962, therefore, the army needed merely to quash
cosmopolitan (but insular) urban opponents to win state power.
Revolution shook all of Indonesia awake and prevented any purely
central force from controlling state power, for dominant Jakarta was as
potentially insular as anywhere else. Over the first independent decade,
Sukarno mastered the situation with direct mobilizing appeals to the
population that ABRI could not successfully challenge (despite several
attempts). When the military did reach for state power, Sukarno
reshuffled its command structure, playing on ABRI’s internal diversity
78 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

to isolate aggressive forces and strengthen those that seemed at least

momentarily loyal. Nevertheless, and despite its internal differences,
ABRI alone had the organizational reach to stretch across all of
Indonesia. Hence, when the Guided Democracy regime strove to build
state power and control social unrest in part by granting ABRI new power
and resources, which in part it used to build a stronger internal hierarchy,
the military’s self-image as the Revolution’s beating heart and foremost
heir began casting a more substantial shadow. But by then, Sukarno had
found a new counterbalance to military ambition: the PKI.
The two militaries, then, developed appetites and capacities for power
within different contexts, and eventually set out against very different
rivals. As the only substantial national institution with any reach, the
Tatmadaw competed with urban political rivals that were very different
from itself. The coup and its immediate aftermath therefore make most
sense as an effort to subdue an urban political arena in which party
capacity exceeded the military’s. Under Guided Democracy, ABRI’s
rivalry with most parties was rendered unnecessary long before 1965 by
weak parliamentary governments, Guided Democracy, and the parties’
own parochialism. Organizational capacity and access to central author-
ity mattered most under Guided Democracy, and in both respects, the
PKI constituted ABRI’s only serious rival. Ideological factors, of course,
increased ABRI-PKI animosity, but so did Sukarno’s explicit reliance on
both ABRI and the PKI. Hence, while Burmese soldiers needed to
neutralize the urban political arena, ABRI set out to eliminate a specific
rival which, like the military itself, could claim to control a national
network.
Differences between Burma and Indonesia, on the one hand, and the
Philippines, on the other, are less subtle. Neither negotiated indepen-
dence nor the Pacific War much disturbed the formidable class hierar-
chies that US rule built in the Philippines. Approaching independence
(and new US Cold-War policies) encouraged elites divided by the war to
smooth over their differences, and made them disinterested in sponsoring
the social mobilization that undercut old status hierarchies in Indonesia
and Burma. Without any substantial mass mobilizing anti-colonial strug-
gle, communism remained relatively remote from Philippine mass experi-
ence, except in Central Luzon, until the Marcos regime itself. Nor, of
course, did many political radicals win state posts or elected office. In
contrast, socially mobilizing recruitment into Burmese and Indonesian
nationalist formations reworked the social basis of political power, and
focused later competition on institutions. Even where subsequent insti-
tutional consolidation reasserted older class-based prerogatives (as
McVey argues occurred in ABRI’s post-independence rationalization)
 Comparisons 79

institutional positioning remained central to political competition. In the

Philippines, class always mattered more. Marcos did not rise within any
single institution; rather he recognized that state institutions, perhaps
more than land, could be powerful resources, particularly those without
landed positions. Behind this recognition, he stitched together a coalition
of new entrepreneurs, newly professional politicians and technocrats, all
with the vision and skills to snatch up investment opportunities and wind-
fall profits, and to forge the state into an active weapon against landed
privilege. At the helm of this social coalition, Marcos was unbound by the
constraints on any specific office. He grew formidable through skills useful
in transforming any office into a vehicle for this new political style. As
president, he centralized and empowered the state apparatus, both to face
down rivals, and to attract entrepreneurs and technocrats fed up with
policy paralysis. But unlike landed families building on their provincial
power, Marcos required access to central institutions, and refused to
vacate the palace: he declared martial law as his second term waned and
his landed rivals seemed poised to bar him from further office.

The new regimes

Extreme violence against apparently helpless opponents cannot entirely
be explained by the dictators’ efforts to unseat incumbents or defend
against challengers. The new regimes of Ne Win, Suharto and Marcos
broke sharply with old political and social styles, and the violence with
which each inaugurated his dictatorship (beyond helping to defeat rivals)
established many of the new political rules on which dictatorship would
thrive. Hence, these rising authorities often roused themselves to levels of
repression out of all proportion to the apparent threats they faced. The
relatively small and politically isolated contingent of student BCP
sympathizers at the Rangoon University, for instance, hardly threatened
the Revolutionary Council; nor, for all his talk of communist threat, was
Marcos seriously jeopardized by the CPP in 1972. Each dictator’s attack,
however, aspired to rewrite existing political rules, and to issue warnings
to future challengers, and this aspiration explains much about the character
of their attacks.
The Tatmadaw set out to build a new political system, oriented toward
a central military command of politics and modeled on its own anti-
insurgent apparatus. It recruited activist groups behind its program of
socialist transformation, but soon regarded these supposed allies less as
political partners (or even vehicles for popular participation) but as sub-
ordinate units to transmit central orders and programs down the line. The
student-union murders proscribed open urban dissent that was both
80 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

anathema to this hierarchical ordering of authority, and a key resource in

the old parliamentary system that so confounded the military. It helped,
of course, that the students under attack sympathized with a BCP at war
with the army. Yet the bombing did not cut into BCP strengths as much
as it shut down a political arena that the army despised. Thenceforth, the
RC kept Burmese society atomized and weak, and pushed dissent to the
criminal and insurgent margins. Not coincidentally, the Tatmadaw alone
could respond to a criminalized opposition with no open political pur-
chase on society, insuring both a fight on terms that the military favored,
and that only the military would be equipped for the job. Hence in Ne
Win’s Burma, dissidents could become secretive, insurgent or compliant,
any of which posed considerably fewer problems to the regime than
would legal political opponents.
In Indonesia, Guided Democracy had long weakened the Jakarta poli-
ticians who were most like Ne Win’s main rivals in Burma, and ABRI’s
field of real competitors dwindled to only the PKI. Unlike the Tatmadaw,
however, ABRI was not primarily an insurgency-fighting army, and had
not built the streamlined, battle-hardened units that made the Burmese
military so coherent and confident against insurgents. Rather, ABRI had
diverse and expanding economic, social and political interests, which
diversified further as it took on new tasks during Guided Democracy.
After the October 1965 coup, ABRI maintained Guided Democracy’s
centralized and corporatist character, for it suited the military just fine.
Given the match between ABRI and PKI capabilities, however, either
might prosper under such a regime – and ABRI had twice watched a
scattered communist party regroup after an apparently shattering defeat.
The PKI murders did not, therefore, address communist behavior (as the
Burmese student union murders had prevented protest); they eliminated
the PKI itself.
Indonesia’s New Order, founded upon those murders, was therefore a
different kind of dictatorship than Socialist Burma. In contrast to the
RC’s aloof hierarchical authority, the New Order’s extensive corporatism
drew all parties (even, to some extent, dissidents) into itself, and domi-
nated society with its smothering pervasiveness. With the PKI destroyed,
only state leaders could pull together and direct these associations, and
while only official associations could function, ABRI would rest on firm
foundations. The New Order unremittingly blocked the organization of
non-state political groups, and incorporated existing groups into official
associations. Parties and labor unions were consolidated into large, inef-
ficient and heavily surveilled organizations. Prohibitions against new or
unsanctioned organization, rather than restrictions on dissent per se,
represented the very core of the New Order’s repressive policies.
 Comparisons 81

Philippine martial law did not establish a new military regime, but
consolidated an incumbent, and so required less violence than either
the Burmese or Indonesian coups. Marcos’s empowered and loyal security
forces ended representative democracy with a series of well coordinated
raids, logistically impossible under earlier, decentralized patterns of
military deployment. Marcos also enjoyed new US support, keyed to a
Cold-War allegiance that portrayed martial law as a necessary measure
against leftist subversion. Armed with new resources, the president did
not need to destroy adversaries, but rather to scatter them enough to
secure an environment of emergency in which martial law could operate
unfettered. With no recourse to due process, political rivals (even from
established, landed clans like the Aquinos and the Lopezes) had little
leverage against martial law. But if they were initially impotent against the
New Society, they nonetheless constituted an elite, fuming, opposition
from the dictatorship’s inception. As Marcos’s constitutional authoritar-
ianism emerged, these opponents would adapt, and eventually prosper.
Comparison between the Philippines, Burma and Indonesia suggests
that the character of state attacks depended less on leader’s capacities or
animosities, and more on his vulnerabilities to rivals in the specific
context of the dictatorship’s emergence. Ne Win’s violence eliminated
open protest that underlay the political power of parliamentary factions.
Perhaps, like Suharto, he also wished to exterminate the communist
party, but needed instead to focus on gaining control over lowland
Burma to eliminate the vestiges of parliamentary power. The 1962
student union murders drove dissent underground and into rural arenas
the military could more comfortably engage. In contrast, Suharto’s fear of
the PKI organization lay behind the 1965 to 1966 massacre. ABRI did not
need to secure strategic territory, as had Ne Win, and instead hunted
down the PKI in its provincial bases. Suharto attempted neither to push
back nor reform the PKI, and one cannot imagine him conducting peace
talks with communists, as did Ne Win in 1964. The PKI’s very existence
threatened the idea of a New Order. Ne Win’s socialist regime, in
contrast, could accommodate an insurgent BCP far more easily than open
protest. Marcos had less to fear from any rival social force than either Ne
Win or Suharto; he mainly faced legal obstacles protected by parliamen-
tarians. His moves against both the left and the parliamentary opposition
produced space to redraft Philippine law to continue the centralization of
personal patrimonial power. Indeed, Marcos probably felt most vulner-
able to international criticism of his regime, and he therefore set about
constructing a political order that he hoped to be able to defend, at least
on paper. The bounded, punctuated liberalism that he deemed necessary
for this defense, however, allowed his domestic opponents to regroup.
82 Authoritarian attack and dictatorial rise

Hence these attacks bridge old and emerging political orders. Either by
directly striking at its strongest rivals – as ABRI struck at the PKI – or by
undermining the base of a rival’s power – as did the Burmese RC’s
prohibition of protest – new authorities used specific patterns of violence
and repression to shake themselves free of the old system. In so doing,
they also established rules for future political dissent, and claim makers in
Socialist Burma, New Order Indonesia, or New Society Philippines could
look to state crackdowns to learn what to expect from authorities. From
1962, Burmese protesters more or less understood that demonstrations
courted bloodshed that (even) insurgency and underground work could
avoid. Open mobilization against Ne Win consequently required extra-
ordinarily encouraging conditions, for no activist could reasonably expect
to encounter understanding or receptive authorities. New Order Indonesia
proscribed political organization, but allowed demonstrations and pro-
test. The state’s hold on power rested on its organizational monopolies,
but because these measures defanged the opposition, the New Order
could permit peaceful demonstrations that Ne Win would not. In the
Philippines, both elite parliamentary opponents and radical organized
and underground groups survived into martial law. Marcos’s attention
to the ruling apparatus gave each the chance to adjust to the new terrain.
Marcos certainly assumed that a more centralized state could withstand
(and perhaps even win over) the opposition. But these new rules, includ-
ing the bankrupt constitution, also provided resources for an opposition
that proved flexible and resilient – not least because both its parliamentary
and underground modes survived 1972.

Conclusion
This chapter has attempted to explain contrasting patterns of authoritar-
ian crackdown in terms of the power balance between each of the three
rising dictators and their political opponents. State leaders in each setting
had reason to fear at least some challengers, for dissent and protest under
the turbulent conditions of post-colonial politics threatened to unleash
catastrophic consequences: the loss of power, a country torn from their
control, death and retribution. The three patterns of attack are consistent
with the new regimes’ senses of vulnerability to political challengers, in
the context of evolving political relations. They represent crucial moments
in longer, more strategic interactions between vulnerable regimes and
social challengers. The next section extends this narrative into the three
new dictatorships. If regimes act strategically, challengers do no less.
Following regime attacks, dissidents eventually reassemble, sometimes
discarding its shattered pieces, sometimes fitting them together to form
 Conclusion 83

new vessels for resistance. They mobilize resources and shape strategy in
a society often fundamentally altered by repression – and these alterations
constrain movement activity. Activists plan strategy and recruit support
with at least some sense of danger and threat, culled from the memory of
authoritarian crackdown. It is impossible for New Order Indonesians to
contemplate an underground organization without considering the PKI’s
demise. Burmese activists cannot plan a demonstration without recalling
the murdered students of 1962, or of 1975 or of 1988. From these fears,
and from movement accommodations with state proscriptions, a political
calculus emerges, born of different repressive patterns, and of claim
makers’ efforts, nevertheless, to be heard.
4 Protest in socialist Burma

Before it established the exclusive and repressive military regime that

would dominate Burmese politics for decades, Burma’s eight-person
Revolutionary Council (RC) embarked on a path briefly notable for its
show of consulting potential supporters (even mobilized, activist organi-
zations) and soft-pedaling radical changes in the Burmese economy.
Where it would soon arrest and murder demonstration participants, it
initially attempted to recruit activist support to the new regime, and this
seems strange in hindsight. Yet authorities’ early policies also presaged
the drive for political control that most characterizes the socialist period.
The RC set aside the 1947 constitution, established state control over
universities and the printing industry, and banned such innocuous prac-
tices as beauty contests and song and dance competitions.1 Soon, more-
over, what might at first have been new avenues for representation (under
military supervision) began more obviously to operate as mechanisms to
extend and consolidate military control.
At the outset, government efforts to organize support, coupled with its
attacks on BCP sympathizers, appeared to discriminate between those
allied with the RC, and those who opposed military rule. Student associ-
ations established by the new regime’s Burma Socialist Program Party
(BSPP), as well as National United Front (NUF) groups and newly
constructed Village Organizing Councils (VOC), expressed initial enthu-
siasm for the RC. For many experienced, leftist activists, the opportunity
to build mass associations and participate in Burma’s socialist transition
was utterly exciting, and early BSPP initiatives, like land to the tiller and
rent reduction programs, as well as concepts outlined in the Burmese Way
to Socialism, stoked that excitement. Officials depended on activist enthu-
siasm and support to pull together a network of grassroots associations
ostensibly to participate in that transformation. Soon, however, state
repression ceased to differentiate between regime allies and opponents,

1
Taylor 1987.

84
 Protest in socialist Burma 85

and instead attacked politics itself. Demonstrations supporting the

RC’s stated goals of negotiated settlements with insurgents drew indis-
criminate, escalating repression that foreshadowed more general mea-
sures to prevent any public political activity (apart from BSPP-staged
events).
Village-level mass associations, organized by the RC in the eighteen
months following the coup, illustrate how authorities curtailed their own
meager efforts at fostering representation. To build these associations,
the RC relied on security councils (built in the late 1950s to disarm
private armies and regulate mass organizations).2 Security councils estab-
lished township peasant councils (later renamed township organizing
committees) in which experienced organizers, often from NUF groups,
played leading roles.3 The councils, in turn, set up village-level mass
associations, so that in theory a fully developed chain of participatory
organizations connected local communities and national government.
Council general assemblies allowed villagers to meet party officials, who
were in turn connected to government actors further up the line, and
these interactions seemed to constitute a foundation for participatory
mass politics.4 When the RC had consolidated its power on narrowing
foundations of the BSPP, these opportunities disappeared. Authorities
de-registered all parties apart from the BSPP in 1964, depriving village
activists of contacts and allies between themselves and the national gov-
ernment. In 1966, village general assemblies lost their right to express
grievances, and thereafter merely transmitted RC directives. Peasant
leaders absorbed into the party often lost their connection to the villages.
Hence when rice shortages arose in 1966, the village-organizing councils
were no longer in position to smoothly transmit farmer demands to
officials.5
The general story of Ne Win’s regime follows lines laid out in this
example. Until 1974, the BSPP remained a very small, very exclusive
organization, open mainly to military elites who harshly proscribed

2
Callahan 1996: 484.
3
The transition from independence to BSPP affiliation was not always smooth. In the
BWPP, for example, an acrimonious debate divided the U Ba Nyein faction, which
wanted to join these new groups as individuals, and Thakin Chit Maung’s faction, which
wanted to maintain the BWPP structure. U Ba Nyein’s position won out, but the debate
was rendered moot when the government outlawed all non-BSPP organizations in 1964.
(Interview B–5.)
4
Taylor 1987: 292–294.
5
Interview B–6. This informant belonged to the PVO before joining a labor union
originally affiliated with the AFPFL, and later with the BWPP. After March, 1962, he
was assigned to the Township Organizing Council in his area to set up village and
township organizing committees.
86 Protest in socialist Burma

politics of any kind outside their ruling circle. With political parties out-
side the BSPP banned, associational life squashed (to the point of state
prohibitions on football matches), and political demonstrations sharply
proscribed, political activity of any kind was driven into clandestine,
secret acts. Outside the major cities, the Tatmadaw fought sustained,
brutal battles with ethnic and leftist insurgents, but these fights were
increasingly isolated from the central urban areas, and so would neither
support, nor draw support from, protest in the cities. Economic activity,
dampened by policies isolating Burma from the rest of the world, was
strongest among a stratum of so-called black-marketeers: both illegal and
necessary to the regime, and so publicly criticized, periodically perse-
cuted, covertly protected and consistently extorted.6
Within this stifling political climate, what forms did political conten-
tion take, and what state responses did it encounter? In order to answer,
our account begins by tracing student activity in the wake of the 1962
murders, and moves from there to a more general chronology of Burmese
dissent under Ne Win.
After the July 7 university explosion, surviving BCP students spent
months hiding on University campus, while the army waited for them
to make a break for Rangoon’s safer confines.7 In the main, confronta-
tions between students and soldiers appeared rather low key: students
built a crude, symbolic structure where the old Union building had stood,
and soldiers pulled it down; in the main, however, the military refrained
from extensive raids on campus holdouts.8 It was in some ways a puzzling
stand off. Certainly, the troops did not want to provoke broader demon-
strations by too-blatant attacks on students, but they were surprisingly
passive and appeared content to contain campus activism while they
established the foundation of the new regime. In particular, there were
few of the sweeping arrests and interrogations that marked the rise of
Suharto’s New Order or even Marcos’s martial law.
When schools and universities reopened in late 1962, campus politics
had changed utterly. The RC replaced student groups with new BSPP
associations that randomly divided students into teams for athletic and
social events. Each had a name alluding to Burmese mythology, and an
identifying color, but no whiff of politics or ideology to mark one from
another (a sharp departure for a milieu in which even the control of
university reading-rooms had been a matter for partisan dispute).9

6
Steinberg 1982: 79; Kyaw Yin Hlaing 2001.
7
Steinberg 1982.
8
Interview B–4.
9
Silverstein and Wohl 1964: 53.
 Protest in socialist Burma 87

A university administrator accountable to an army Security and

Administration Committee (SAC) chaired each association, with a
BSPP student leader as vice-chair.10 In this climate, BCP sympathizers
were completely isolated. Their former allies in the SUF largely sup-
ported the new government, and with their close former association
with the BCP students, made particularly dangerous informants. In 1963,
during peace negotiations with the government, BCP party leaders under
safe conduct passes contacted student BCP members and sympathizers
holed up on campuses. When the government peace parley broke down,
many of these activists accompanied the guerillas into the hills. (The
recruitment brought little advantage to anyone: campus activism did
not prepare students for jungle warfare, and they dragged at insurgent
forces.) Politics for those who remained on campus was more difficult
than ever, but BCP remnants and sympathizers made cautious moves to
build underground cells.
The term underground (UG) has a particular meaning in this context,
which, given its importance to the discussion that follows, merits some
explanation.11 Commonly, the term underground cell denotes one unit in a
larger network of covert groups that support illegal or insurgent activity
either by working through legal front organizations or in clandestine,
secret groups. In either case, individual cells acquire importance in a larger
movement structure – they are cells in a biological sense. In Burma after
1962, heavy state repression and surveillance, as well as proscriptions
against even the most innocuous associational life, eliminated any possi-
ble covering activity, and prevented cells from forming larger networks.
According to one analyst, there was one spy on campus for every ten
students, and so activist cells had to be self-sustaining and utterly dis-
crete.12 Arrested activists faced open-ended detention, draconian jail
conditions, torture and execution. In this climate, UG cells were less
units of political activity than small, defensive activist clusters, unable to
cohere into a proper movement, but which nevertheless kept dissident
skills and memories alive.13 Some contained veterans of past demonstra-
tions, who had earned whispered reputations for skill and experience, and

10
Interview B–11.
11
Smith provides a similar definition and discussion of underground activists in Smith
1999: 367.
12
Selth 1986.
13
Informant B–12 recalls: ‘‘Basically, the role of the underground was to try to keep a
feeling of anti-government sentiment alive through the years. We trained urban activists
and cadres in these cells, and also from time to time would publish and distribute anti-
government articles and leaflets. This really was about all that we could do in the urban
underground.’’ From notes transcribed immediately following interview.
88 Protest in socialist Burma

attracted students looking for guidance in times of mobilization and

protest.
The few accounts of cell activity that exist describe small, cautious
collectives of between three and five who gradually sharpened their
critical consciousness by reading and discussing novels, political tracts,
and eventually the government itself.14 Some published heavily disguised
political satire in popular literary magazines that for some reason
remained open.15 As one writer from that period recalls
We set up a newspaper that published on campus after the coup, and remained
open right up until 1967, when (after anti-Chinese riots) the government shut
down a lot of these papers. We tried to slip some political criticism into short
stories and poems. We experimented with all kinds of literary mediums, always
trying to pass our anti-government message past the censors.16
Another activist describes how he functioned in the national media:
I was put in the media field and worked there for many years, anonymously. I
didn’t show my (political) identity at any time since my student days. Nobody
knows about me, even the leftist workers themselves didn’t know about me. The
communist party regarded this field as very important, very strategic. They told
me to stay behind and not to expose myself.17

This pattern echoes BCP methods during the parliamentary period,18

except that underground activists after 1962 mainly sympathized with,
rather than belonged to, the BCP or some other illegal group. Nor did
they commonly coordinate with one another. One leader in the 1988
democracy movement started a cell in 1984, and then pursued rumors of
kindred dissident circles for years, to no avail.19 More rarely, a full-time
BCP activist (often trained in China) returned to conduct secret work,
but most of these seem to have been relatively uninterested in actual
organizing or resistance activity. One BCP member, reflecting on those

14
Aye Saung 1989.
15
Divisions between educated Burmese and the newly empowered (often under-
educated) Tatmadaw became increasingly explicit toward the end of the
Parliamentary regime, and into the Socialist period. Several informants speculated
that at least some of the provocation for the military attack in July 1962 stemmed from
student taunts at less-educated soldiers, and the soldiers’ class resentment. In any
event, most writers I interviewed believed that literary satire slipped easily past
uneducated military censors who did not understand literary devices like allusion and
irony. Interviews B–11, B–12 and B–1.
16
Interview B–12; see also Article 19 1991: 22–23.
17
Taped interview B–9.
18
One activist recalls: ‘‘We formed small groups, gave out literature to discuss, and so
identified those we might recruit. After a time, when we thought we knew who we were
working with, we began talking politics and eventually built a cell.’’ Interview B–1.
19
Interview B–13; also see Aye Saung 1989.
 Protest in socialist Burma 89

years, argues that the party’s gravest mistake was ignoring the urban
political arena.20
As BCP sympathizers were forced underground, legal groups formally
supporting the RC also encountered new constraints. In 1963, with
insurgent organizations from across Burma traveling to Rangoon to join
a peace parley with the government, legal organizations like the BWPP
and the NUF formed a loose movement called the People’s Peace
Committee. The Committee staged a Peace March along the hundred-
mile road from Minhla to Rangoon. Supporters lined the parade route
and the march ended in a 200,000 strong demonstration in Rangoon.21
The military exercised some restraint during this march, although it did
arrest activists linked to the BCP or to U Nu’s Union Party. The relative
political openness surrounding the peace parley lulled NUF and BWPP
supporters, and even BCP sympathizers, into a rash complacency, and
military intelligence agents quietly identified many who participated in
those demonstrations.
By November 1963, plans for a second peace rally in Mandalay trig-
gered a crackdown and ended the parley. This time, however, authorities
moved against NUF and BWPP members formally allied with the new
regime. Beginning on November 14, security forces arrested over 900
activists in Mandalay, with similar sweeps in upcountry towns. By the
year’s end over 2,000 activists from groups that supported the RC were in
jail, where many would remain for over a decade without being charged.22
On March 28, 1964, all parties and political organizations save the BSPP
were banned – a move that merely formalized relationships established in
the 1963 arrests. From that point forward, mass protest was exceptionally
rare and dangerous in Burma. In 1965, some 2,000 monks did protest the
introduction of a state agency to control the Buddhist clergy, but author-
ities arrested more than 100, imposed monastic controls and so prevented
monks from protesting in any numbers until 1988. Apart from that
confrontation, protest in socialist Burma required an extraordinary
exogenous spur, provoking widespread spontaneous mobilization.
The peace parley’s end provoked renewed fighting in the countryside,
and thenceforth, grievances that arose in connection to events like demon-
etization in 1964 strengthened insurgency more often than protest.23

20
Interview B–9.
21
Smith 1999: 210.
22
Smith (1999) estimates that 4, 500 people were arrested in these sweeps from late 1962
to 1963. His account of political support for the 1963 Peace March is based on
interviews with participants in those events, 210–214.
23
The 1964 monetary policy produced a ‘‘new generation of ethnic insurgent movements
(that) rose up overnight.’’ Smith 1999: 219.
90 Protest in socialist Burma

Indeed, Ne Win and the BSPP leadership seemed in some ways more
committed to eliminating protest than insurgent groups. Authorities, at
any rate, reached periodic accommodations with insurgent forces that
would never have been conceived as a strategy against urban protest. The
military, for example, followed the broad outlines of safe-conduct agree-
ments with the rebels that allowed most to return to their bases after
1963, peculiar in a place where authorities seemed to care so little for
established rules of engagement.24 When insurgent activity increased in
1964, furthermore, Ne Win offered many new groups the opportunity to
reform as semi-autonomous defense militia (Ka Kwe Ye).25 No similar
accommodation was ever attempted with urban protest groups.

Cultural Revolution and rice protests

If patterns of state repression atomized and isolated urban politics, devel-
opments in the late 1960s guaranteed that no compensating ties with
insurgent organizations could develop either. The events began when
protest mobilized during a rice shortage, itself partly due to declining
production incentives under socialism.26 When the dwindling rice supply
drove up prices, riots broke out across Burma. Students joined in, but
workers initiated most actions. Rangoon protests centered on river jetties,
where rice was loaded and stored.27 Elsewhere, impoverished farmers
and workers raided rice storage facilities, and concentrated less on
demanding political reform than on acquiring food. This contention is
precisely what one would expect in settings where civil associations and
movement organizations do not exist to plan and coordinate resistance
activity: riots spread because the crisis struck scattered regions simulta-
neously, encouraging direct action against local resource depots, rather
than more indirect actions against national authorities. Security forces
responded brutally, arresting and shooting demonstrators and rioters in
the cities, and using even stronger force further afield. In the bloodiest
incident, the 20th battalion killed 270 people in Arakan.28
Shortly thereafter, Chinese students influenced by the Cultural
Revolution began wearing Mao badges to schools and invoking other
symbols of Chinese communism. The BSPP had not by then abolished
the Chinese schools, which divided into those supporting Mao’s

24
Taylor 1987: 367.
25
Lintner 1994.
26
Silverstein 1977.
27
Interview B–3.
28
Smith 1999: 225.
 Cultural Revolution and rice protests 91

revolution and those that backed the Republic. Hence despite depolit-
icizing pressure on other campuses, Chinese students often had access to
more politically coherent networks than other students. When the
Chinese Embassy began distributing Mao’s publications in 1967, stu-
dents in Chinese schools could brandish the famous ‘‘red book’’ just like
Red Guards across the border. In early June, one group of students
attacked several teachers, triggering an immediate and strongly xenopho-
bic popular reaction.29 Through June and July of 1967, many of those
who had been mobilized during the rice shortage attacked Chinese
teachers, schools, businesses, and on June 26, the Chinese Embassy.
These attacks refocused mass anger away from the state in ways that
seem more than mere coincidence.30 Two months of rioting destroyed
Chinese establishments across Burma, and probably killed hundreds of
Chinese.
In response to the violence, China stepped up aid to the BCP, and
granted it broad access to territory bordering Burma. These new
resources encouraged the BCP to adopt a more exclusively insurgent
line against the state. But the anti-Chinese violence (seemingly directed
against the Chinese revolution) also shook some BCP members’ faith in
the urban arena (a faith already weakened by difficulties that 1963
student recruits encountered integrating with battle-hardened insur-
gents).31 These considerations set off a violent Cultural Revolution-
inspired purge inside the BCP in late 1967, killing most student recruits,
but also some of the party’s most dynamic organizers and leaders.32
Although Chinese arms and logistical support helped the BCP gain vast
territory over the next five years, Burmese communism never recovered
its authority in urban politics, and its organizational separation from the
cities, emphasized by the move to distant basing areas, was virtually
complete.33
These developments closed the last possibility for any substantial
link between underground cells, or people involved in periodic urban
protest, and the rural insurgencies. The party was not eager to recruit

29
The Guardian, June 23.
30
Smith (1999: 227) interviewed an RC official who revealed how military officers spread
news of anti-Chinese riots upcountry to areas where the rice protests had been most
severe, in order to provoke further anti-Chinese actions and derail any further rice-
related protests; see also Aye Saung 1989: 42.
31
The exodus of BCP student sympathizers into the insurgent struggle is described in
Lintner (1990), where the student exodus is described as boosting the BCP insurgency.
Most informants I spoke with emphasized that trouble emerged almost from the outset
between BCP cadres and their student recruits. Interviews B–12, B–14 and B–5.
32
Lintner 1989 66–67; Aye Saung 1989: 42; Maung Maung 1999: 74–75.
33
Lintner 1994: 203.
92 Protest in socialist Burma

students – and after 1967, students were equally wary of the party.34 With
neither legal organizations nor receptive insurgent groups to absorb UG
activists, most found some place in mainstream Burma:
Upon graduation, some went to the jungle – but only a minority. Most stayed in
the cities and took up positions as journalists, lawyers, or like myself, government
servants. I worked in government for a long time, and even joined the BSPP –
there was no alternative for government employees – you either joined the party or
risked being posted to some backwater.35

More important, it was less possible to imagine linking an underground

cell to any organizational structure or systematic anti-government initia-
tive. Underground activists had few options except to preserve dissident
perspectives and wait for a change in political conditions; from 1968 until
1974, with the exception of a small and easily scattered protest march
demanding democracy at the 1969 Peninsular Games in Rangoon, no
protest of substance occurred in Burma. U Nu (released from prison in
1966) adopted an openly dissident stand in 1969; still, even this invet-
erate politician organized an ostensibly insurgent, rather than political
challenge to the BSPP government.36

Protest in the 1970s

The next protests, from 1974 until 1976, began as strikes among oil
field and railroad workers and then spread to Rangoon textile, ink
and paper factories. Unrest mobilized spontaneously as food grew
scarce and prices rose. Workers launched insurrectionary strikes that
(as in 1967) spread because of the broad and general hardship that
the economic crisis produced across working populations. Early
strikes alternated periods of intense disruption with relative outward
calm, but as work stoppages paralyzed communication and transpor-
tation industries, the rest of Burmese society quickly discovered that
something was afoot. More important, over the course of this activ-
ity, demonstrators learned how to organize protest, and developed

34
According to one informant, after 1967 to 1968, when the communist party murdered
student recruits who were accused of harboring counter-revolutionary orientations,
students who fled the cities to evade capture were more likely to take up with one or
another ethnic insurgent forces than the BCP. The communists continued to focus their
recruitment efforts among the minority populations living in frontier areas. Interview B–4.
Lintner’s account of the BCP’s mass base at the time of its collapse also tends to
corroborate this recruitment pattern. Lintner 1990.
35
Interview, B–12.
36
Taylor 1987: 369.
 Protest in the 1970s 93

networks that were more open and political than any in the twelve
years since the coup.37
In considering these strikes, it makes sense first to note a political
exercise that passed without protest. In February 1974, authorities finally
submitted their draft constitution to a national referendum. While
rumors of cheating filtered in from various quarters, threats and intimida-
tion, rather than ballot rigging after the fact, managed to produce enough
votes to win approval for the constitution. Voting booths were con-
structed to allow officials to note who voted to approve the constitution,
and who did not. This way of coercing a favorable vote individualized the
encounter between potential dissidents and state authority, focusing
repression on myriad but isolated acts of voting rather than on any
more potentially collective complaint that votes were miscounted, mis-
placed or misrepresented. As elsewhere under Ne Win, the logic of
repression aimed at preventing dissent rather than at overpowering it.
(As we will see, Indonesian and Philippine authorities managed elections
quite differently.)
Industrial strikes began on May 13, 1974 among oil workers in Chauk,
then spread into Rangoon. A conservatism marked these actions: workers
remained inside their factories, halted production, and demanded better
working conditions and wages, but carefully avoided explicitly anti-
government actions they thought might provoke authorities. When
University of Rangoon students, excited by the protests, went to the
nearby Thamaing spinning mill to invite strikers to a street march, the
workers declined, with polite gratitude.38 The caution seemed well
placed: on June 6, the military closed in on the mill and fired on striking
workers, killing between twenty-eight and a hundred.39 After several such
attacks, the Tatmadaw arrested students on University campuses who had
supported the workers.
After more than a decade of dormancy, the student activism stirred by
these demonstrations had few models or leaders to follow. The oldest
1974 activists were still children during the last protests, and most knew
nothing of activist strategy or tactics. No student leaders existed apart from
those in unpopular and compromised BSPP groups (Lan Zin Lu Nge)40

37
Htun Aung Kyaw 1997.
38
Htun Aung Kyaw 1997.
39
Smith 1999: 269.
40
One leader in the 1974–1975 Rangoon student protests, reports that an original
movement leader, Soe Tint, was replaced on the U Thant funeral committee after one
hour when companions discovered he belonged to a Lan Zin organization. Htun Aung
Kyaw 1997: 26.
94 Protest in socialist Burma

for state repression and informants drove all others to jail, exile, the grave
or underground.
In such dangerous circumstances, how could students trust that a
companion did not work for the regime? Who would spread word of
demonstrations? How would leaders emerge? Who would teach new
recruits? The rallies themselves provided initial answers – for UG activists
remained cautiously aloof. Curiosity, compassion, and a certain adven-
turousness drew students to the strikes, where they learned about work-
ers’ goals and grievances. Soon, students picked up and amplified these
demands at speeches delivered on university campuses and in the streets.
At first, a small student circle initiated the activity.41 Those who demon-
strated the most initiative or courage assumed leading positions, for with
no other yardstick available, one’s conduct at public rallies proved one’s
anti-regime commitment, and action (not association) produced initial
movement solidarity. These connections, and leaders’ reputations, sur-
vived the violence that quelled the 1974 strikes, and UG cells began to
take notice of the volatile situation.
From the 1974 strikes, campus activists (a meaningful designation
once more) vigilantly searched for the next opportunity to mobilize.
Six months later, the occasion presented itself when respected statesman
and former UN Secretary-General U Thant died overseas, and was
returned home for burial without honors in an isolated Rangoon cem-
etery, in conformity to regime orders. Outraged by the apparent snub of
U Thant, thousands of students and monks at the funeral seized his body,
and marched it through downtown Rangoon. Eventually, they buried
U Thant in a makeshift tomb near where the student union once stood
on the RU campus. This burial site framed the episode as an indictment
of the BSPP’s very foundations, and students soon broadened their
demands to include democracy, and an end to government repression.
On December 11, three days after the burial, military tanks crashed
through the university gate, and soldiers dug up the Secretary-General’s
body for burial at a more suitable site than originally intended. In the
commotion, soldiers shot students who jumped atop the coffin to resist
the move, and protests and riots flared across Rangoon. Official reports

41
Htun Aung Kyaw describes his own activity: ‘‘We wrote letters to distribute – only a few
of us friends – addressed to Dear people, monks, students. My friend is a teacher, and
so had a hand copier, the kind that rolls out copies by hand on an ink pad. So we
borrowed this, wrote the letter on wax paper and rolled out 2,000 sheets to distribute on
the university compound. When students got hold of this copy, they read it and got
agitated, and started to discuss these issues.’’ The next day, 2,000 students from the
University of Rangoon marched to Insein road to support the workers. (Recorded
interview B–15.)
 Protest in the 1970s 95

claim that soldiers killed 16 people, injured hundreds more, and arrested
4,500.42 Others estimate far greater casualties.43
Unlike the earlier strikes in May, the U Thant protests produced
organizations apart from sanctioned campus groups: a central committee
and soon a separate unit to design and then manage U Thant’s tomb,
which many activists hoped would serve as an operations base for future
campaigns. As before, however, movement leaders established their
authority through particularly courageous speech or action, for these
organizations did not pre-date the struggle, and could not screen out
government spies. They did, however, enable far more organized and
coordinated activity. Students went through Rangoon collecting dona-
tions as they had during the 1963 peace parley: trucks passed along
established routes in the morning, announced collections, and returned
later to gather donations – often tens of thousands of Kyat, and more food
than activists could eat.44 Some activists had parents inside the BSPP,
who leaked news of government plans against the movement.45 Workers
who had been reluctant to leave their factories in May and June marched
with students, as did many monks.
If movement leaders only emerged through public acts of eloquence or
bravery, most participants also assumed that military agents were every-
where, and looked suspiciously upon individuals whose views undercut
more general opinion. This mistrust hampered activists’ ability to make
careful political distinctions or devise subtle strategies. Consider the
decision to bury U Thant at the student union site. As some students
marched his body through downtown Rangoon, others convened a com-
mittee to decide where and how the statesman’s tomb should be built.
When the Government announced concessions (a new funeral, with
honors, at the more prestigious Cantonment area), U Thant’s family
and the tomb committee were inclined to accept. At that moment, how-
ever, a law student picked up a megaphone, and urged students to bury
U Thant at the university as planned. A cheer went up, and the procession

42
Silverstein 1977: 143.
43
Smith 1997: 269–270; Shwe Lu Maung (1989) quotes a student participant in those
demonstrations who estimates that over fifty were killed on the campus skirmish alone,
and hundreds more in Rangoon.
44
Selth 1989.
45
Htun Aung Kyaw reports that, ‘‘We got all kinds of information about government
preparations against the movement, leaked to us from inside the regime. On
December 10, for example, we received news that the government was sending spies
to infiltrate student groups, and they would be wearing a clip on their collars, to help
identify one another. This information came to us from the BSPP central committee
headquarters. We informed the movement security detail, and they captured twenty
people wearing such clips.’’ Recorded interview B–15.
96 Protest in socialist Burma

continued as before. No member of the tomb committee, despite their

misgivings, intervened.46 Given the crowd’s enthusiasm, and the slim
solidarity binding students together, none dared: ‘‘We were on the spot –
if we disagreed, we would be beaten or captured as spies, so we keep
quiet.’’47 The dilemma directly follows from patterns of regime repres-
sion, which assured that activists would have no public reputation qua
activists. Debates within the movement were hence confined to virtually
apolitical matters (i.e. which dormitory should lead) rather than issues of
strategy or tactics. One activist leader recalls, ‘‘We really didn’t know
what to do. . .’’48
In other ways, however, the U Thant demonstrations evidenced far
stronger organizational involvement than the earlier strikes. In Burmese
phrasing, the protests were supported and controlled by ‘‘rightists,’’
a designation that must be understood in relationship to the prevailing
left-of-center discourse. Activists like Tin Maung Oo were associated
with (only moderately) conservative forces like U Nu’s Parliamentary
Democracy Party (PDP), and may have received resources donated by
people once active in the outlawed Democratic Students’ Organization
(DSO) or the Union Party.49 Unlike BCP sympathizers, who could offer
training on activist strategy, ‘‘rightists’’ more often provided resources –
like the trucks that collected donations – but had little experience in
movement building. Inclined more toward conspiracy than organization,
‘‘rightists’’’ hold on movement structures proved vulnerable: those
surrounding Tin Maung Oo controlled the central committee for the U
Thant demonstrations, but on December 6, ‘‘leftist’’ members joined that
committee and dominated it completely by December 11.50

46
The committee itself was already preparing a longer term plan to accept the
government’s offer but also to participate in the U Thant’s memorial at the
Cantonment area. The funeral committee would establish an office at the
Shwedagon Pagoda to coordinate and plan construction of the memorial building –
in the hopes of providing a longer term base for counter-regime activity.
47
Recorded interview B–15.
48
Quoted in Shwe Lu Maung 1989.
49
The term rightist, when used by Burmese activists, has particular connotations that
reflect the dominant leftist terms of reference of Burmese politics. In the main, groups
that reject socialist or communist principles and leaders, including those who advocate
free market capitalism, or simple multi-party democracy, have been called rightist.
50
While he does not identify specific political orientations Shwe Lu Maung’s informant
does say that the original group of students who had seized U Thant’s body
(presumably identified with ‘‘rightist’’ groups) feared that spies were everywhere on
December 10, and went off to meet in secret. When they returned, another group that
the informant suspected worked as government provocateurs, had already buried the
body, an act that unseated the original leaders. Shwe Lu Maung 1989: 52–54. Htun
Aung Kyaw mentions the same shift as a leftward shift. (Recorded interview B–15 and
Htun Aung Kyaw 1997.)
 Protest in the 1970s 97

The U Thant protests produced a more experienced and recognizable

core of activist leaders, as well as students who considered themselves
activists, and regarded the government with nearly open animosity. By
June 1975, activism had so taken root at the university that the government
sent officials to campuses to explain deteriorating economic conditions to
students, hoping to enlist their support, or at least to fend off further
protests. The first meeting, between BSPP central committee member
Dr. Hlan Han and Rangoon students, proceeded without incident. That
night, however, activist groups met to prepare for the next day’s meeting
at the Rangoon Institute of Technology (RIT).51 At that meeting, student
activists executed a plan that required more coordination than would
have been possible a year earlier: as the official spoke, activists positioned
throughout the audience rose to ask pointed questions about the regime’s
legitimacy. The speaker soon fled and subsequent meetings were
rescheduled or canceled.
Students, led by Tin Maung Oo, recently returned from consulting
with U Nu’s PDP on the Thai border, planned demonstrations to follow
up on the RIT event. They described government plans to shift or cancel
further consultative meetings with students as insulting, and by then anti-
regime students were keenly attuned to such insults. After the meeting,
Tin Maung Oo approached a wall dividing workers’ quarters from stu-
dent dorms constructed by the authorities after the May 1974 demon-
strations. With some twenty companions, he took up a log, and tried to
batter down the barrier. Students watched from their dormitory balconies
for several moments, during which time the activists below operated with
neither secrecy nor mass support – a dangerous condition in Ne Win’s
Burma. Soon, however, the observers descended, and in the last mainly
spontaneous act of this cycle, tore down the wall.
The next day’s protests were more organized, for leftist UG activists
who had directed the last portion of the U Thant demonstrations began to
play a leading role once more. A general strike committee met that first
night, with Tin Maung Oo in charge, and others from the newly organized
‘‘rightist’’ Anti-Fascist Students League in prominent positions – but with
the left poised to grab control from the right. On the strike’s first day,
BCP sympathizers seized control of a march to Insein Jail to demand

51
Htun Aung Kyaw had formed the Anti-Fascist Student League, which met on the eve of
the RIT consultation to plan their response to Dr. Hla Han’s presentation. But Htun
also acknowledged that secret groups of BCP sympathizers were also meeting during
that same period, and so the speaker confronted an audience that, at least in its initial
opposition to his remarks, was more organized than had been the case for earlier
protests. Recorded interview B–15 and Htun Aung Kyaw 1997.
98 Protest in socialist Burma

prisoners’ release. By the next day, one of their ranks, Myint Soe,
replaced Tin Maung Oo as strike committee chair, and elevated other
leftists to the committee. New tactics soon followed: the general strike
committee began concentrating on constructing activist organizations
and set up headquarters at the RU Arts and Sciences Convocation Hall.
They unfurled the fighting-peacock banners under which anti-British
nationalists had marched, and had leaflets (urging coordination between
urban protests and the BCP insurgency) to pass out at daily demonstra-
tions. The BCP itself, concentrating on its insurgent war with the govern-
ment, took little evident notice of these protests, however. On June 11,
troops moved in and arrested over 200 student activists, ending the
general strike.
Leftists exercised even more control over the protests in the cycle’s final
March 1976 demonstrations. These protests responded to government
plans to commemorate the anti-colonial movement’s most respected
writer, Thakin Kodaw Hmine. Two prominent leftist writers on the
event’s planning committee resigned when Ne Win named himself a
member as well, providing students one more opportunity to emphasize
issues of democracy they strongly associated with Thakin Kodaw Hmine.
Writers and artists led this last short round of protest, for many such had
sympathy for the BCP and ties to UG cells. Study circles produced anti-
government pamphlets, but only grew aware of one another as the literature
began to circulate. Several discussed the relationship between Kodaw
Hmine’s writings and the BSPP regime, and many gained renewed
circulation. When demonstrations broke out, they were already planned
and announced by UG activists, largely through printed circulars.
Ideologically distinct demonstrations carried rightist and leftist banners,
led by activists clustered around Tin Maung Oo and Tin Aye Kyu,
respectively.52
On March 23, over 2,000 students marched off the campus to the
poet’s tomb, commemorated his birthday, and then returned to occupy
the RU Convocation Hall, as in June. A great many pamphlets and flyers
circulated prior to the demonstration, evidence of advanced, secret pre-
paration. When students returned to the University campus, however,
leaders slipped away to preserve their cell core for future struggle.53
Without leaders at the demonstration (when clearly some group had
called the assembly) the Kodaw Hmine protests grew confused.

52
Tin Maung Oo, however, was picked up the night before the March 23 Thakin Kodaw
Hmine demonstration, and so the movement lost the main thrust of its non-BCP
leadership.
53
Recorded interview B–15 and Htun Aung Kyaw 1997.
 Protest and state repression under Ne Win 99

Participants milled around for some time, then most merely left. Military
agents swiftly closed sites of campus protest, and picked up key student
leaders and organizers, virtually ignoring rank and file participants. Tin
Maung Oo was arrested on the eve of the March 23 protests, and
executed three months later. Others in his circle had been arrested after
the June 1975 protests. Members of Tin Maung Oo’s family, who seem
only to have been superficially connected to the protests, went to prison
for between five to nine years.54 Writers and activists associated with the
BCP (and Tin Aye Kyu’s circle of BCP sympathizers) also fell to govern-
ment operations. From March 1976 until 1987, Ne Win faced no
protests.
The left’s rise during these protests flags something important. Rightist
students had resources and links to U Nu’s PDP, access to printing
materials and money, which allowed them to print flyers announcing
demonstrations, but they had no tradition of mass organizing beyond
their small and secret circles. Even before the 1962 coup, organizations
like the DSO worked mainly by providing logistical support to activists of
the left. When the BCP seized control of the general strike committee,
rightist students almost willingly stepped aside. Rather than organizing a
movement the communists might dominate, rightists then attempted to
attract international attention (as indeed, U Nu was attempting to do)
through a program that included bombings and hijackings.

Protest and state repression under Ne Win

Burmese contention, though rare, followed rather clear patterns. The
military was never comfortable with, nor particularly successful at, open
politics, and resorted to repression to prevent or quash protest that did
emerge. The 1962 explosion, mass arrests in the early 1960s, attacks on
striking workers, and sweeps through student dorms all illustrate author-
ities’ pursuit of this same basic objective. While state antipathy toward
communists may underlie some attacks, 1963 demonstrations (also
repressed) supported peace negotiations that Ne Win himself initiated,
organized by forces pledged to support the regime. Repression deci-
sively influenced dissidents’ political calculations and strategies – driving
many underground or toward frontier insurgencies. Nevertheless, links
between the countryside and the urban sites of struggle never developed,
and underground cells became so isolated that they could hope only to

54
Information on who was arrested and what prison terms they received is available in
Htun Aung Kyaw 1997.
100 Protest in socialist Burma

preserve dissident perspectives and skills, rather than to sustain dissent

itself. Most sympathizers graduated from college into mainstream occu-
pations, and many even joined the BSPP. Cowed by this sustained
repression, activists could protest only under cover of more spontaneous
mass unrest. In 1967, and again in the 1970s, unorganized political
contention began with broad economic crisis, arising first where working
people gathered in normal workday interactions that helped them see
individual hardship as collective grievance, but then developed in ways
that suggest the organized activity of more experienced activists.
Initially spontaneous demonstrations making direct and often eco-
nomic claims prompted more organized and planned demonstrations
making indirect and more political demands.55 1967 rice riots paved the
way for small political demonstrations at the 1968 Peninsular Games. In
the 1970s, student support for strikes encouraged ties among them, giving
subsequent campaigns more organization. Protests during U Thant’s
funeral, the June government consultation, and the Thakin Kodaw
Hmine ceremony made progressively broader, more political claims.
U Thant’s funeral was arguably a bridge in this regard, for it gathered
a disgruntled mass at the potentially routine burial ritual, and group
dynamics at the site produced sharp protest, but also a committee struc-
ture to guide future resistance. Students may not have protested when
authorities cancelled meetings with them, and could not have coordi-
nated their questions at meetings which did take place, without prior
planning and explicit leadership. By the Thakin Kodaw Hmine protests,
leaflets were published in advance to stir up protest. This progression
illustrates the deepening involvement of those loosely organized activists
that I have described as underground cells.
As collective forms demonstrate more organization and planning, the
events that trigger protest become more politically symbolic, rather than
merely material. Given state repression, perhaps only massive socio-
economic could initiate protest, for neither activist networks nor dissident
practice existed in sufficiently robust form to mobilize dissent from the
outset. Spontaneous activity, however, woke activists to the possibility
that Burmese society had begun to quicken, and they watched for oppor-
tunities to frame events like U Thant’s funeral in terms of broader
dissatisfactions. Not surprisingly, in the political void carved out by
state repression, planned protests strongly evoked earlier Burmese strug-
gles, and quickly appropriated their sites and symbols: the University

55
For a discussion of the relevant differences between indirect and direct forms of struggle
in social movements, see Boudreau 1996.
 Protest and state repression under Ne Win 101

convocation hall, the fighting-peacock flag and the demand for a student
union remained the most vivid political themes in the struggle against
Ne Win – testimony to both the power of the nationalist legacy, and the
absence of anything after 1962 to displace it.
This evolution is crucial. UG activists sank below the surface of
Ne Win’s Burma, with little prospect of activity as either open dissidents
or (after 1967) insurgents. Most kept Marxist perspectives alive, but prob-
ably devoted even more effort to avoiding state surveillance and repres-
sion. Activists required spontaneous unrest to provide them cover, to
suggest broader possibilities and produce encounters between activist
cells and unorganized demonstrators. This sequence also explains why
the 1974 constitutional referendum sparked virtually no mobilization,
but almost certainly would have following U Thant’s funeral.
The interplay of experienced activists without public reputations and
mass unrest structured important elements of Burmese contention. First,
protest leaders had great difficulty directing mobilized activity. With no
public organizations or leaders, the momentum of mass opinion became
inexorable. Moreover, if leaders established themselves by brave words or
deeds, spies were thought to reveal themselves by actions or speech that
undercut mass opinion. Contention was therefore difficult to focus polit-
ically, vulnerable to state subterfuge, and prone to violent escalation.
The 1967 rice riots deteriorated into anti-Chinese rioting (probably
encouraged by the military). Second, the underground culture of secrecy
made movement participants suspicious of potential supporters. At the
U Thant funeral, activists confiscated and smashed foreign correspondents’
cameras, thereby pre-empting potentially sympathetic international press
coverage. Finally, because so much mobilization depended on the lim-
ited, everyday contact that the regime allowed, authorities could quash
protest merely by closing universities. Ne Win used the tactic months
after the coup, and repeatedly thereafter.
State repression also followed patterns suggested in 1962 that raised
the costs of protest. Authorities responded to protest with indiscriminate
shooting and sweeping arrest, but never allowed demonstrations for more
than a few days – except the anti-Chinese riots. Prison terms grew longer
and executions more frequent. In fact, it appears that in several respects –
particularly in its periodic willingness to enter into peace negotiations and
cease fire arrangements – Ne Win was more inclined to conciliate insur-
gents than student protesters. The government crushed 1974 labor strikes
by interrupting ongoing counter-insurgency efforts, and bringing troops
into the cities.
The expectation of state repression led UG activists, even during pro-
test, to work with extreme caution, to the point of abandoning protest at
102 Protest in socialist Burma

the Thakin Kodaw Hmine events. In the long and oppressive calms
between protests, cells slipped into virtual suspended animation.
Hence, across Ne Win’s reign, protest repeatedly mobilized apparently
from scratch, but soon, under the leadership of a tentative underground,
began to move in more political – but backward-looking – directions.
5 New Order repression and the Indonesian
opposition

Despite the Indonesian New Order regime’s inaugural mass murders, it

has since been relatively lenient toward demonstrations of a certain kind
particularly in comparison to socialist Burma. Student protests, localized
land and labor disputes, NGO-led environmental demonstrations, pro-
voke periodic (not inevitable) arrest, injury or murder. Participants in
such action (at least into the 1980s and even acknowledging prominent
state violence against labor activists in the 1990s) seldom experience the
kinds of prison torment one associates with dictatorship, and commonly
spent relatively short spans behind bars. Other forms of dissent and
resistance, however, predictably called forth sharp state violence. Outer
island separatist movements in East Timor, West Papua, and Aceh drew
sustained, brutal repression, as did any movement that sought to develop
strong organizational structures and capacities. Hence, for almost two
decades, the New Order presented two contrasting faces, depending on
the mode of resistance it confronted: one committed to bloody and
unremitting repression, the other more willing to tolerate dissent that it
probably still disliked, and also subjected to intense surveillance.1
The New Order wove a repressive strategy from two legacies of its
bloody rise. First, the anti-PKI struggle physically eliminated the only
force that, in terms of organizational capacity, could rival ABRI for
pre-eminence.2 Suharto then expanded corporatist structures that deep-
ened his organizational monopoly and restricted the legal possibility of
organizing dissent outside state agencies.3 Second, intimations of anti-
communist violence colored even the most oblique state threats, and
many proscribed acts (but increasingly the act of organization) were cast
as communist.4

1
Tanter 1992.
2
McVey 1996.
3
King 1982; McIntyre 1990.
4
Schulte-Nordholdt 1987: 41.

103
104 New Order repression and the Indonesian opposition

Restrictions on organizing emerged incrementally, for Suharto at first

needed, and even helped organize, social support against President
Sukarno. ABRI agents worked closely with students and rural Islamic
institutions to build anti-communist groups. From late 1966, however,
state actors seemed less interested in popular action. Soldiers took control
of the anti-PKI campaign, and violence shifted from a public war against
known PKI groups to more secret attacks on ‘‘conspiracies’’ and ‘‘under-
ground cells.’’5 This period produced the first antagonistic notes in
authorities’ relations to supporting movement organizations. By the
middle 1970s, the New Order had established its mature strategy, using
direct repression sparingly, but broadly proscribing organization. The
1965–1966 massacres, of course, underwrote these proscriptions, at
times explicitly, but also through elliptical references to communist
influence via ‘‘irresponsible people’’ or ‘‘formless organizations’’6 and its
consequences.
The containment strategy worked well. Prohibitions and threats against
dissident organization atomized and moderated dissent. With no organ-
izational vehicles to sustain dissent, most activists preserved their ability to
rejoin the social and economic mainstream as lawyers, journalists, writers
and politicians, and movements became extremely respectful of state
restrictions.7 Indonesian dissent, in consequence, became elliptical and
stylized, expressed (rather frequently, under the repressive circumstances)
by small-scale demonstrations, local associations and independent intel-
lectuals. In time, students found common cause with peasants, workers
and slum dwellers, but continued to favor episodic and isolated acts of
resistance. In this chapter, we trace links between state repression and this
specific style of New Order contention.
Precisely because Indonesian state repression scattered and atomized
dissent, descriptions of individual movement histories are of limited
value, and a catalogue of all protest activity impossibly cumbersome.
(Burma and the Philippines, for reasons directly related to key aspects
of their states’ repressive modes, produce far more coherent narratives:
the former because protest is so rare, and the latter because it is so
centralized and coordinated.) The main dynamics of Indonesian contention
are most clear in shifts between state policies to control dissent and the
adjustments these shifts produce in contention. Throughout the New

5
Van Langenberg 1990: 50–61; Jenkins 1984: 4.
6
‘‘Orang yang tidak bertangungjawab’’ and ‘‘Organasisi tenpa bentuk,’’ respectively. Both
phrases were prominent codes for communism in New Order pronouncements. Van
Langenberg 1992: 127–128.
7
Liddle 1985: 74–77.
 Student protest and state sponsorship in post-coup Indonesia 105

Order, authorities’ efforts to control dissent motivated a succession of

policies proscribing a succession of specific organizational forms. In 1974,
1978, and 1983 to 1984, following periods of disruptive and escalating
mobilization, new state policies prohibited organizational modes that
gave recent contention its particular power. Activists typically worked
around (rather than challenged) new state proscriptions, engineering
consequent shifts in contentious forms.
Accordingly, shifts in state policy and movement response provide the
milestones in the narrative that follows. Legislation in 1974 made it illegal
for students to protest off campus, and so they retreated to university
institutions, and used them to put together strong mobilizations in 1977
and 1978. In 1978, after these protests, authorities passed legislation
that prohibited the use of university facilities for political purposes,
and activists eventually moved to set up small off-campus agencies
and study groups. When these groups gained power and mass support
in the early 1980s, authorities enacted legislation that prohibited
political groups from legally organizing a mass base – and movements
either eschewed mass organizing or retreated from political positions.
We will concentrate on these shifts, but first discuss the period from
1966 until 1974, when for particular reasons, Indonesian students did
have the organizational capacity to mount more or less coordinated
national struggle.

Student protest and state sponsorship in post-coup

Indonesia
While the New Order’s first dilemmas resembled those confronting post-
coup Burma, key differences also existed. Both militaries faced parlia-
mentary and communist rivals, recruited disgruntled popular forces, but
then shouldered mass allies aside. Yet the Tatmadaw’s organizational
dominance before its coup made Burmese officers less inclined to cultivate
social support; moreover, since the BCP had been at war with Burma’s
parliamentary regime, there was little danger that U Nu and the commun-
ists would unite against Ne Win. In Indonesia, the PKI had substantial
and growing power within Guided Democracy, with nearly 20 million
reported members.8 Before Suharto’s victory was evident, many officers
feared communist counter-mobilization,9 and for several years after

8
McVey (1996) reports that in 1965, the PKI had 3 million party members, and some 20
members in affiliated mass organizations.
9
Robinson 1995: 134–135.
106 New Order repression and the Indonesian opposition

1965, the New Order remained largely on the drawing board, its very
design contested among officers.10 Suharto’s leadership continued to be
tenuous, and Sukarno commanded enough support to prevent swift and
summary moves against him. Sukarno even showed initial signs of mobil-
izing society against ABRI, as in 1952 and 1957. Under those conditions,
ABRI turned to student activists, already protesting against Guided
Democracy and fighting rival student groups of the left.
The coup provided anti-communist organizations with new allies
and support, and they fell into step with the army’s broadening anti-
communist campaign.11 At first, demonstrations closely paralleled the
government’s anti-PKI campaign. When officials concentrated on blaming
the PKI for the coup (in October) students staged rallies leveling the same
charge.12 When authorities began arresting PKI members in government,
students denounced specific officials, and military units (particularly
the RPKAD[Resimen Para Komando Angkatan Darat, Indonesian
Special Forces] and KOSTRAD) protected anti-communist demonstra-
tions from pro-PKI groups.13 But the early movement also lacked disci-
pline and focus, as when October 10 anti-communist rallies in Jakarta and
Sumatra degenerated into anti-Chinese riots that eventually assaulted the
Chinese Embassy.14 To address concerns raised by such intractable
demonstrations, Major General Sjarif Thayeb (Minister of Higher
Education and Education Sciences) met with student organizations15
on October 25 and established the Indonesian Students Action
Union (KAMI, Kesatuan Aksi Mahasiswa Indonesia). As one activist

10
According to Jenkins (1984), the military was divided between radicals, who favored the
abolition of representative institutions in favor of a junta, and moderates who expected
to dominate a tractable corporatist system that nevertheless left opportunities for
popular representation.
11
ABRI closed several PKI newspapers on October 3, and on October 12 shuttered
universities with strong communist movements. By October 16, authorities banned the
PKI and several affiliates. Thereafter, ABRI chipped away at the PKI’s hold on
government institutions, and it began purging government officials and members of the
military alleged to belong to the party. See van der Kroef’s too credulous account
(1970) of government moves against communist conspiracies. One of van der Kroef’s
key erroneous assertions in this piece is that the PKI launched a significant and vicious
counter-strike. Many refute this view (e.g. McVey 1996: 116).
12
See articles cited from the military newspaper, Angkatan Bersenjata by Robinson 1995:
124.
13
Budiman 1978: 617; Sundhaussen 1982.
14
Newspaper note on this.
15
Saidi (1989) reports that among the student organizations present at that meeting were
the Association of Islamic Students (HMI, Himpunan Mahhasiswa Islam) Movement of
Islamic Students of Indonesia (PMII, Pergerakan Mahasiswa Islam Indonesia) and the
Association of Catholic Students of the Republic of Indonesia (PMKRI, Perhimuunan
Mahasiswa Katholic Republik Indonesia).
 Student protest and state sponsorship in post-coup Indonesia 107

wrote, KAMI ‘‘rendered students more coordinated and easy to lead.’’16

ABRI’s role here is striking, for never again would it permit, let alone
assist, efforts to build organizational power outside the state.17
KAMI demonstrations were larger, more coordinated, and more syn-
chronized with ABRI. Its chapters launched simultaneous actions with
standard demands across Indonesia, often in close coordination with
military action. When, for instance, KAMI published one of its seminal
documents (its Tritura or Three People’s Demands) on January 10, 1966,
RPKAD commander Sarwo Edhi attended the event.18 The strikes that
followed culminated an organizationally internal process, and Edhi’s
attendance signaled ABRI support for student activity, placing the move-
ment in a strange, almost semi-official position. Thenceforth, KAMI
protests often foreshadowed ABRI operations against the PKI or
Sukarno. At KAMI seminars, students and invited guests (often soldiers)
picked at the ideological fabric of Sukarno’s rule, and fashioned alter-
natives around ideas of development and modernity. Regular KAMI
meetings with Generals Dharsono, Kamal Idris, and Sarwo Edhi, allowed
students to imagine themselves in an emerging governing coalition, meet-
ing on the New Order’s ground floor.19
When Sukarno relinquished his executive powers on March 12, stu-
dent protests shifted. Earlier demonstrations against economic hardship,
the PKI and Sukarno helped Suharto to power by making economic
demands to attract mass support (for example, against high transporta-
tion costs and demonetization in January 1966) or by directly demanding
that Sukarno resign. Thereafter, however, students also began advocating
a clear restoration of democratic rule and launched an anti-corruption
campaign that lasted until late 1967. In these new demands, students
approached positions that would eventually divide them from the New
Order.20 Still, they retained the national organizations that ABRI helped
them to build, including national councils, inter-campus coordinating
bodies, radio stations and newspapers. These capacities cut sharply
against the grain of the New Order’s emerging corporatist strategy, by
which authorities would soon combine political parties into the internally

16
‘‘. . . agar para aktivis mahasisiwa itu manjadi lehbi terkoordinir dan mudah depimpin.’’
Saidi 1989: 76.
17
Suryadinata 1989: 19.
18
Sundhaussen 1982; Saidi 1989: 78.
19
Aspinall 1995: 28–29; Suryadinata 1989: 32.
20
The first outright clash between students and the regime they helped to set in place
occurred during Bandung mobilizations, called by students when elections were
postponed from June 1968 to some future date. These led to growing protests from
students against the military’s expanding power. Liddle 1973: 290.
108 New Order repression and the Indonesian opposition

heterogeneous Muslim Partai Persatuan Pembangunan (PPP, United

Development Party) and nationalist Partai Demokrasi Indonesia (PDI,
Indonesian Democratic Party), or press associations into official state-
sponsored unions, farmers’ organizations and the like.21 Even when some
student leaders accepted government posts, however, the activist machinery
continued to function. Organizers experimented with mobilization forms
to strengthen the movement: they staged demonstrations on symbolic
events like the coup anniversary, adopted an anti-corruption campaign
that played on growing mass discontent, and acted for the first time like
entrepreneurs. The students had grown more capable than was entirely
convenient for the state.
Because the student movement mobilized the precise mode of dissent
that authorities wanted most to curtail, official responses provide an
opportunity to examine New Order repression in some detail. By mid-
1966, ABRI could be relatively certain of defeating the communists and
Sukarno, and its second congress in Bandung strengthened the dwifungsi
doctrine and also resolved differences between New Order radicals and
moderates.22 From this more secure position ABRI required less in the
way of mobilized mass support, and was in any case moving to build the
corporatist apparatus on which it would depend.23 Moreover, the anti-
communist campaign was then turning toward operations to unearth
alleged underground communist networks: specialized work for anti-
communist professionals, rather than a matter for public politics.24
Government and military purges accomplished part of the task, but state
agents also reported secret PKI cells plotting an insurgent struggle.25 In
this climate, officers began to undercut student protests; the last demon-
strations clearly worked out between soldiers and students occurred on
September 19 and 20, 1966, backing increased military efforts to arrest
PKI members. After that, ABRI began to distance itself from student
groups (i.e. before students began making demands that Suharto found
uncomfortable). In early 1967, soldiers dispersed marchers demanding
Sukarno’s removal from office. On January 27, Suharto banned demon-
strations. Students largely ignored this injunction from late January to
early March, and celebrated the transfer of presidential power to Suharto
on March 4. On March 6, the government again banned street demon-
strations – though one last protest followed this announcement.26

21
Liddle 1973; Schulte-Nordholdt 1987: 43–44.
22
Suryadinata 1989: 39; Jenkins 1983; MacDougall 1976; Gunn 1979: 763–764.
23
Anderson 1978.
24
Van Langenberg 1992: 51.
25
Van der Kroef 1970.
26
Newspaper sources.
 Student protest and state sponsorship in post-coup Indonesia 109

The first significant effort to undermine student power in a character-

istically New Order style of repression came in late 1966, when students
developed a new description of their political activity as representing
a ‘‘moral force.’’27 Officials soon accepted and used the formulation
themselves, for it implied corollary restrictions that authorities found
useful: a moral force was not a political force, and did not rely on massed
pressure.28 Rather, students were to use suasion, make their point, and
then stand down. The concept was thus an encoded prohibition against
using the political and organizational resources that ABRI helped stu-
dents cultivate in 1965. Soon, students felt this prohibition more clearly.
In April 9, 1968 soldiers attacked a gathering of students assembled to
plan a demonstration, killing one high-school student and injuring three
others. Around the same time, ABRI officials began to speculate more
frequently that students were linked to a communist conspiracy. It was
a significant charge. With the PKI’s open machinery destroyed, author-
ities had turned to rooting out secret communist cells.29 In this climate,
stories of communist conspiracy continued to rework popular concep-
tions of what communism was: no longer an open parliamentary party,
but an underground, secret organization, operating in defiance of the
New Order’s monopoly on legitimate political organization. To ignore
prohibitions on organization thus opened one to charges of communist
entanglement.30
The idea of the necessary morality of legitimate student activism also
created new opportunities to discredit students. In mid-1967, military
and police began warning of juvenile delinquents (‘‘hell drivers’’ or
‘‘cross-boys’’). Tales of rich kids smoking marijuana, racing expensive
cars, and having sex with multiple partners appeared in the press.31 One
story described how police accosted young men in Beatle haircuts and
forced them to have public haircuts. These accounts provided a context

27
One of the earliest expressions of the moral force idea can be found in a series of articles
written by Arief Budiman in 1967 (these articles are cited in Aspinall 2004).
28
Arief Budiman describes the post-1966 student movement’s use of the ‘‘moral force’’
position in terms of Javanese cultural idioms. In these terms, the idea of a moral force
conjured the image of the resi (i.e. hermits and sages) who were traditional sources of
moral and personally disinterested political criticism in Javanese literary and theatrical
forms. Budiman 1978: 616–619.
29
Van der Kroef 1970.
30
McVey (1996) reminds us that the association between communism and organization
was not merely a post-coup, New Order formulation. Akhmadi also expresses this
association clearly (Akhmadi 1979: 165–166).
31
A New York Times’ article entitled ‘‘Wild Teenagers Bedevil Jakarta’’ describes these
alleged acts, and claims that ‘‘Every day, the (local) papers are filled with reports on
adolescent antics.’’ New York Times, August 8, 1967.
110 New Order repression and the Indonesian opposition

of moral depravity within which authorities could situate student protest:

later accusations of student involvement in communist conspiracies
merely broaden this accusation from degeneration (hell drivers) to trea-
son (communists). Nevertheless, although authorities intimidated and
discredited student organizations, they left the associations, inter-campus
councils and the student press, largely intact.
Officials’ initial tolerance toward organized student protest represents
a departure from larger New Order patterns, and was probably a conse-
quence of the Angkatan 66’s earlier anti-communist support; the repres-
sive strategy is far clearer, however, in relation to separatist challenges
that also defied New Order proscriptions on organization. Starting in
1968, separatist organizations in West Papua (Irian Jaya) moved into a
protracted insurgency that foreshadowed later struggles in East Timor,
Aceh and (to a lesser extent) Ambon.32 As others have argued, these
regions had contentious, and often shorter histories within the Republic,
and separatist movements in each attracted substantial popular support.
The scope and the character of separatism posed obvious dangers in the
heterogeneous Republic33 – but also virtually assured that activists would
assert these demands from within more formal, long-term insurgent
organizations. Hence, an entirely different set of state–movement inter-
actions emerged between Jakarta and separatists, precisely because it
was virtually impossible (perhaps from the beginning, but certainly after
a few months of state repression) to conciliate these movements into
the New Order. In West Papua, ABRI massively repressed separatists,
segregating the region from Indonesia and barring journalists as
well. Isolated in this way, separatist movements calibrated their activity
to their organizational capacities, troop strength, local support, and
international attention (i.e. capacities they could use against authorities)
rather than to their chances of winning over Indonesian allies. It is
therefore difficult, and probably not particularly useful to assess whether
separatism or movement organization most decisively shaped the New
Order’s response to these movements. As we will see, however, the
pattern of the strongest state repression targeting the most organized
movements, so clear in relation to separatist movements, is evident else-
where as well.

32
The resistance was stirred to life when Indonesia announced vague and shady plans to
substitute consultations with 1,000 village representatives for a UN-mandated popular
referendum on the territory’s independence. Osborne 1985 (especially chapter 1).
33
Indeed shortly after the West Papuan insurgency began, Ambonese separatists staged
several terrorist attacks in Indonesia and in the Netherlands.
 Protest in the 1970s 111

Protest in the 1970s

Two important facts shaped student protest against the New Order in the
1970s. First, with the communists eliminated and Suharto in power,
students began to think more directly about Indonesia’s future rather
than about outflanking those they regarded as responsible for its past. In
this shift, many moved toward a critique of modernization-based devel-
opment models, and began also to identify and criticize local, sometimes
corrupt collaborators in dependent economic relations. Protest hence
began more often to target New Order authorities.34 Second, for reasons
that in retrospect seem a bit puzzling, the military refrained from pro-
hibiting student organizations forged during the anti-PKI campaign, even
as it was banning or ‘‘consolidating’’ other parties, unions and political
associations. The regime intimidated, punished, conciliated, or dis-
credited student political assertion, but did not eliminate them.
Students (and students alone) could therefore still plan and coordinate
national protest based on their own organizational resources rather than
exogenous sparks. Study groups turned the publication (in student news-
papers!) of critical papers about state policy into occasions for mass
action. University student councils (Dewan Mahasiswa, DM) coordin-
ated campaigns between universities. Veteran of the 1966 movement
assessed the New Order’s progress against blueprints they helped draft
years before. KAMI and related groups remained active,35 but virtually
every demonstration also produced new organizations around specific
campaigns. Between 1968 and 1974, in fact, campaigns were more
organized than mobilizing, and many featured small groups or symbolic
actions accompanied by carefully drafted position papers.36 Cadres
ensured that movements responded to price increases, election campaigns
or movement anniversaries, and sophisticated critiques of government
programs touched off explosive anti-corruption protests in 1970, ‘‘Taman
Mini’’ protests in 1971, and the Malari riots in 1974: loosely linked events that
involved a fairly stable set of activists operating in movement organizations.
The Taman Mini Indah protests in 1971 to 1972 and Malari riots in
late 1973 to early 1974 were but the high points of an extended student
campaign. Starting around January 16, 1970, high-school students (organ-
ized in Kesatuan Aksi Pelajar Pelajar Indonesia, KAPPI, Indonesian
Students’ Action Front) protested fuel price hikes in demonstrations that

34
Aspinall 1995; Budiman 1978; Akhmadi 1979: 168.
35
Saidi 1989.
36
Budiman 1978: 623.
112 New Order repression and the Indonesian opposition

soon spread to Jogjakarta; protests ended on the 26th, when the govern-
ment banned further demonstrations.37 Authorities pre-empted planned
August protests by the student ‘‘Anti-Corruption Committee’’ (Komite
Anti-Korupsi, KAK) by arresting activists for hanging anti-corruption
posters near the Attorney General’s office. In a typical but telling accu-
sation, General Sumitro accused the students of communist connections
and compared the situation to that leading up to the 1965 coup. The
following March, protests mobilized in the run-up to scheduled elec-
tions, and sharply increased in May.38 A Golongan Putih (White Group)
formed in mid-May to advocate an election boycott, and the Opposition
Young Generation Group projected a similar stance for the Islamic social
organization Nahdlatul Ulama.39 That September, students protested
authorities’ cancellation of an Indonesia Foundation discussion, and
commemorated the anniversary of the anti-corruption movement.
General Sumitro once more berated activists, and accused them of
harboring communist sympathies.
The first crescendo in this activity was 1971 to 1972 students’ protests
against the Taman Mini Indah project, an expensive, frivolous theme
park in which Suharto’s wife Tien held a substantial interest. By January
15 demonstrations occurred in virtually every university center across
Indonesia.40 The demonstrations represented the sharpest anti-government
criticism to that point, and were all the more volatile because they leveled
charges at Suharto’s family. Authorities responded with a mixture of
violence against demonstrators, and a more concerted effort to under-
mine activist credibility. On December 24, hired hoodlums attacked
twenty demonstrators, injuring three, on January 6, a visibly angry
Suharto threatened to use deadly force, and the next day security forces
attacked a student sit-in outside the project’s headquarters, arresting
several participants. ABRI linked the protests to the Golput electoral
boycott, and both to the PKI.41 On January 14, Minister of Interior,
Amir Machmud claimed that PKI ‘‘terror campaigns’’ depended on
criminal support. Other officials implied that activists were merely paid
criminal stooges. Arief Budiman, a leader in these protests, took special
pains at the time to refute government descriptions of the activists:

37
Press announcement.
38
Pedoman, May 24, 1971.
39
From the outset, officials attempted to delegitimize these groups. They described
activists involved in these actions as rapists and kidnappers carrying Mao’s ‘‘red book’’.
Diwarna, May 16, 1971.
40
Tempo, January 15, 1971.
41
Angkatan Bersenjata, January 6, 1971.
 Protest in the 1970s 113

‘‘[M]embers of the Austerity Movement are students of the University of

Indonesia schools of (among others) letters, law and economics. GAPUR
(Gerakan Pemyimpkan Uang Rakyat, Movement to Save the People’s
Money) consisted of KAPPI figures . . . mostly 1966 activists, known to
the military and neither rapists nor muggers.’’42 Starting on January 18,
state agents arrested prominent movement leaders, shutting down the
protests.43 Government reports once more decried long hair, drugs and
promiscuity among the youth, linking moral decay to activism and crim-
inality. Soldiers again administered forced public haircuts in what it
depicted as a struggle to root out subversion on interlaced cultural,
moral and political fronts. Since both government and student forces
elected to define acceptable dissent in the language of the ‘‘moral
force,’’ this campaign in fact struck home, setting many actual (or alleged)
student acts outside the realm of legitimate activity.
Still, the sanctions did not disrupt student organizations, particularly
the student press and inter-campus organizations, which were instru-
mental in framing and mobilizing dissent. The DM’s analysis of the
economic roots of 1973 anti-Chinese rioting in Bandung, for instance,
established positions that informed protest in 1974.44 A series of small,
but regular and organized student protests occurred in 1973’s last quarter,
against a ban on long hair, a visit by the Dutch Education Minister, and
(in greater numbers) a marriage bill that offended Muslims. Organizations
also allowed close contact between activist leaders and some sections of ABRI.
At the time, two military factions, described by Crouch as professional
and investment generals, struggled for power, with the latter more involved
in economic affairs and more implicated in corruption.45 A prominent
member of the professional camp, General Sumitro (Kopkamtib) spent
1973’s last months solidifying ties with student organizations, issuing
statements supporting greater political freedom, and encouraging student
demonstrations criticizing the finance Generals.46 Aspinall argues that

42
Indonesia Raya, January 18, 1972. The last remarks, that demonstration participants are
neither rapists nor muggers comes in response to government charges, circulated in
mid-January, that communists had hired gangs of criminals to fill out demonstrations
ranks – with the lingering implication as well that activists and criminals were pretty
much the same. See also Arief Budiman’s Letter to the Editor, Kompas, December 30,
1971.
43
Among those picked up were Arief Budiman, human rights activist Hadji Princen, Sinar
Harapan editor Aristides Katoppo, and KAPPI head, Jusuf AR. Katoppo and some of
his reporters were released after sixteen hours, others, like Budiman and Jusuf AR, were
held longer.
44
Ng 1976: 5–8; Akhmadi 1979; Aspinall 1995.
45
Crouch 1978.
46
Van Dijk 1989: 12.
114 New Order repression and the Indonesian opposition

students believed that Sumitro would seize power if university organiza-

tions could sustain protests.47
The protests that capped this activity were initially organized demon-
strations against Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka’s visit and the eco-
nomic policies that visit represented, but soon spun off in violent
rioting, particularly when unorganized members of poor urban commu-
nities joined in.48 The action was in some ways inherently vulnerable to
unruly non-student participation. As a self-consciously ‘‘moral force,’’
students protested in expressly symbolic ways, as when three activists
calling themselves the Komite Kabanggaan Nasional (KKN, Committee
for National Development) draped the Japanese Astra building with
an Indonesian flag in late 1973.49 Convinced that they functioned best
‘‘morally,’’ students used organizations to provide themselves with
credentials and to coordinate among leaders, rather than to draw in or
direct mass support, and the movement remained detached from
society.50 Most students envisioned the economic policy debate as prop-
erly conducted among modern sectors of Indonesia, and were thus eager
to exclude mass society (and consequently unprepared to direct mass
participation). Deteriorating economic conditions and a rice shortage,
however, had driven working Indonesians to the brink of defiant activity.
Already scattered incidents of largely unorganized protest or conflict
across Indonesia seemed on the rise, and centralized, public student
protest proved an irresistible draw for many. Some evidence also suggests
that Ali Murtopo, a prominent finance general, countered Sumitro’s
efforts to mobilize student support by recruiting slum dwellers to join
and radicalize the protests.51
For whatever reason, relatively peaceful student protests on January 14
gave way to greater violence the next day. Workers and slum dwellers
streamed into Jakarta, burning and damaging Japanese cars. By day’s
end, mobs had looted and burned a major shopping center, smashed
the Toyota showroom in the Astra building, and vandalized the Japanese
Embassy. On January 16, 10,000 students gathered near the Japanese-
owned Presidential Hotel, but riot troops turned them back with warning
shots. Later, Sumitro disavowed the violence, depriving student leaders
(themselves badly shaken) of expected support. Students quickly endorsed
Sumitro’s call. DM president Hariman Serigar recalls feeling great

47
Aspinall 1995: 30.
48
Budiman 1978: 618.
49
Kompas, December 17, 1973.
50
Ng 1976: 30; Aspinall 1995: 6–7.
51
Ng Chin-Kaong 1976: 17–20; Hansen 1975: 150–152; Bourchier 1992: 193.
 Protest in the 1970s 115

alarm as the demonstrations swelled beyond the DM’s control, and relief
when they ended.52 Official estimates place the riot damage at 11 deaths,
137 injuries, and 1,000 destroyed cars and motorcycles.53
The government response, given this violence, was relatively lenient,
and concentrated first on quelling the unrest and then on restricting
student organizations. On January 18 troops occupied the University of
Indonesia and set a curfew that remained in effect for only a week. Of
over 800 students, journalists and teachers arrested, only 42 eventually
faced trial, and they reported relatively privileged prison conditions.54
More significant action came later, from the new Education Minister
Sjarief Thayeb (who had helped organize KAMI in 1965). Aware of
how organizations enhanced student power, Thayeb drafted law SK 028
(restricting off-campus student protest) and unsuccessfully attempted to
elevate the KNPI (Kesatuan Nasional Pemuda Indonesia, the Indonesian
National Youth Committee) to the status of sole legal student organiza-
tion.55 Despite a visibly less supportive government,56 many students
were inclined to accept SK 028 restrictions and view the Malari violence
as reason to avoid broader political involvement. The violence also trig-
gered a backlash inside religious organizations like the HMI (Himpunan
Mahasiswa Islam, the Organisation of Islamic Students), behind the
position that student leaders had become too political and secular.57
Others merely reassessed the tactics surrounding Malari, re-embracing
the ‘‘moral force’’ proposition to concentrate on discussions, cultural
presentations, poetry readings and folk concerts.58

52
Taped interview, March 6, 1998.
53
These estimates were reported to the People’s Representative Council’s January 21
meeting (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat, DPR). Kompas, January 22, 1974.
54
Hariman Serigar, for instance, scoffed at the idea of overseas exile as an alternative to
Indonesian prison: ‘‘Why do that? Things were so comfortable for me in prison – I was
even able to go home when I needed a good meal.’’ Taped interview, March 6, 1998.
See also Southwood and Flanagan 1983: 184–185.
55
First announced in a speech in Malang, July 17, 1974. In a general way, the editors of
the journal Indonesia make this point in footnote 26 of their translation of ‘‘The Exceptie
of Heri Akhmadi.’’ (Akhmadi 1979). For a more particular example of an organization
leader’s successful work to fend off the centralizing efforts of the KNPI, see Saidi 1989:
115–122; Thomas and Soedijarto 1980: 51–55.
56
HMI leader Ridwan Saidi, for instance, describes a meeting between student leaders
and Misister of Religions, Mukti Ali. The Minister regarded the students with cool
detachment, took a long pull on his cigarette and asked each what level they had
attained in school. The students answered . . . and the Minister ended the meeting
abruptly to demonstrate how little they mattered in his official calculations.
57
Saidi 1989: 117–122.
58
Hariyadhie described this evolution of student collective forms. Hariyadhie: 1997: 2–4.
116 New Order repression and the Indonesian opposition

Yet campus organizations did survive and could still coordinate and
organize resistance (unlike in Burma, where such groups were eliminated).
Hence when 1977 DPR elections drew near, and a government official
named Sawito Kartowibowo published a series of papers alleging govern-
ment corruption, students began once more to protest.59 The actions
occurred on individual campuses, in conformity with SK 028 restrictions,
but soon also challenged those restrictions: Surabaya students joined
ambulant food vendor riots, Bogor students protested land tenure pat-
terns, and the Mahasiswa Ujungpandang Bertanya (Ujungpandang
Students Ask) petitioned at Sumatra’s local assembly.60 Elections pushed
activists to coordinate these demonstrations, and they met in East Java to
discuss how their press might strengthen the national movement.61 In
February, students across Indonesia met university rectors to complain
about SK 028 and began to demonstrate against issues of mass concern,
like expensive bus fares.62 Later that year, students from three universities
organized a mock legislative session called the Provisional Parliament.
Akhmadi recounts that, ‘‘By this move, we began the consolidation of
student movements/activities by setting up coordination networks in each
city . . . (after our arrest) our ideas were then taken up by the student
Councils/Student senates in Jakarta, Bogor and Bandung.’’63 Larger
student meetings in October produced stronger cooperation and a docu-
ment called the ‘‘Students’ Vows.’’
These efforts demonstrate a growing willingness among activists to
struggle for organizational power (perhaps natural after three years of
SK 028 restrictions) in place of earlier activists’ inclinations to form
small, excluding alliances with potential allies in the state. At large
inter-university meetings, students agreed to ‘‘take advantage of every
opportunity’’ to press their demands. They organized demonstrations on
two November holidays and to meet a delegation of seven government
ministers traveling to campuses and dialogue with students. In both
cases, student organizations planned demonstrations and publicized
them in the student press. Some even argued for joining forces with
mass society, unimaginable earlier, and particularly hard to fathom so
soon after the Malari chaos. By 1977, however, activists believed that

59
McDonald 1980; Bourchier 1984.
60
Hariyadhie 1997: 14–17.
61
One participant in high-school protests at the time recalls how his campus, which
eventually was the site of violent clashes between students and security forces, first grew
political because they could obtain college magazines that inspired resistance.
(Interview, Coki, February 13, 1998).
62
Akhmadi 1979: 17–18.
63
Akhmadi 1979: 18–19.
 Protest in the 1970s 117

Malari escalated because the actions were unorganized, and the move-
ment could correct that flaw, and even be more militant, if organized.
Demonstrations mobilized despite military warnings, and began to leave
campus despite SK 028. In some cases, students marched even when
soldiers ringed their demonstration, and tanks patrolled their perimeter.
The White Book of the Student Struggle, published by the Bandung
Institute of Technology’s Student Council on January 14, 1978, tried to
explain student protests to a broader audience – a new and significant
concern for the erstwhile ‘‘moral force.’’64
The paper was an anti-Suharto declaration of unprecedented strength,
and days later student councils in Jakarta, Jogjakarta and Surabaya
published similar documents. Kopkamtib troops moved into the larger
campuses to arrest student leaders. On February 25, soldiers seized Gadjah
Madah University with far greater force than anything in Bandung or
Jakarta, killing six students and injuring many more. On smaller campuses,
students built barricades – but these often only attracted determined
commando raids. Into March, soldiers violently broke up demonstrations
and arrested around 800 across Indonesia; as with the Malari riots,
however, far fewer (150) spent more than a few days in jail. Authorities
closed all student councils and eight newspapers regarded as having
sympathized with the demonstrators (seven that pledged not to cover
opposition news eventually reopened).65 In late March, close Suharto ally
Ali Murtopo became Minister of Information, officials seen as too close to
students (for example, Generals Nasution and Kamal Idris) were repri-
manded, and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) head
General Dharsono was forced to resign. These measures took the wind
out of the activists’ sails: some demonstrations occurred during the Majelis
Permusyawaratan Rakyat (MPR, the People’s Consultative Assembly)
General Assembly on March 3 and March 11, but a token show of
military force scattered the crowd.
The strongest measures against further protest came in a package of
policies called the Normalasisi Kahidupan Kampus/Baden Koordinisisi
Kamahahsiswaan (NKK/BKK or the Normalization of Campus Life/The
Body to Coordinate Students), drawn up by the new Minister of Education
and Culture Dr. Daud Jusuf. The NKK/BKK imposed more stringent
course requirements, placed student life under a campus bureaucracy with
ABRI oversight, barred student organizations from political activities,

64
Bandung Institute of Technology Student Council 1978.
65
This pledge and its consequences for the media record concerning protest and dissent is
one reason why Indonesian newspapers are unreliable sources of information about
contention during the New Order.
118 New Order repression and the Indonesian opposition

and abolished institutions central to the 1978 demonstrations (especially

the student councils and press). Unit Kagiatian Mahasiswa (Student
Representative Bodies) were limited to sporting and social events, and
could only exist on the individual faculty levels.66
Surprisingly, implementing NKK/BKK provisions required little direct
repression, apart from threats to expel violators or restrict their employ-
ment potentials. Troops quickly disbursed each action that rose to protest
the measures, but exercised enough restraint to avoid spin-off anti-violence
campaigns.67 Beside such one or two day challenges, fifty youths were
arrested in early 1979 as members of an underground militant organiza-
tion. In the main, however, activists complied with the new proscriptions
and established study groups to review their pasts.68 This relative meek-
ness is puzzling, particularly given recent student concern about organ-
izational power.69 Some conjecture that most students grew disinterested
in campus politics, and study groups eventually did argue that activists
should seek closer ties with Indonesian society off-campus, and to that
end, established small Non-Governmental Organizations (called LSMs for
Lembaga Swadaya Masyarakat). The NKK/BKK legislation did emerge
in conjunction with state moves to reprimand or purge government
officials who supported student initiatives, and so students had little
choice but to comply. Still, the absence of student struggle against the
measures, particularly efforts secretly to defy the measures by building
something akin to underground formations, is striking.
Consider, however, the larger context of Indonesian politics. Students
had isolated themselves from mass society since 1965, and participated in
processes establishing distinctions between campus and mass politics.
Deeply involved in the New Order’s emergence, they defined moral and
modern politics mainly by its exclusion of unruly mass exercises, particu-
larly of the left. Students did not suffer the campaigns to prohibit,

66
Aspinall 1993: 8–9. For a more detailed justification of the measures’ logic, see the
paper written by Dr. Jusuf and sent to students, entitled ‘‘Normilasi Kahidupan
Kampus’’ and included in Hariyadhie 1997: 171–179; see also Ministry of Education
and Culture 1980.
67
500 University of Indonesia students protested the expulsion of 11 NKK/BKK violators
on November 10, 1979. Ten days later, 100 students in Bandung protested the
legislation. Other protests occurred over the next few years, but they were usually quite
small and always fairly short expressions of dissent. Kompas, November 11, 1979;
Kompas, November 21, 1979.
68
Tempo magazine’s April 22, 1989 feature on study groups served to inform many of one
another’s activities, and paved the way for visits and eventual coordination among
them. See also Denny 1990.
69
Hariman Serigar even recalls that he and other former activists urged students to stick
to the campuses and struggle to re-establish the student movement there.
 Protest in the 1970s 119

constrain or consolidate their organizations that reshaped other associa-

tions in the early New Order period, but there was not much they could
do alone to sustain activism. One could not, that is, graduate from campus
politics to a movement structure operating in the broader society, for
repression had eliminated such networks. Hence, by the time graver
consequences were attached to student defiance (particularly when
authorities began to present organized resistance as communist resistance)
campus dissent was largely isolated. Moreover, student activists (even
those from more disruptive, anti-state actions in the 1970s) often went on
to mainstream careers, precisely because of the credentials they estab-
lished via campus politics.70 By the late 1970s, the stakes riding on such
transitions were growing quite high. The Indonesian economy had
entered a period of steady growth, and prospects for educated
Indonesians with unblemished records were quite bright.71 But such
careers depended on academic degrees, awarded only to those who
remained within the broad confines of state proscriptions. Students,
who constitute both an identifiable social group and individuals becom-
ing something new, were in fact particularly vulnerable to NKK/BKK
prohibitions, for since activists only could anticipate futures sanctioned
by the New Order, apparently weak NKK/BKK threats of expulsion
represented central (not incidental) barriers to activism.
Contrast this situation with that of movements not dissuaded by heavy
state sanctions, which defied all manner of state proscriptions, including
those on organization. Separatist movements in West Papua, in East
Timor (after the 1974 Indonesian invasion) and in Aceh (1980s) developed
underground and insurgent organizations;72 Maluku separatists in the
late 1960s favored dramatic acts of terror both in Indonesia and the
Netherlands. Each movement demonstrated resolve in the face of focused
state repression.73 For instance, over 100,000 of East Timor’s 600,000
residents died in the occupation’s first years, and the New Order
responded to the West Papuan movement with armed military invasion.
These movements generated committed resistance with deeper, more
fully articulated anti-state organizations and alliances, partly because of
their physical and psychic distance from Jakarta, and perhaps also
because they did not occur where the PKI had been strongest, or bloody
anti-PKI massacres most intimidating. Hence, separatists never developed
the bounded symbiosis with authorities that led many Javanese students

70
Lev 1996: 146–147: Adrinof 1988.
71
Robison 1988: 64–67.
72
Osborne 1985; Hill 1978; Kell 1995: 61–68; Tanter 1992: 239–244.
73
Wessel 2001.
120 New Order repression and the Indonesian opposition

to define their actions as essentially moral rather than political. Separatists

seldom sought Indonesian support, set out to preserve their own futures in
an Indonesian mainstream, or to influence those who did. One East
Timor activist reflected that, ‘‘We assume that there is no audience for
us inside Indonesia. So when we demonstrate, we are either attempting
to build our organization in East Timor, or to capture international
attention.’’74 Each movement developed an underground organization
capable of surviving state pressure, concealing members, and training
new recruits in an essentially insurgent strategy that required an
organized network – and defied state proscriptions in ways that students
never would.

After NKK/BKK
Before NKK/BKK, inter-campus networks and the suppression of non-
student activism allow us to describe contention as possessing substantial
central coherence. After 1978, student activists scattered and developed
isolated formations that undertook limited episodes of protest, often
(following recommendations of the post-1978 campus study groups) in
cooperation with other Indonesian social formations. The result of these
efforts would vary over the years (in response to shifting state prohib-
itions) but always reflected dissidents’ inability to organize or broadly
coordinate their activity, except under extraordinary circumstances.75
Initially, students founded small LSMs to work with impoverished,
marginalized Indonesians in what might broadly be called development
programs, and avoided confrontation with state agents.76 By the early
1980s, LSMs and other groups began taking more political, strongly anti-
New Order positions, and less-organized riots, frequently against local
targets, also increased.77 Authorities often treated these outbursts as
criminal or moral offenses that required suppression in the event itself,
but no more comprehensive response. Local military detachments

74
Recorded interview with East Timor activist, Jogakarta, March 4, 1998. See also
recorded interview with Marcelino Magno, March 3, 1998; Naipospos 2000: 87;
Chauvel 2001.
75
Gayatri 1999: 104–105.
76
Bunnell 1996: 181.
77
Some evidence indicates that students in loose groups incited some of the unrest. On
March 2, 1981, forty students were tried for roles in November 1980 riots. Hong Kong
Radio reported that students led riots that same year in Maluku and Central Sumatra.
Sometimes, loosely arranged, one or two day student demonstrations off-campus
produced riots, as in Bandung on January 14, 1981, or Lhoksemawe, East Aceh on
November 2 that year. See Uhlin 1995: 99–150; Eldridge 1989.
 After NKK/BKK 121

imposed curfews or increased patrols, and sometimes officers called the

local Islamic clerics to scold people, but unrest remained fragmented, and
offered a low-order threat to authorities.
Just as authorities seemed to have forced open contention into manageable
forms, however, they began also to report underground, anti-government
conspiracies. Often, media stories described the groups as mainly student
led, but Michael Vatikiotis reports that radical groups may have been
former Darul Islam activists assembled by Ali Murtopo to discredit
Islamic parties in approaching elections.78 Indeed, initial information
about these activists described their secret work to disrupt the 1982
general elections. Later, a spate of militant attacks and government
counter-raids indicated that the struggle was escalating. Intelligence
agents arrested key leaders of a group called the Kommando Jihad on
January 16 and 26, and killed another, Faisal Gozali, on January 18. The
Mujahidin Command detonated a bomb on September 1, 1980 at a
Jakarta hospital where Murtopo was to have been treated; ABRI
operations smashed the group by October 21. In early 1981 the
Indonesian Islamic Revolutionary Board (IIRB) began attacking police
outposts, culminating in a Bandung raid that killed three policemen – but
yielded many IIRB prisoners. On March 28, hijackers seized a Garuda
Airlines plane to demand that arrested IIRB and Kommando Jihad
members be released; three days later, commandos raided the plane,
taking many prisoners. In such cases, arrested operatives received jail
sentences ranging from seven to twenty years, starkly more than that
meted out to student activists around the same time, and the secret
organizations more generally received harsh and decisive treatment
from authorities.79
Apart from the Islamic groups, another underground clash began in 1983:
the so-called petrus (Penembakan Misterius, or Mysterious Shootings).80
Dead bodies, often described as ‘‘tattooed,’’ began appearing on the
streets of large cities. By 1987 some 5,000 people had been killed in this
manner, mainly via execution-style bullet wounds to the head, after earl-
ier torture. Behind unconvincing government explanations that a gang
war produced the casualties, Indonesians understood that both the killers

78
Vatikiotis 1993: 129. The author acknowledges a debt to Sydney Jones Asia Watch for
that information. See also Jenkins 1984: 56–57.
79
In 1979, Heri Akhmadi received a two-year sentence for his role in the 1978 protests; in
1980 former UI student council president Dodi Suriadireja received ten months for
insulting the president; in October of 1981, the University of Indonesia Rector received
custody of student leaders arrested for inviting banned author Pramoedia Anna Toer to
speak on campus. King 186: 344–347.
80
Bourchier 1992b; see also Amnesty International 1983.
122 New Order repression and the Indonesian opposition

and victims belonged to covert networks,81 partly discernible to ordinary

Indonesians, but revealed most clearly in the grisly corpses discovered
each morning. Killers and victims hence posed ominous contrasts to the
rest of society – and the boundary between the covert and the open was
thus marked by blood warnings.
While varied, each of these events represents a state attack on anti-
regime organization. Actions against both the Muslim underground and
criminals demonstrate the state’s violent resolve to root out conspiracies
and undergrounds, and probably also made the point that while criminals
and terrorists lurked out of ordinary sight, they could not evade an
omniscient state. As if to emphasize their commitment and power, author-
ities also periodically executed detained PKI members. The executions
followed no discernible judicial timetable, but like petrus killings, were
thrust suddenly into public consciousness – another underground,
unearthed and vanquished, time and again. Student demonstrations
probed NKK/BKK provisions, and found them firm. Subsequently,
study groups avoided state pressure by remaining informal and fragmen-
ted, and by confining themselves to study and debate.82
Evolving repressive patterns also shaped LSM activity from that point
forward.83 LSMs initially delivered services and assistance to individual
beneficiaries. LBH (Lembaga Bantuan Hukum, or Legal Aid Society),
for example, provided legal assistance to individual clients, often on
prosaic matters like divorce. New college graduates who had been active
study group participants brought fresh, more explicitly political insights
to the LSM movement. Under this new influence, LBH, like other LSMs
at the time, shifted in 1983 from service provision to wider advocacy
campaigns and more frequent recourse to demonstrations, and regularly
began to situate disputes within integrated reform positions.84 Crucially,
as LSM activity adopted more radical tones and tactics, most still shunned
formal organizational elaboration.85 Networks that pulled together local
communities for protest disappeared once LSMs took up other issues in
other communities, and never set out to be long term or programmatically
complex. The LSMs themselves remained small enough to escape strong
state concern, or, when groups like LBH expanded, they did so in ways

81
While most believed that the criminals or galis belonged to street gangs, there was also
evidence, and substantial opinion, behind the notion that they were also members of
networks set up by Ali Murtopo, organised as part of a plan to undercut his political
rival, Benny Murdani. Bourchier 1992b: 189–193; Schulte-Nordhold 1987: 45.
82
Aspinall 1993: 14.
83
Eldridge 1995.
84
Lev 1987.
85
Bunnell 1996.
 After NKK/BKK 123

that conformed to state prohibitions. The LBH, for instance, renamed

itself a foundation (yayasan), understood explicitly as not an organization.
This semantic slight of hand demonstrates a more general LSM trend to
avoid seeming to organize mass communities. Experience suggested that
authorities would pre-empt and repress such efforts, but might tolerate
looser advocacy.86
Within the structures of post-NKK/BKK restrictions, opposition
movements began once more to gather steam. LSM expansion brought
urban Javanese activists to rural and ‘‘outer island’’ cases, where author-
ities acted with less legal restraint and power issues were more funda-
mental.87 In these local struggles, LSM activists and members of local
populations often ran afoul of security forces striving to maintain order or
protect their interests. Soldiers more commonly intimidated or threatened
local advocacy efforts, but seldom resorted to the harsher measures, like
murder and torture, of which they were institutionally capable. Initially
scattered and small-scale LSM efforts began to grow larger and more
politically potent as organizers gained experience and began also to
criticize their own fleeting engagements with mass society. At the same
time, the two largest Islamic networks, NU and Muhammadiyah, organ-
izationally intact because they had designated themselves as religious and
social groups, began more strongly political patterns of activity.
The state response to mounting unrest, when it came, was not a
coordinated sweep to arrest or harm activists, but another round of
legislation narrowing the permissible scope of counter-hegemonic organ-
ization. Mass Organization Legislation (Ormas) in 1984 restrained political
organization outside the government’s GOLKAR (Golongan Karya,
Functional Groups) from recruiting and organizing constituencies. The
legislation reiterated the intent of ‘‘floating mass’’ policies that prevented
opposition parties from organizing stable mass support, but aimed specifi-
cally at non-party associations like Islamic organization, unions and
LSMs.88 The measures forced groups either to abandon mass constituen-
cies (as most LSM would do) or to redefine themselves as social organiza-
tions (a path that NU and Muhammadiyah chose). On May 21, 1985 new
legislation required all associations to adopt the Pancasila as their sole
ideological basis, a rule that particularly affected Islamic groups.89 The

86
Eldridge 1995; Aspinall 1995.
87
In 1983, for example, LBH opened an office in Irian Jaya, and almost immediately took
in clients involved in the region’s autonomy struggle. For patterns of LSM expansion
more generally see Eldridge 1995.
88
King 1982: 111.
89
MacIntyre 1990: 39; Hari 1990; van Djik 1985.
124 New Order repression and the Indonesian opposition

NU and the Muhammadiyah rested on basic organizational building

blocks that were also central to the Muslim religion: local clerics and
teachers, Mosques and Pesantren. Ormas could not eliminate these orga-
nizations without attacking Islam itself. Hence, these ‘‘social’’ associa-
tions were allowed to maintain their organizations, but adopted
orientations defined by the state.
The legislation generated even less protest than had the NKK/BKK,
for by 1984, the New Order had substantially weakened its opposition.
With no movement organizations to underwrite protracted struggle or
counterbalance state sanctions by offering alternative activist futures,
dissidents who defied Ormas would expect to act alone, risking both
their present security and future prosperity. Other measures made this
isolation more complete. Newspaper closures in 1978 intimidated the
media from devoting substantial attention to opposition activity, and
journalists began to practice self-censorship and a particularly circuitous
mode of expression.90 After September 1, 1980, foreign media sources
were also barred from reporting on Indonesian politics within the
Republic.91 Mandatory state indoctrination (so-called p4 classes) and a
pervasive effort to de-politicize the Indonesian language also contributed
to the effort.92 Authorities sometimes further strengthened corporatist
institutions, as when the Federasi Buruh Seluruh Indonesia (FBSI,
All-Indonesia Workers’ Federation) gave way in 1980 to the more restric-
tive Seriket Pekerja Seluruh Indonesia (SPSI, The All Indonesia Workers’
Union).93 Together, these policies represent the New Order’s mature
repressive strategy, aimed at preventing dissidents from developing
sustained, coordinated or national political expressions.
As activists internalized and worked around these restrictions, protest
became more generally tentative, rhetorical and episodic.94 Because
secular protest worked within the state’s paralyzing organizational restric-
tions, it seldom aroused the strong state violence. A contrasting glance at
Islamic protest, which in the early 1980s did provoke substantial state
repression, emphasizes this point. Islamic protest depended on local
institutions like Mosques and Pesantren which left pious Muslims less
‘‘afloat’’ than most Indonesians, and so capable of sometimes-powerful
unrest. Some of the most committed and energetic protest – against the
state lottery (1991) or new marriage laws (1973) – had Islamic

90
See Dhakidae 1991; Kitley 2001: 257; Heryanto 1996.
91
Measures announced August 12, 1980 (Kompas, August 12, 1980).
92
Heryanto 1988; Foulcher 1992: 304–305.
93
Hadiz 1994: 194.
94
Heryanto (1999) provides a fine statement of this position.
 After NKK/BKK 125

organizational foundations. Not surprisingly, resistant as they were to

repression through organizational proscription, these protests also incited
some of the most flagrant state repression. Soldiers killed between
twenty-two and sixty-three at Islamic protests in Tanjung Priok, and
around thirty more in later Muslim demonstrations in Sumatra.95 One
ABRI operation even removed the Ayatollah Khomeini’s picture from
West Java homes.96
By the mid-1980s, Indonesian contention took many forms, from
student protests to secessionist insurgency, and including land, labor
and water disputes, as well as those involving issues of Islamic faith.
Nevertheless, the hallmark of the New Order’s political success at domestic
pacification was the segregation of different social forces and contentious
forms from one another via proscriptions on their organization.97 It was
also difficult for ambitious university graduates to work for long in such
small and limited LSMs. With scant room for either political success or
individual advance, many LSM workers evolved into a particularly New
Order-style activist: public intellectuals who criticized the regime in
lectures, but strove to remain within what was legal and tolerated, and
so eschewed movement building or any real calls to action.98 Many of
these public intellectuals emerge within some study groups that began to
specialize in cultivating media exposure, and which developed a strategy
of ‘‘information action’’ as an explicit alternative to ‘‘mass action.’’ These
individual activist careers combined to produce an extremely cautious
movement culture. Barred from organizing sustained resistance, many
came to regard dissident lectures and discussions as full-blown struggle.
Reform professionals and public intellectuals stood in for movement
cadres, and devoted considerable energy to dissident discussions.
Significantly, these restrictions hobbled the New Order’s opposition
precisely as the Indonesian economy continued to grow and to offer
opportunities to those outside the developmentalist state’s originally
narrow circle: expanding individual opportunities for economic gain
overshadowed collective opportunities lost in the realm of forceful oppos-
ition.99 The strategy was also self-sustaining: as activists accommodated

95
The precise number killed at Tanjung Priok has never been established precisely.
See the Petition of 50 1984 and Anonymous 1985.
96
Liddle asserts that, as the Abangan Catholic Benny Murdani expanded his role in
ABRI, ‘‘Many santri in society, particularly modernists, nonetheless believed that
Murdani’s army was an anti-Islamic force, willing and even eager to repress them.’’
Liddle 1996a: 629.
97
Aspinall 1993: 19.
98
See Denny 1989; Aspinall 1993: 14.
99
Robison 1988: 70; Adrinof 1988; Liddle 1992: 452–453.
126 New Order repression and the Indonesian opposition

state proscriptions, they sacrificed resources, like powerful movement

organizations or a strong opposition culture that would have allowed
sharper defiance. For authorities, this was precisely the point: by prohi-
biting movement organization and regulating access to the Indonesian
mainstream, they kept contention fragmented and manageable, even
when levels of protest rose.100

Protest and keterbukaan

On May 5, 1980, amidst growing dissatisfaction over the army’s expan-
sion into politics, spreading corruption and the regime’s anti-Muslim
bias, fifty prominent Indonesians (many retired generals, but also two
former prime ministers) issued a statement of concern; the signatories
became known as the ‘‘Petition of 50’’, and from that point forward
served as a prominent oppositionist beachhead.101 The group met fre-
quently, and often issued statements criticizing the government.102 When
the New Order encountered more broadly-based opposition almost a
decade later, the ‘‘Petition of 50’’(still actively criticizing the regime)
provided examples of how dissidents might carve out space in the New
Order.103 By then, ABRI was becoming a less reliable bulwark for
Suharto’s controlling ambitions. Within the New Order, conflict emerged
between Suharto’s patrimonial and nepotistic impulses, on the one hand,
and the interests of those undercut by those impulses, including formal
institutions like ABRI.104 To thwart potential challenges and to weaken
prospective rivals, Suharto rotated senior officers out of power via terri-
torial command positions, or into direct retirement.105 He fostered ser-
vice branch rivalry and constraint by placing adversaries together in
important service institutions, betting that they would keep one another
in check.106 At the same time, outside the regime, opposition politics was
acquiring some important new foundations. Years of economic growth

100
Liddle 1996b; Heryanto 1999.
101
Jenkins 1984: 157–173.
102
Sadikan 1985.
103
See, for instance, the influential article in the Far Eastern Economic Review in which
Retired General Sumitro called for broader democracy. Sumitro 1989.
104
Aspinall 1995: 28–29. Other locuses of tension included military dissatisfaction with
the rising influence of Islam. These tensions would continue and contribute to disputes
over the GOLKAR leadership in the early 1990s. Suryadinata 1997: 273–274; see also
Vatikiotis 1993.
105
Most prominently, ABRI Commander and close Suharto ally Benny Moerdani was
dismissed in 1987 for voicing concerns about succession to the presidency and
corruption. Liddle 1996a: 629.
106
Jenkins 1984.
 Protest and keterbukaan 127

and prosperity produced a growing stratum of professionals and entre-

preneurs who did not automatically agree with regime policies, and often
supported public intellectual dissent.107 As LSMs multiplied, many
moved away from narrow developmentalist positions, and began to
embrace more political advocacy.108 In 1988, several forces broke with
the established pattern of simply accepting Suharto’s nomination for the
Vice-Presidential position. The Muslim PPP party nominated an alter-
native candidate and strongly campaigned on his behalf. When Suharto’s
nominee, General Sudharmono, eventually secured the nomination, an
ABRI officer took the stage to express military dissatisfaction.109
Pressure within the regime by the latter 1980s (especially because
parties to intra-state debates often sought social support, as had
Sumitro in 1973) opened the way for stronger social criticism and mobil-
ization, producing a liberalizing thaw known as keterbukaan (openness).
But, keterbukaan increased opposition activity without initially changing
dissent’s basic parameters, for habits of deference and restraint continued
to inhibit activist expressions. Protest remained issue-specific and local,
and often withered at the first sign of state disapproval. But in specific and
limited ways, dissent began also to acquire broader organizational
resources that would slowly change contention. In 1987, for instance,
Education Minister Wartasan sent a former activist (Surito) to recruit
university student support (although it has never been clear for whom).
Through those meetings, students pressured Wartasan to revive the
Ikatan Pers Mashasiswa Indonesia (IPMI or Indonesian Student Press
Union) and allow student newspapers gradually to publish once more.
Student government, confined to ineffective and isolated faculty units
since 1978, was reorganized into the new SMPT (a less autonomous
version of the old DM; Senat Mahasiswa Perguruan Tinggi, University
Student Senate) in 1990.110 Small campus protests, although violations
of the NKK/BKK, began to slip by unmolested, and students also began
discussing activism in broader, multi-campus assemblies.111
New student activism advanced two kinds of demands. New impositions
like fuel and utility price hikes, currency devaluations, new traffic laws,
marriage laws and a state-run lottery produced uncharacteristically
strong and sustained protest, and often policy concessions from

107
Robison 1988: 58–60; Lev 1996.
108
Eldridge 1995; Uhlin 1997.
109
Sudharmono had been a lawyer not an ABRI field commander, and this undermined
support for him among other officers. Liddle 1996a; Budiman 1992.
110
Aspinall 1995.
111
Hein 1990: 223–224.
128 New Order repression and the Indonesian opposition

government. Protests against power rate hikes (1988) new traffic laws
(1992) a state-sponsored lottery (1993) and the construction of a tourist
resort in Bali (1994) all extended over a period of weeks or months, while
1987 helmet laws in Kalimantan triggered extraordinarily violent
exchanges between activists and authorities.112 Second, students took
up larger issues of democracy and freedom echoing groups like the
Petition of 50. Participants in such protests were more often hurt or
detained than those making limited and national claims, and the actions
generally attracted a hundred students or less, and rarely lasted beyond an
hour or two. Yet precisely because protests were small and episodic, some
activists did risk making dangerous criticisms against some core regime
policies.113 Demonstrations decried state violence (particularly at pro-
tests) and also challenged activist arrest or sentencing114 – especially
when prominent figures, like labor leader Muchtar Pakpahan or Arief
Budiman were detained (both in 1990). As in the early 1970s, symbolic
occasions like anniversaries or holidays also triggered student mobiliza-
tion: alternative independence celebrations occurred on August 17,
1994,115 and protests marked the December 8, 1992 anniversary of the
East Timor invasion.116
In contrast, ongoing LSM-led advocacy campaigns mainly focused on
reversing specific actions against specific communities. These protests,
largely over issues of land tenure and water usage, occurred across
Indonesia, apace with expanding, community-displacing development
projects (often owned by military-backed concerns). Activists threaded
a careful line in these disputes, between helping local residents and
observing laws against building mass organizations.117 Meetings of
more than five people, for example, were not allowed without prior
permit, and when two LBH lawyers met four clients in Badega, all six
landed in jail.118 LSM organizers refrained from building mass bases, but
slid past Ormas laws by providing education seminars on organizing
strategies to farmers, who then constructed political groups themselves.
Struggle organizations that did emerge remained utterly local and

112
In those protests, soldiers killed fourteen students and arrested forty. Kompas,
November 16, 1987.
113
Widjojo and Nurhasim 1998.
114
Following violence at the 1987 helmet law protests, for example, students across
Indonesia staged November protests, and the legal aid group LBH held a three-day
symposium to decry state violence. Kompas, December 10, 1987.
115
Kompas, August 18, 1994.
116
Kompas, December 9, 1992.
117
Eldridge 1995.
118
Rianto 1996.
 Protest and keterbukaan 129

embedded in the fabric of community relations. LSMs and students did

set up politically ambiguous and ad hoc solidarity committees that could
be dissolved and reconstituted at little cost. Farmers soon learned to seek
out LSM and legal foundation assistance: the Badega dispute alluded to
above began when farmers traveled to Bandung to enlist LBH lawyers’
help; the next month, in March, 1987, LBH mobilized (but did not
organize!) 500 Bandung students to march supporting the farmers. In
stand offs between residents and bulldozers, soldiers often resorted to
violence against mass participants, but tended not to hit student or LSM
members.119 While the incidence of such protest increased, they
remained atomized and isolated from one another: neither a unified
movement nor entirely separate events.120
Most important, student activism began to augment LSM work, and
those who joined LSMs in the 1990s frequently were not seeking a
substitute for the campus dissent (as in the late 1970s) but its post-
graduate continuation. But no formal organizational connection between
campus groups and LSMs existed, and differences still marked their
politics. Students more boldly confronted state authorities, and were
critical of LSM caution and moderation.121 Student activists joined
land and labor protests from a clearly prominent, sometimes national
campus base. In traveling between the sites of struggle and of
study, they came to insist on a more political approach to advocacy,
and often produced uncomfortably apparent activist constituencies.
Demonstrations protesting the dam construction at Kedung Ombo in
1989, for instance, began in LSM efforts to help residents affected by the
proposed flooding to seek redress.122 Student involvement politicized the
protests and activists pushed LSMs more extensively to coordinate their
activity. Soon, a broad front of LSMs and student activists converted the
case into a national cause, and demonstrations in large cities augmented
those at the dam site.123 In similar ways, students continued to avoid
formal organization and protest forms remained atomized and episodic,
even as they pushed a more coherent opposition movement into
existence.124

119
See, for example, the twenty-nine cases of land tenure dispute discussed in Rianto
1996.
120
Bunnell 1996; Eldridge 1995; Lucas 1997.
121
Among a group of hunger-striking student activists I interviewed at Gadjah Mada
University, for instance, most anticipated graduating into work in some LSM –
although most also expressed resentment at LSM conservatism. Interview with
Author, February 28, 1998. See also Budiman 1990; Lucas 1992: 91.
122
See account in Rianto 1996; also, Budiman 1992.
123
Lucas 1992: 86–87.
124
Gayatri 1999.
130 New Order repression and the Indonesian opposition

Labor strikes increased from 1988 to the middle 1990s. Government

restrictions had virtually prevented labor stoppages since 1973, but
keterbukaan and LSM support emboldened workers to adopt land-case
models (i.e. localized stoppages that often subsequently ventured ‘‘long
marches’’ from factories to petition government agencies).125 As with
land and water cases, LSM workers and lawyers intervened to help work-
ers on an individual, case by case basis. Soon, however, a distinct group of
labor organizers, supported by international allies and norms, began to
build an unofficial national labor union – among the first national acts
directly to defy state organizational proscriptions. While initially illegal,
the Sejahtera Buru Seriket Indonesia (SBSI, Prosperous Workers’ Union of
Indonesia) was first tolerated, and then grudgingly accepted by author-
ities.126 SBSI began by using safer symbolic tactics, like one-hour
national strikes in February 1994, in place of longer protests. Explosive,
multi-factory Medan strikes in May 1994 raised the stakes. Rioting and
clashes between soldiers and strikers killed one person, wounded fifty and
led to the arrest of over a hundred more.127 Government agents arrested
SBSI leaders over the next months, and tried them for inciting to riot. But
the government also increased the minimum wage, and regularly urged
factory managers to raise salaries. Thenceforth, military teams investi-
gated (and often supported) worker charges against sub-minimum wages.
The message was vintage New Order: strikes were barely tolerated, but
those who organized opposition activity (instead of keeping it looser and
less coordinated) would be punished. After the Medan strikes, labor
protests retreated from the large organization model, and once more
concentrated on factory level strikes in which LSM organizers played
key roles.
Keterbukaan perhaps provided the broadest latitude for public intellec-
tuals who in greater and greater number spoke out on what was essentially
a professional oppositionists’ lecture circuit. In part, the rise in intellectuals’
demand for democracy reflects the expansion of the Indonesian middle
class after sustained economic growth.128 Journalists, writers, lawyers,
religious leaders and former activists began more frankly to advocate
democratization, to criticize Suharto’s autocracy, and to decry corrup-
tion, human rights violations, and electoral constraint. NU leaders
organized what we might consider the prototype for these groups: the

125
The most comprehensive discussion of this upsurge appears in Kammen 1997.
Budiman 1992; Evers 1995.
126
Bourchier 1994; Liddle 1996b.
127
Asian Labor Update 1994b (nos. 15 and 16).
128
Mallarangen and Liddle 1995; Robison 1993.
 Protest and keterbukaan 131

Democracy Forum. No single force dominated Democracy Forum, nor

did it attempt to build any substantial machinery. Rather, its members
staged periodic events that the media prominently covered, and articu-
lated (in a sense general enough to remain barely safe) demands for
reform and democracy. This activity, however, remained largely within
the New Order’s understood political parameters and ‘‘favor[ed] genteel
seminars for intellectuals, civil servants and businessmen.’’129 Speeches
were cautious and rhetorical, and speakers often withdrew or modified
remarks following government criticism. Groups like Democracy Forum
almost never urged political action. Discussions centered on what a demo-
cratic society should look like, or how it would benefit Indonesia.130
Sometimes speakers revealed particular acts of state corruption, and
when elections drew near, they dwelt on the unfolding political process,
or sometimes unveiled (usually limited) opposition candidacies. Lacking
support from other elites or institutions, LSM members and activists
paid fairly close attention to the faltering leadership that these forums
provided.
Eventually, activist organizations apart from those on campus also began
to emerge. In 1989, security forces arrested several students, ostensibly
for selling banned books by Pramoediya Anna Toer. While in Jakarta’s
Cipinang jail, they met East Timorese separatists, learned about separat-
ists’ more complex and covert organizational machinery, and began to
think more seriously about cultivating international support.131 Separatists
responded to the association by augmenting their outer island insurgencies
with demonstrations in Java’s major cities. Years of insurgent struggle,
however, had convinced separatists that they had no significant
Indonesian support, and so such demonstrations usually occurred when
an international audience was also present.132
In other ways, activists acquired stronger organizational resources,
despite existing prohibitions. As we will discuss in more detail later,
some developed the covert, multi-sectoral and national network even-
tually known as the Partai Rakyat Demokrasi (People’s Democratic Party
or PRD). More openly, dissidents began more seriously to operate within

129
The Economist, 1991.
130
Uhlin 1997.
131
Naipospos, interview with author February 1998; Naipospos 2000.
132
Examples of this strategy abound. On October 12, 1989, East Timorese activists
mobilized during the Pope’s visit to their province; on January 18, 1990, East
Timorese students protested during a US envoy’s visit to their province; on April 15,
1994, protests in East Timor met a delegation of foreign journalists; in November
1994, protests in both Jakarta and East Timor met US President Clinton’s state visit,
and activists stormed the US Embassy.
132 New Order repression and the Indonesian opposition

organizations the regime formally permitted, like the PPP and the
PDI.133 The move to take electoral parties as more serious opposition
vehicles followed PPP examples set in a surprisingly strong 1988 election
campaign. An infusion of campus and LSM activists in 1992 revitalized
the PDI and pushed it toward a more energetic 1993 campaign. No one
then seriously anticipated a PDI victory, but the party’s organizational
potential nevertheless attracted activists in droves, forming a radical wing
that pushed the party to redefine itself. PDI activists focused their atten-
tion on supporting the reticent, but politically evocative Megawati
Sukarnoputri, the image of whom conjured her father’s leadership and
provided a symbolic umbrella for ideas about democracy, socialism, and
struggle. At the party’s December 1993 congress, activists backed
Megawati for party president. Despite government pressure against
Megawati, her candidacy prevailed, setting up a 1996 confrontation
between her supporters and the New Order. It would be the first public
act in the regime’s end game.

Conclusions
The history of contention outlined in this chapter emphasizes how New
Order repression influenced the institutions and strategies available to
aggrieved populations. From its inception, the New Order sought to
maximize the organizational advantage it gained by slaughtering PKI
members by tightly limiting all other opposition organizations. Attacks
on the PKI established a pervasive threat to enforce with prohibitions, but
also established a New Order convention of equating communism with
attempts to organize dissent: communists (and only communists) meet
secretly, print underground pamphlets, infiltrate unions, and build
networks. Hence, long after the PKI had been eliminated, charges of
communism could be used to tamp down opposition activity the state
preferred not to allow.
Read in this light, styles of protest, and the Indonesian opposition’s
general circumspection directly descend from state repression. The New
Order’s elimination and consolidation of most political organization early
on amplified student protest in the 1970s – but students also adapted
their actions, under the moral force banner, to a climate in which political
organization was suspect, and mass participation unwelcome. Later state
moves against students forced those who might have become activists

133
Although, for limits on that permission, consult Body for the Protection of the People’s
Political Rights Facing the 1992 General Election 1994.
 Conclusions 133

under other conditions into a less contentious developmentalism that the

state itself pioneered. Organizationally, inter-campus organizations gave
way to scattered LSMs. Fragmentation and political inhibition diffused
student protests, and made LSMs compliant when further organizational
restrictions emerged in the early 1980s. This compliant activism contrasts
sharply with patterns we will examine in the Philippine case, where front
organizations struggled against state impositions precisely because of the
more strongly organized opposition networks that supported that strug-
gle. In Indonesia, LSMs stood in for movement organizations eliminated
by New Order repression. Over time, the restrictions grew self-enforcing.
With no organizational basis for activist careers and an economic boom
rendering the social mainstream more attractive, proscriptions on dissent
became embedded in a depoliticized New Order culture. As we have
seen, even as keterbukaan revived some institutions central to earlier
movements, public intellectuals, LSMs and activists remained initially
quite cautious.
The chronicle of Indonesian contention, finally, is cumbersome, for its
scattered and atomized events confound efforts to write a central narra-
tive. Yet this pattern precisely reflects state repressive activities. The
culture of political caution, the circumspect professional dissident circle,
the occupational segregation of protest all follows from state repressive
patterns. New Order protest emerged in thousands of local, small-scale
and short-term events, some spontaneous, some partly organized. Those
who have described patterns in these events as provocations hatched by
conspiracy or the interest of some hidden hand may in some cases be
correct. Yet the more general context of Indonesian contention, its frag-
mentation and its caution, surely allows such conspiracy greater latitude,
and is a testament to more fundamental state efforts to eliminate dissident
organization.
6 The Philippine new society and state
repression

Earlier, I argued that Marcos’s distracted authoritarian crackdown demon-

strated more interest in state building than in defeating adversaries.1 In
fact, Marcos detained many political rivals (i.e. excluding activists) for only
a few months after martial law’s onset. In late 1972, as the draft martial
law constitution approached its referendum, he even released some prom-
inent dissidents and encouraged them to debate the new document.2
They mounted so strong a campaign that Marcos canceled the vote, and
rammed the constitution through an impromptu local assembly (barangay)
approval process.3 Yet why allow the campaign at all? Neither Suharto nor
Ne Win would seriously have tried conciliating such adversaries, nor have
been surprised (as Marcos apparently was) at staunch resistance. Marcos,
however, rose through a world of bounded political struggle, where elect-
oral losers quickly accommodated themselves to victors – and he perhaps
too readily expected support from those he jailed. He also expected all elites
to support his regime, particularly if the alternative seemed communist
revolution.4 Indeed, martial law’s anti-communism might have attracted
elite oppositionists like the Lopez or Aquino families – but in 1972
Philippine communism was still fairly ephemeral, without deep national
roots, so intra-elite conflicts seemed far more pressing than any between
the ruling class and insurgents. Accordingly, many elites were less inclined
to accept martial law than Marcos expected, and authorities never devoted
themselves to eradicating the communists they pretended so to fear.5

1
A Staff Report Prepared for the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
corroborates this: ‘‘Since declaring Martial Law, President Marcos has put less
emphasis on the threat from insurgent groups (which he claimed led to the action)
and on measures to control that threat and more emphasis on the reforms necessary to
build what he calls the ‘New Society’ . . . ’’ Staff Report Prepared for the US Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations 1972: 32.
2
Van der Kroef 1973b–74: 55; Rosenberg 1974-1975: 477–478.
3
Stauffer 1977: 401–403.
4
Marcos 1978.
5
Tiglao 1988: 30–31.

134
 Martial law, protest and resistance 135

Of the three dictators, therefore, Marcos alone consolidated power

without eliminating either open dissent or more radical opposition organ-
izations. Instead, he focused on discouraging alliances between the poli-
tical center and the left. Given what seemed a basic tension between
moderate and radical opponents, Marcos proceeded as if limited reform
would divide the opposition. While he vigorously pushed war against
communist and Islamic insurgents, he was more flexible with the rules
of political participation. In time, dissident labor unions, peasant associ-
ations, and opposition parties re-emerged, many operating as legal fronts
for banned movements.6 Members of these groups faced harassment,
arrest, torture and murder – but the violence was less assured or public,
and Marcos typically treated individual attacks as mysteries or mistakes.7
(Suharto and Ne Win, in contrast, more often claimed their murders.)
Periodic elections, typically called in response to internal or international
pressure, almost certainly involved massive and widely recognized cheat-
ing, but the campaigns themselves produced rallies, speeches and party
building beyond what either of the other regimes permitted. How did this
repressive strategy influence contention?

Martial law, protest and resistance

Contention under Marcos demonstrated many organizational forms and
strategic orientations: moderate protest, radical insurgency, and myriad
interactions between them applied variegated pressure on the state – even
when different movements did not explicitly cooperate.8 Basic philo-
sophical differences marked the boundaries between the anti-dictatorship
movement’s different sections. The National Democratic (ND) left,
linked to the communist party, treated participatory opportunities as
inherently illusory, useful mainly to expose the limits of reformist possi-
bilities and to recruit for the armed struggle.9 Liberal and Social
Democratic (SD) dissidents often accepted participatory opportunities
more at face value, as chances to make concrete advances.10 Hence,
moderates often mobilized when the regime undertook what would
prove insubstantial or temporary liberalizing measures – while the

6
Southeast Asia Chronicle 1978.
7
Clarke 1998.
8
This heterogeneity had roots in the pre-martial law movement: in 1970, for instance,
the CPP instructed members to engage the Constitutional Convention campaign, but
to boycott the actual vote; more moderate groups backed delegates they thought might
win and draft a progressive constitution. Pimentel 1989; Franco 2000; Rivera 1985.
9
Jones 1989.
10
De Dios 1988: 71.
136 The Philippine new society and state repression

insurgent left more reliably expanded during authoritarian crackdowns

that usually ended such liberalization. These differences partly under-
mined opposition unity, but also meant that authorities could not attack
one opposition flank without energizing another: liberalizing reforms
designed to diminish communist power enabled moderate protest,
while repression aimed at controlling rambunctious legal protest often
radicalized liberals and increased support for the left.
Martial law virtually ended protest until 1975.11 The campaign against
the constitutional plebiscite produced some demonstrations in 1973, but
only until Marcos canceled the plebiscite. Student protests, once tumul-
tuous affairs, became small campus events as surveillance tightened.
Labor strikes, relatively frequent before martial law, ceased altogether
when Presidential Decree (PD) 823 banned labor actions in any vital
industry.12 Press restrictions ended in May 1973, but because the pres-
ident issued all media licenses (renewed every six months) reporters
remained mainly compliant.13 The strongest initial anti-dictatorship
moves occurred in the courts, which still functioned in order to bolster
Marcos’s claims for martial law’s legitimacy. Five opposition Senators
(from the closed legislature) were able to file a motion against the 1972
Constitution’s ratification, arguing against martial law itself (hard to
conceive of a similar case making it to Burmese or Indonesian courts).14
Benigno Aquino’s extended trial, interrupted by his hunger strikes and
jurisdictional disputes challenging the regime’s legitimacy, provided a
pulpit for lawyers to attack martial law, and kept Aquino in the spotlight.
Under cover of organizations that Marcos permitted in order to maintain
his legal veneer (like the Civil Liberties Union) men like Senator Jose
Diokno issued dissident reports that both exiles and international human
rights’ organizations picked up.
This elite legal (and legalistic) opposition had no formal ties to the
underground left, but provided it propaganda opportunities, and import-
ant mainstream support. In fact, more explicit moderate-left cooperation
was reported to have occurred between Aquino and the CPP before
martial law, and Aquino seems also to have courted NPA support for
his electoral activity.15 Under martial law, however, even general support
for liberal principles could provide resources to the left. Diokno organized
the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG) in 1974 to help the group Task

11
Rivera 1985.
12
Dejillas 1984: 29–30.
13
Wurfel 1988: 122.
14
Muego 1983: 96–102; Tolentino 1990; Tiglao 1988: 29.
15
Burton 1989.
 Martial law, protest and resistance 137

Force Detainees (discussed below) defend men and women accused of

subversion and rebellion; but frequently turned these trials into indict-
ments of martial law.16 FLAG began from narrow concerns about due
process, but its members soon developed deeper sympathies with the
left.17 Other civil organizations survived martial law by holding fast to
slender legal footholds that remained.
The regime also failed to control the influential Catholic Church,
which had both a strong Philippine hierarchy and formidable trans-
national links. Even before martial law, progressive Papal Encyclicals
inspired some Catholics to organize community associations, but 1972
brought most of this activity up short.18 Thereafter, some clergy opposed
martial law (and one group formed the underground Christians for
National Liberation or CNL) but the hierarchy was silent.19 Raids on
fourteen churches in martial law’s first months annoyed Catholic offi-
cials, but only full-scale raids on two seminaries in mid-1974, and Church
outrage at the regime’s account of cordial inspections, moved the
Archbishop to such guardedly anti-dictatorship actions as a protest/
prayer rally that drew over 5,000 participants. Established Church organ-
izations began to take firmer action.20 The Association of Major
Religious Superiors of the Philippines (AMRSP) at its 1974 meeting,
founded the Task Force Detainees, (TFD) to keep track of political
prisoners and advocate their fair and humane treatment. TFD became
a model of how legal institutions could provide support to broader, and
even underground, struggle.21 It established branches across the
Philippines, and attracted underground activists who used the Church’s
sheltering support, and the broad issue of human rights, as an entering
wedge against the state. Similar service organizations began also to act in
ways not obviously linked to the underground struggle – but which still
criticized the regime, and recruited support for more pointed struggle.
Because civil, legal and religious institutions provided cover for banned
political organizations, underground activity was a more integral element
of on-going Philippine dissent than in Burma or Indonesia. Even mod-
erate social democrats developed a formally radical underground: some
descended from the progressive Christian Social Movement as a secret
network that eventually emerged in 1977 as the Philippine Democratic

16
Thompson 1995: 73.
17
Clarke 1998: 168–171.
18
Youngblood 1990: 83–83.
19
Bolasco 1984; Youngblood 1981; de La Torre 1986.
20
Wurfel 1988: 220; Pasquale 1988; Hardy 1984.
21
Clarke 1998: 167–169.
138 The Philippine new society and state repression

Socialist Party (PDSP), and others more directly from Church or campus
groups.22 But the CPP built the main underground. In 1974, it announced
plans for its National Democratic Front (NDF), containing civil associ-
ations that could get by under martial law. Activists formed or infiltrated
such groups, and then steered them toward movement positions, and also
recruited for the armed struggle. Before martial law was formally lifted in
1981, the NDF was a more entirely clandestine network, with the stron-
gest presence among campus organizations that survived because Marcos
would not move against the universities.23 The Kabataan Makabayan
(KM or Nationalist Youth) in 1973 had around 112,000 members in 300
chapters. Other activists worked in student government, the campus
press, or even in what might have been apolitical academic groups.
After 1981, front organizations acquired more leeway off campuses,
and became more politically explicit. But from the first, the simultaneous
existence of underground and civil institutions allowed activists to link
legal and underground struggle.
In the early 1970s, the CPP’s New People’s Army (NPA) had bases
only in Isabella province. The NPA initially cultivated scant village
support, and adopted Yenan-style fixed bases that over-estimated rebels’
military power. Sharp counter-insurgency drives, using as many as 7,000
government troops in northern provinces, reduced NPA troop strength
from around 500 armed guerillas and perhaps 2,000 civilian supporters
in 1972 to approximately 500 combined fighters and supporters by 1974.
Also in 1974, the AFP over-ran expansion areas in Bicol, Zambales,
Tarlac, and captured four important education and training facilities in
1974.24 Under pressure, the CPP turned more careful attention to poli-
tical tasks, and implemented more cautious and systematic expansion
plans. The care was well placed, for the early 1970s also marked the
regime’s populist high water mark, buoyed by a relatively ambitious
agrarian reform program that undercut some of Marcos’s bitterest rivals.25
Predictably, the program bogged down after a few years, but for a time it
also hampered CPP recruitment.

22
De Dios 1988: 71–74; Abinales 1985.
23
Unlike Ne Win or Suharto, there was substantial sociological affinity between Marcos
and his campus rivals, and this prevented a wholesale anti-campus campaign. Both
Marcos’s rivals and his allies’ supporters educated their children on these campuses.
Moreover, Marcos never doubted his regime’s fundamental modernity, and hence his
ability eventually to conciliate university graduates and use the universities to bolster his
regime. On martial law campus politics, see Abinales 1985.
24
Tiglao 1988: 64; Jones 1989.
25
Kerkvliet 1974: 287; Southeast Asia Advisory Group to the Asia Society 1975: 25;
Wurfel 1977: 8.
 Martial law, protest and resistance 139

Marcos also faced a strong Muslim insurgency from 1971, mainly on

the southern island of Mindanao. Unlike the CCP/NPA, the Mindanao
Independence Movement (forerunner of the Moro National Liberation
Front – MNLF) received regular overseas and strong village support.
Although the Muslim insurgency was formidable, however, it progressed
through provincial battles that distracted, but did not disrupt state-building
projects so important to the early martial law program.26 Moreover,
differences between Islamic separatists and Catholic Marcos opponents
reduced the chance of alliances between them at first, although in the
1980s, some agreement was reached. Still, campaigns against Southern
rebels sapped AFP energies that might otherwise have focused on
Northern communists, unarguably helping the NPA to survive.27 The
Mindanao wars were also important counter-insurgent training grounds,
and AFP soldiers who fought the NPA in the late 1970s and 1980s were
battle hardened and formidable.28
By 1975, then, the anti-Marcos resistance had recovered somewhat
from early martial law setbacks.29 Legal regime opponents adjusted to
new conditions, some via high profile court cases, others forming civil
associations with no open anti-regime activity.30 Street demonstrations
remained rare, but universities and the Catholic Church established
offices that provided cover for activist work.31 Marcos’s desire to legit-
imize the New Society (as he now called the dictatorship) led him to
constrain the courts and the media, but allow both to function, providing
activists with additional resources and opportunities.32 In secret, the
underground also expanded, both within these institutions, and as a
proper insurgent army. In explicit counterpoint to both radical left and
rightist dictatorship, the Catholic Church strongly supported Social
Democratic movement organizations, which also combined moderate
legal and underground struggle.33 Across this political range (but far
more directly on the communist left) insurgencies supported the legal
struggles, which benefited from opportunities that such struggles created.
Hence while legal activists themselves made little headway against the
dictatorship, the combination of their activity and armed insurgency
formed a larger, more tenacious and disruptive movement complex.

26
George 1988; Tiglao 1988: 67–68.
27
Overholt 1986: 1147–1148.
28
McCoy 1999.
29
Kessler 1989: 52–54; Muego 1982.
30
Rivera 1985.
31
Celoza 1997: 42; Allen 1976.
32
The Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights 1983: 115–132.
33
Fagan 2000: 459.
140 The Philippine new society and state repression

Protest did not fail or succeed merely on its ability to influence

government or change policy; it expanded support for the longer-term
revolution – which itself encouraged and validated legal activists’
struggles and sacrifices.

International pressure, regularization and protest

In late 1975, renewed protest and demonstrations produced a loose
alliance between illegal underground activists and opposition politicians.
The communist underground had spent three years rebuilding networks
among the urban poor and workers. By 1975, they established several
clandestine labor associations under the Bukluran ng mga Mangagawang
Pilipino (BMP or Association of Filipino Workers) with similar activity
among Manila’s urban poor, peasants and university students. Such
groups undertook open struggle and mass demonstrations, but concen-
trated on providing an operational and recruitment base for the armed
struggle.34 Nevertheless, new state restrictions, (PD 823 in November
1975 banned all labor strikes) and new support from prominent ind-
ividuals like Cardinal Sin (who in November urged Marcos to reconsider
that decree) convinced cadres to experiment with mass action. 4,000
students, workers and slum dwellers demonstrated against the decree in
late November, and 6,000 repeated the action when US President Ford
visited in April 1976.35 Marcos responded by easing labor restrictions on
December 16 – but these events had invigorated mass organizations. In
late December, BMP members at the La Tondeña distillery launched the
first illegal strike under martial law, attracting substantial support.36
Parliamentary forces undertook a parallel effort in late 1975, led by
former Philippine President Diodado Macapagal and timed to coincide
with the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) 1976 Manila summit.
He called for an Interim National Assembly (INA) as mandated in the
1972 Constitution. Encouraged by on-going labor protests and needing
a machinery, Macapagal met with the CPP’s Manila Rizal section (a party
branch quite open to tactical experiments) and planned several large
demonstrations in January to demand the INA. Marcos responded by
ordering arrests that netted 300 La Tondeña strikers and students; over
1,000 more fell in the weeks that followed.37 Still, the campaign accom-
plished three things. It demonstrated the possibility of political struggle

34
See Southeast Asia Chronicle: 1978: 7.
35
Wurfel 1977: 15–16.
36
Pimentel 1989: 137–140.
37
Franco 2000: 204–207.
 International pressure, regularization and protest 141

against the regime and underscored basic regime abuses. Over the next
year, members of the Catholic Church, parliamentarians and civic organ-
izations began also to protest. Second, it revived contacts between mod-
erate parliamentarians and the communist party – or at least its Manila
Rizal branch. Finally, Macapagal’s gambit pushed Marcos to announce
elections for an Interim Batasaan Pambansa (IBP, Interim National
Legislature) providing further opportunities for collaboration between
moderates and radicals.
An upsurge in student-led protest backed by new insurgent activity in
1976–1977 followed the 1975 labor actions,38 and signaled the first real
strains in martial law. The communist insurgency had clearly begun to
recover by 1977. Not only had the NPA expanded into new Visayan base
areas, it was also exploring alliances with Muslim insurgents in
Mindanao.39 Security forces had clear ideas that Church and university
organizations supported the left, and were probably front organizations –
but Marcos was constrained in his countermeasures. The parliamentary
opposition, resurgent and excited in advance of the 1978 elections, and
the Catholic clergy (now routinely criticizing regime repression and
human rights violations) consistently protested state attacks on civic,
(even front) organizations. Counter-insurgency techniques like the stra-
tegic hamletting program, began in 1977 raised objections from both
domestic and international human rights’ advocates.40 Newly elected
US President Jimmy Carter, moreover, made US support for Marcos
less exclusively dependent on his anti-communism and more connected
to his human rights’ record; the State Department’s January 1, 1977
report was the first in a regular series of US criticisms against the
regime.41
Unable to eliminate political organizations or dissent, authorities
continued almost randomly to harass and intimidate front organizations,

38
For example, in the campaign surrounding the October 17, 1976 plebiscite, large anti-
martial law demonstrations occurred repeatedly. Over 2,500 people – mainly students,
workers and members of the urban poor – demonstrated against martial law on October 3.
On October 10, the largest and most violent demonstrations to that point under martial
law occurred, mounted by the same coalition that organized the October 3
demonstrations. Large protests occurred also on May 1, 1977, and five separate
demonstrations, resulting in arrests and injuries, occurred from September 19–25.
These examples demonstrate that the Philippine left had acquired the organizational
muscle to mobilize demonstrations and strikes virtually on command. Boudreau 2001;
Franco 2000.
39
Molloy 1985.
40
The outcry against the strategic hamlet program only grew over the next several years.
Integrated Bar of the Philippines: 1983; Lawyers’ Committee for International Human
Rights 1983: 72–87; Far Eastern Economic Review, 1982.
41
Daroy 1988: 76–78.
142 The Philippine new society and state repression

but regime elites always preserved their ability to disassociate themselves

from any attack. Marcos periodically closed newspapers, ordered campus
raids, harassed church or labor organizations, and had critical parliamen-
tarians arrested. Often, he released detainees after a short while, claiming
that lower-level security agents arrested them in error. These moves
obscured the boundary between tolerable and illegal dissent, fostered
an immobilizing confusion among opponents, and allowed the regime
to depict repression as incidental, rather than central to the exercise of
state power. At the same time, Marcos undertook measures like 1978
elections, designed to divide opposition moderates from radicals by con-
ciliating the former and leaving the left more isolated and vulnerable. The
plan, however, had an important flaw: Marcos would only contemplate
the most insubstantial reform and genuine participatory opportunities
touched off such protest that he seldom allowed them much play. Hence,
crackdowns against moderates who engaged reform-driven political
opportunities ended each liberalizing thaw. Martial law elections, for
instance, were violent and dangerous for campaign workers, and unfail-
ingly fraudulent. Rather than satisfying moderate dissidents, they were
often radicalizing experiences, and also provided them with political
experience and organizational vehicles.
The 1978 IPB elections demonstrated the Marcos plan’s promise by
touching off debates inside the opposition. In the end, Benigno Aquino
campaigned from his prison cell, under his newly organized LABAN
Party (Lakas ng Bayan, Strength of the Nation), supported by other
prominent oppositionists.42 Jesuit-backed Social Democrats like the
PDSP became a key element of LABAN’s machinery.43 Senators
Lorenzo Tañada and Jose Diokno, each drifting toward movement orga-
nizations, led a boycott campaign, arguing that Marcos would cheat
anyway. The CPP also advocated a boycott, but instructed cadres and
mass organizations to use the election period’s political thaw to recruit
support and conduct anti-regime propaganda. The party’s Manila Rizal
branch, (MR), and particularly its United Front Commission, however,
saw a chance to solidify links with moderate oppositionists, and seriously
engaged the election, in defiance of CPP policy.44 MR pursued an alli-
ance with Aquino that recalled pre-martial law arrangements. However,
the MR/LABAN alliance did not hold. Aquino had limited faith in the
left, and party discipline prevented MR from evading the boycott policy
for long. Eventually, the party reined in its maverick cadres, disciplined

42
Bonner 1988: 232–233.
43
De Dios 1988: 71.
44
Weekley 1996: 38–42; Malay 1988.
 International pressure, regularization and protest 143

those most responsible for the alliance, and nullified important promises
MR made to LABAN.45 For Marcos, of course, this all ran according
to plan.
But the April 7 election also demonstrated the Marcos strategy’s
central flaw. In prison and allowed but one televised speech, Aquino’s
Manila-only campaign still was strong enough to cast suspicion on
Marcos’s claims of sweeping victory. Reports of campaign violence and
ballot theft augmented this suspicion,46 and led to unruly but organized
protests, backed by social democrats with some unorganized and ND
support as well. The first protest came on election night, when frustrated
voters banged pots, honked horns, and exploded firecrackers; organizers
planned a ten-minute noise barrage, but it lasted for three hours.47
Demonstrations continued over the following days, particularly between
April 9 and 11. The regime swiftly repressed these protests, arresting 561
demonstrators on April 9, and raiding a seminary office at the Ateneo de
Manila University (a center of Jesuit support for SD movements).
Although 540 of the April 9 detainees were freed in a matter of days,
the experience radicalized many.48 Despite martial law restrictions, reim-
posed on April 10, protest never entirely returned to pre-election levels.
Broader student protests – both short, small ‘‘lightning’’ rallies and longer
marches and demonstrations – occurred regularly thereafter. Workers
more directly challenged restrictive labor laws in the courts, and in
Negros, sugar workers undertook demonstrations and strikes.
What of the crucial moderates that Marcos had set out to co-opt? Many
were mobilized by the campaign and radicalized by the fraud.49 When
Marcos stole the 1978 elections, he convinced many that civil resistance
and opposition was futile. Aquino’s LABAN party remained an important
symbolic rallying point, but efforts to build opposition organizations, like
former Defense Minister Salvatore Laurel’s National Unity for Democracy
and Freedom,50 also suggest that moderates had begun to think in move-
ment terms. One segment of the parliamentary opposition, led by Lorenzo
Tañada, advocated explicit alliance with the communist left, and only
Aquino’s staunch opposition thwarted that plan.51 From late 1978, several
armed and clandestine organizations with SD bases formed. In July, 1979,

45
Malay 1988.
46
LABAN submitted a formal complaint to the Commission on Elections, published in
The Philippine Times, May 11–17, 1978; see also Machado 1979: 133.
47
Lande 1978.
48
Machado 1978 133–134; Abueva 1988: 59.
49
De Dios 1988: 72–74.
50
Organized in September, 1976; Machado 1979.
51
Thompson 1995: 82.
144 The Philippine new society and state repression

soldiers arrested 100 armed men, erstwhile moderates, undergoing mili-

tary training in North Cotabato.52 Members of the opposition reportedly
also discussed plans for a coup d’état with Defense Minster Juan Ponce
Enrile, who had then just lost an intra-military power struggle to Fabian
Ver. But the clearest story of moderate radicalization describes two linked
urban terrorist movements – the Light a Fire Movement (LAFM) of
1979, and the April 6th Liberation Movement (A6LM) in 1980.
A small group close to Aquino began discussing insurrectionary strat-
egies in 1977.53 The parliamentary opposition had then formed an
‘‘inner circle,’’ that was considering extra-electoral activity – initially via
alliances with CPP cadres. Somewhat on the fringe of that group (more
central during the 1978 election) SD activists argued for combining
movement politics, electoral campaigns, and – in proportion to their
limited capacities – armed struggle. When Marcos repressed post-
election protests, these activists were positioned to put the new, more
radical strategy into effect. Leading figures included Aquino (eventually
freed from prison in 1980 to seek medical treatment in the US), Social
Democrat Charles Avila, and members of the powerful Lopez clan;
supporters included industrialists, priests, lawyers, community organ-
izers and academics. In 1978, after inner-circle talks, a representative
traveled to the US to solicit money and support from the Filipino exiles.54
The LAFM expanded along elite social connections, but remained
small and conspiratorial.55 Rather than mass demonstrations, it favored
acts of arson and sabotage, torching several Manila buildings in 1979.
The conspiracy collapsed when customs agents caught Ben Lim
smuggling explosives into the country; before dying in state custody,
Lim revealed the names of many LAFM members.56 The A6LM pulled

52
This Mabuhay Philippines Movement was not, however, the social democrats’ first
experiment in armed struggle. Since the middle 1970s, the PDSP (Philippine Social
Democratic Party) had been training an exceptionally small army in Sabah – having
established ties with Muslim insurrectionary forces at the very outset of martial law.
This small force, however, never really engaged the Marcos state, and perhaps served
more as a destination for social democrats who felt then needed to go underground.
Boudreau 2001; Psnakis 1981.
53
This account largely follows the excellent history in Thompson 1995. See also Neher
1980: 263–265; Toye 1980.
54
Many of Marcos’s elite opponents fled martial law and established overseas solidarity
networks. Among those that LAFM enlisted were Raul Manglapus, Heherson Alvarez,
and Steve Psinakis, a Greek American married to a Lopez. Psnakis 1981. See also
Aquino 1980.
55
For instance, Eduardo Olaguer came to it through his Jesuit brother’s SD activity;
Teodoro Yabut knew Olaguer from country-club connections, and also brokered
financial support from the Puyat family. Psnakis 1981.
56
See Psnakis 1981 for an account of the Lim heart attack.
 International pressure, regularization and protest 145

together LAFM remnants, but rested more heavily on the US-based

contingent, and the more organized SD group, KASAPI (Kapulungan
ng mga Sandigan ng Pilipinas, Organization of Defenders of the
Philippines). Like the LAFM, the A6LM struck several Manila targets,
from August 22 to an October 19 meeting of the American Society of
Travel Agents. But the A6LM effort was also more public than the
1979 arson binge, selecting more dramatic targets and issuing advance
warnings.
Thompson argues that the travel agent attack moved Marcos to speed
up the lifting of martial law, a move he was considering in any case.57 The
measure potentially divided the moderate opposition from radical allies
or tactics, and so was a typical Marcos maneuver. Still, the repeal of
martial law did not fundamentally change things. Formal arrests
dropped, and many of the political prisoners held as subversives were
released. Yet as open repression dropped, secret, extra-judicial killings
increased. What Filipinos called ‘‘salvage’’ victims – nabbed in secret by
authorities, tortured, killed, and left at some public place, sharply
increased.58 In the countryside, counterinsurgency intensified, with
over 500,000 village residents forced into strategic hamlets.59 The num-
ber of strikes initially increased sharply, but then new restrictions came
into force that virtually banned strikes entirely.60 Marcos also retained
power to legislate by presidential decree.
He also ignored key elements of his 1980 pledge to social democratic
activists, and ordered many A6LM members arrested in the following
months. SD leaders linked to the A6LM fled to safety, sending ripples of
dissent through movement organizations left behind and under the
gun.61 Some organizers renounced their leaders, re-evaluated the SD
program, and drifted toward independent politics, often developing new
shades of social democracy. A new round of organizing followed, closely
tied to communities and often committed to active non-violence.62 Other
activists began to search for safer organizational expressions, often in
small advocacy, education, research or organizing institutions (what
would soon be called NGOs). In consequence, the SD movement
became organizationally quite differentiated by 1983.63

57
Thompson 1995.
58
McCoy 1999: 204–207; Clarke 1998: 173; Youngblood 1981.
59
Leary, et al. 1984: 35–39.
60
Dejillas 1994: 30.
61
Far Eastern Economic Review, April 14, 1978: 14; Boudreau 2001: 38.
62
Among these were the Pandayan group, based in Ateneo de Manila, and organizations
like Tambuli and Tambunting. Rivera 1985: 5–7.
63
Soriano 1987; Kimura 1997: 51–53; Thompson 1995: 109.
146 The Philippine new society and state repression

Further left, the ND movement was itself evolving. Although CCP

leaders resolved their 1978 conflict with Manila-Rizal cadres by asserting
the insurgent line, opportunities for semi-legal political action in alliance
with moderate activists remained.64 Even before martial law formally
ended in January 1981, the parliamentary opposition had softened the
regime enough to make semi-legal politics more promising, and to draw
CPP attention. US pressure on Marcos to ‘‘normalize’’ politics and
respect human rights, and the surprising activities of what some NDs
called ‘‘bourgeois bombers,’’ suggested growing possibilities for protest.
By 1980, moreover, ND activists had lived through several cycles of
authoritarian thaw and crackdown, witnessing how that process radical-
ized moderates. As party activists expanded in frontier areas such as
Mindanao, they gravitated toward more dynamic united front strategies,
while at the center, a substantial group of older cadres also supported a
more political (as distinct from military) revolutionary strategy.65 For all
these reasons, the party created new mass organizations, designed to use
protests to bridge the divide between themselves and political moder-
ates.66 When more political unions began to form after labor lawyers
overturned the ban on multi-industry unions in 1980, ND cadres
founded the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU, May First Movement).67 The
CPP took longer building farmers’ associations, for cadres feared intro-
ducing a reformist note within their presumed main revolutionary base,
but the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP, Movement of
Philippine Peasants) emerged in 1983.68 The party began establishing
women’s organizations along initially sectoral lines, such as WOMB (Women
Against Marcos Boycott) for Professional Women and SAMAKANA
(Samahan ng mga Malayang Kababaihan na Nagkakaisa, The Movement
of Free and Unified Women, Philippines) for the urban poor, culminating
in the umbrella organizations Gabriella, in March 1984.69 Nevertheless,
party strategy still emphasized armed struggle, and held neither hope nor
affection for a reforming process. Rather, by supporting front organ-
izations, CPP leaders hoped to radicalize and recruit among political
moderates when the state resorted to violence.
Hence the ND dynamic differed substantially from that among the
less organized moderates. Via centralized organizational control, cadres

64
Porter 1989; Weekley 1996; Jones 1989: 146–147.
65
Kessler 1989: 69–71; Jones 1989: 145–154.
66
Franco 2000: 232.
67
Dejillas: 1994.
68
Jones 1989: 301.
69
Raquiza 1997: 175.
 International pressure, regularization and protest 147

steered members to serve insurgent (rather than legal, political) ends.

NDs had the potential to deliver command demonstrations, so-called
because participants mobilized on party directives, even when external
conditions hadn’t stirred more general contention to life.70 Graffiti and
poster campaigns, often in the very teeth of harsh regime repression,
called out from the underground, reminding society of the secret oppos-
ition crouched just beyond reach, preparing to strike. Following this
logic, NDF groups mobilized in response to both state attack and expand-
ing opportunities, but less enthusiastically for the latter. Cadres sought to
harvest the anger and frustration that state repression provoked among
regime opponents, and engaged participatory opportunities to position
themselves for that harvest. They expected more effectively to recruit as
repression rose, and were inclined to accelerate demonstrations, in
so-called ‘‘outrage rallies,’’ when government seemed least forthcoming
or most aggressive. Projecting an underground and largely invisible left
also made cadres eager to mobilize on symbolic occasions like anniver-
saries or working-class holidays. The KMU’s own figures, for example,
state that its biggest demonstrations between 1980 and 1986, occurred
annually on May 1, in large, orchestrated, and diverse protests.71 This
development marked a new stage in the anti-dictatorship movement, in
which semi-legal or underground associations played stronger roles in
open political arenas.
In the end, however, it was neither the expansion of the underground
nor legal movement institutions, on either moderate or radical movement
flanks, that most decisively shaped political contention under Marcos.
Rather, interactions between differentiated movement groups stymied
regime repression. This is particularly clear, as we will see below, when
members of the establishment began to break ranks with the regime.
For now, consider an early example. On August 28, 1980, 72 leading
opposition figures signed the ‘‘National Covenant for Freedom,’’
a wholesale critique of martial law.72 Despite the document’s brave
criticisms, parliamentary opponents had no organizational apparatus,
and its signatories had no plans to organize one. They did, however,
show interest in working with mass organizations to build a broader
anti-dictatorship movement, and this interest motivated the CPP to
accelerate its efforts to form semi-legal organizations. New bonds
between underground, semi-legal and parliamentary dissidents allowed
them to unite behind a widely successful electoral boycott campaign that

70
Porter 1989: 15.
71
Scipes 1996.
72
Overholt 1986.
148 The Philippine new society and state repression

prevented the election from dividing moderates and radicals.73 The campaign
also provided a model for broader anti-dictatorship mobilization following
the 1981 economic crisis and the 1983 Aquino assassination.

Conclusions: insurgency, party, movement

organization, NGO
The anti-dictatorship movement eventually blossomed in the early
1980s, when important anomalies in Philippine fiscal policy came to
light. Following revelations that the Philippine Central Bank overstated
currency reserves by $600 million, the IMF withheld import credits,
closing down the Philippine economy.74 Large segments of Philippine
business, already disgusted by rampant graft and corruption, adopted
aggressive anti-regime positions that blossomed into mass protest when
soldiers assassinated Benigno Aquino in 1983.75 While those protests
depended on a large measure of spontaneous mass participation and
elite resources, movement organizations set the Philippines on a path
that differed from that in either Burma or Indonesia. By way of conclud-
ing this discussion, let us review the movement structures that grew under
martial law, and underscore the broader logic of state society interactions
as they stood on the eve of Marcos’s decline.
Despite periodic spontaneous mobilization through the 1980s, the
anti-Marcos opposition emerged atop a largely organized base that even-
tually included NGOs, broad ideological organizations, specific sectoral
groups (i.e. peasant, labor, student and women’s associations) church
organizations, electoral and underground parties, and insurgent armies.76
Movement organizations differed functionally, in their social constituen-
cies, and in their ideological orientations, but most ideological currents
possessed the full complement of parties, mass groups, NGOs and
armies. In the public and legalistic discourse governing interactions
between state and movement, distinctions between legal and illegal
actions mattered more than distinction between radical and moderate
programs, for a revolutionary rhetoric pervaded activist culture. The
formal repeal of martial law in 1981 allowed for legal dissent, and
above-ground movement groups functioned as if they possessed clear
political rights, and were separate from the underground.77 Moreover,

73
Youngblood 1981: 229.
74
Manning 1984–1985: 398.
75
Lindsey 1984: 1185–1186.
76
Weekley 1996; Porter 1989.
77
Rivera 1985: 17.
 Conclusions: insurgency, party, movement organization, NGO 149

state officials acted publicly as if strong correspondences existed between

modes of struggle and movement ideology (i.e. political moderates were
expected to prefer civil struggle).
By the early 1980s, however, movement centers were not separated:
organizational webs linked underground and open groups together, and
movements with moderate and radical political visions no longer stuck
exclusively to tactics that were correspondingly moderate or radical.78 In
fact, ideologically diverse coalitions around common programs of action
proliferated in the early 1980s.79 Working within integrated movement
structures stretching across legal and illegal realms, moderates responded
to state attacks on radicals, and radicals benefited from state reprisals
against moderates. Authoritarian crackdowns spurred recruitment into
underground armies, and drove measured institutions like the Catholic
Church to more critical stands.80 Because the boundary between legal and
illegal dissent blurred in both activist tactics and state views, clandestine
state violence often struck down formally (or marginally) legal dissidents,
even as thin participatory reforms attempted to conciliate moderates and
isolate radicals; both efforts aimed at preserving divisions (that public
discourse and policy could not maintain) between legal and illegal anti-
dictatorship forces.
Yet the Marcos strategy was wearing thin. Moderates, particularly after
the 1981 financial crisis, responded to reforms by mobilizing in large
numbers, but were no longer as averse to sharper confrontation. The
resulting activity reliably precipitated new rounds of regime repression
and subsequent radicalization. Years of alternating reform, mobilization
and state crackdown multiplied the legal organizations poised to resist
Marcos. In the countryside, extreme agrarian poverty and periodic
political crackdowns on legal institutions combined to enable steady
CPP/NPA expansion, particularly when state agents began more regu-
larly to use violence against citizens after 1981. As moderate and radical
opposition wings grew, the state had more trouble separating them.
In consequence, social movement institutions accumulated, as they
could not in Indonesia and Burma. Activists built organizations of all
kinds, and then worked within them for years: many movement leaders in
1985 cut their political teeth in the early 1970s, and had lost little steam
since. Not only did movement networks and organizations permit such
enduring activity, but their explicit state power objectives promised
almost unimaginable rewards for sustained activism: the same cataclysmic

78
Franco 2000: 200–222; Boudreau 2001: 22–30.
79
Overholt 1986: 1151–1153.
80
Youngblood 1990.
150 The Philippine new society and state repression

change toward which Burmese activists struggled, but with far better
odds. The opposition evolved via splits and schisms, as disgruntled cadres
formed new movement vehicles and institutions, and in consequence of
new cycles of liberalization and repression. But the state power mission
had such historical standing, such support from accumulating opposition
organizations, that established movement groups dominated most
contention and absorbed more spontaneous or parochial resistance into
the anti-dictatorship movement. Protest always occurred against the
deeper shadows of this historically durable and evocative mission.81
Movement leaders examined changes in the Marcos state, tested the
winds of social support, and asked, ‘‘What kind of activity best suits this
situation?’’ But some activity was always imagined as fitting the bill.
Organizational networks also allowed movement leaders to design
extremely flexible and tenacious strategies (blending legal and insurgent
struggles) that made any state move, short of a retreat from power, likely
to produce some movement gains. Often, movements choreographed
campaigns that included a build-up phase of education and propaganda
activity, and then a series of mass actions and demonstrations. When the
campaign met resistance, more spontaneous actions might follow and
sustain the push. The 1978 IBP campaign followed set plans and used
organizational resources; similar campaigns developed around opposition
to the US military bases, or a nuclear power plant, slated for construction
in Bataan province. In such cases, broader more spontaneous expressions
of outrage and protest followed regime repression leveled against initially
more planned protest actions. Elsewhere, movement cadres discovered
aggrieved populations and attempted to attract them to more compre-
hensive struggle, as when the NDF recruited Cordillera people (displaced
by the Chico River Dam) into the NDF. Yet even without unorganized
support, movement organizations could still plan and execute protests
and strikes – and the insurgency continued to expand.
For years, Marcos kept this growing movement at bay. The opposition
was still arrayed to pose fairly stark choices between a capitalist dictator-
ship and communist insurgency. Ironically, because the regime did not
wipe out NPA insurgents at the outset, when the movement began to
recover in the mid-1970s, the state strategy grew more credible than it
had first been, buying Marcos some important time, and stirring concerns
about communist revolution among regime critics that had earlier refused
to kindle. Soon, however, men like Aquino faced a ticklish dilemma: they
both deeply mistrusted the left and utterly hated the regime, and so were

81
Boudreau 2001.
 Conclusions: insurgency, party, movement organization, NGO 151

compelled to undertake independent radical programs, like the urban

terrorist campaigns of the late 1970s, that attached moderate political
programs to radical forms of struggle. Because they stood apart from the
broader complex of left organizations, however, these movements were,
for Marcos, quite manageable.
Two things changed in the 1980s, foretelling the regime’s end. First,
the gap between political moderates and radicals narrowed because peri-
odic interactions between them, mounting moderate frustration, and the
growth of NDF front organizations with stronger legal dynamics sud-
denly made broad coalitions more viable. As the center-left political
alliance grew more possible, Marcos’s strategy faltered. Liberal thaws
provided occasions for stronger anti-regime protest, rather than mere
opportunities for authorities to co-opt the center. Stronger opposition
efforts in compromised elections made regime cheating more apparent.82
Second, and more important, the 1981 financial crisis increased dissatis-
faction among moderates and the business community, and allowed an
angry political center to become a force in its own right. From 1981 on,
the dilemma that held that center in check – the Faustian choice between
a repressive and corrupt state and the CPP – loosened. As the center
roused itself, it became a true alternative to rightist authorities and the
communist party. The massive outrage and protest following Benigno
Aquino’s assassination in 1983 was therefore the clearest public sign of a
process underway for some time. We will, of course, have more to say
about these events in chapter 8. For the moment, I wish to emphasize that
this mobilization occurred in the context of accumulating movement
institutions, the political geography of which, particularly in relation to
state repression, was changing considerably.

82
Carbonell-Catilo, et al. 1985.
7 Repression and protest in comparative
perspective

That contention broadly differs across the cases should by now be reason-
ably clear. This chapter endeavors to set forth the dimension and logic of
those differences in more explicit terms. First, however, consider for a
moment the significance of that variation for the study of protest. I hope
in part to be demonstrating that one cannot characterize contention in
these cases merely by how they differ from baseline cases in the industrial
world, better represented in social movements theory: since the set does
not hold together as similar examples of ‘‘third-world’’ or even ‘‘Southeast
Asian’’ contention, it confounds efforts to concentrate merely on the
variables that distinguish first- and third-world cases (i.e. levels of devel-
opment, democracy or state capacity). Instead, the cases demonstrate the
central importance of how interactions between states and societies create
an institutional, political and cultural terrain that shapes subsequent
contention.
To broadly restate these differences: In Burma, years of quiet were
punctuated by massive protest that invariably began with widespread
economic dislocation, moved to more coordinated struggle and ended
with radicalized protests and state violence. During each upsurge,
demonstrations grew more organized as the ferment produced new lead-
ers, and underground activists emerged from hiding to play stronger
roles. Apart from these demonstrations, ethnic and communist insurgen-
cies consistently engaged state forces, but seldom coordinated with urban
protest movements. In Indonesia, protest occurred more frequently, and
with less necessarily dire consequences. Changes in demonstrator identity
and activity reflect changing state proscriptions designed to keep protest
unorganized, for dissidents generally obeyed state rules and tailored
activity around state prohibitions. Hence, student-based national demon-
strations dominated protests from 1965 to 1978, but NGO-assisted land
and water protests increased thereafter (reflecting the influence of the
NKK/BKK legislation) followed by increases in labor and finally democracy
protests. In the Philippines, national movements amassed broad bases
by constructing functionally diverse and startlingly dense movement
152
 Repression and the arrangement of contention 153

organizations. Movement leaders orchestrated campaigns that combined

electoral work, marches and strikes, and included or threatened armed
struggle. As the anti-dictatorship movement grew, contention acquired
a more coordinated, organized, and sustained dynamic than in either
Burma or Indonesia.
These different patterns of contention suggest the influence of past
interactions between states and societies. Previous struggles eliminate
some social institutions and call others forth, dispose of some movement
leaders but maybe not all, illustrate how potential movement adversaries
or allies will respond to a collective strategy, and (in consequence of all of
these) shape counter-hegemonic cultures. Patterns of state repression left
marks particular to each society, reflecting how different authorities,
equipped with different capacities and facing different challenges,
attempted to maintain control. We will examine several of these legacies
in turn.

Repression and the arrangement of contention

State attacks restructured opposition vehicles in each case. Robust and
rowdy popular associations existed before and during each dictator’s rise,
but soon came under fire. State repression followed definite strategies,
rather than the haphazard whims of men merely drunk with power or
poisoned by cruelty. The Burmese military, with the strongest counter-
insurgent capacities of the three (and unsuited for open election-based
politics), violently ended open dissent and protest, driving political groups
underground. (It is also true that Burma faced the strongest insurgent
challenge of the three, which serves to emphasize a key element of the
argument: authorities do not merely respond to their most potent adver-
sary. Rather, they respond to adversaries that seem most to outmatch state
capacities. Armed with a potent counter-insurgent force, Burmese authori-
ties preferred to drive contention into insurgent postures.) Indonesia’s
New Order, in contrast, eliminated many non-state organizations,
replaced others with new corporatist bodies, and consolidated remaining
groups into large, heterogeneous and divided formations. Behind a new
organizational dominance, authorities could tolerate (within limits) pro-
test that did not organize. Marcos, more concerned with state-building
than with any particular challenge, scattered both underground organiza-
tions and open political rivals – but eliminated neither. In consequence,
he began his dictatorship facing powerful elite opponents and under-
ground insurgency; both groups would soon help political organizations
to emerge and take root. Marcos tried to isolate the left by implementing
weak participatory reforms to conciliate moderates, by using sporadic,
154 Repression and protest in comparative perspective

unpredictable violence to frighten semi-legal activists into inactivity, and by

concerted military campaigns against insurgents.
Beyond reshaping movement structures, early repression also influ-
enced subsequent development by obstructing or encouraging particular
lines of growth or change. Early state repression appears most clearly
to have shaped three elements of contentious politics: the potential rela-
tionships between protest movements and insurgencies; the potential
connection between elite and mass strata of the opposition; and, finally,
the availability and autonomy of non-movement institutions (i.e. religious
institutions, community organizations) that could provide cover or support
for anti-state activists. We will examine each dimension in turn.

Protest and insurgency

Connections between open political and insurgent struggle vary across
the three cases – sometimes reflecting pre-dictatorship patterns, but
always also in ways that state repression at least enforced and sometimes
established. The matter is essential, because connections between protest
movements and insurgencies change mobilization’s entire calculus:
insurgency adds a new dimension to protest, changing how participants
and authorities calculate victory and defeat, expense and opportunity.
Connected to insurgency, protest movements can both press for prox-
imate demands and undertake actions to support the armed resistance.
Power struggles between state and social forces are not, in such cases,
limited to individual cycles of protest, for cadres may design campaigns
primarily to recruit insurgent soldiers, raise movement resources, or
soften society up for revolution. In Burma and Indonesia, the state dis-
rupted or prevented links between political and insurgent struggles. In his
initial nonchalance about adversarial social forces, Marcos did not elim-
inate or isolate either legal protest or insurgent organizations, and so
political and insurgent modes of opposition interacted to form a more
resilient, cumulative and flexible opposition than that which emerged in
Burma or Indonesia.
The Burmese Tatmadaw closed legal avenues of dissent by jailing
members of parliament, blowing up the student-union building, and
even arresting activists still allied to the BSPP in 1963. Its moves against
legal political figures were more decisive than those following the
Indonesian coup, and more committed than Marcos’s. By late 1963,
only insurgencies openly opposed the Revolutionary Council (RC).
Stranded urban dissidents and BCP sympathizers formed small under-
ground circles, but never connected them to larger opposition networks.
Regime pressure and surveillance prevented activists from building a legal
 Protest and insurgency 155

movement, and after BCP purges and anti-Chinese riots in 1967 and
1968, the communist party lost interest in urban recruits for their jungle
war. Hence, the activists who formed underground cells had little con-
nection to communist or ethnic insurgencies, and no network of civic
associations to provide them cover. Hounded by the regime and isolated
from insurgencies, cells remained exceptionally cautious. Members
adopted largely defensive and anticipatory postures and under normal
circumstances, most reached some provisional modus vivendi with the
regime – but also studied and waited.
In Indonesia, student movement participation in the New Order’s rise
left several important legacies. Student activists mobilized against the PKI
(the sole social force potentially able to conduct anti-state insurgency1)
and in alliance with New Order anti-communist forces; the combination
eroded student affinity for or interest in insurgent modes of struggle.
While ABRI initially helped students build strong movement associa-
tions, it dismantled most other popular organizations, or replaced them
with domesticated corporatist associations. Student protest in the next
years stood apart from other social forces – and students valorized this
separation in the idea of their privileged and moral access to policy
makers. This pose partially sheltered student activism when New Order
pronouncements began equating organization with insurgent and
communist plots – which, given the memory of anti-communist slaugh-
ter, represented a formidable proscription against new organizations.
Hence even when students began more to criticize Suharto, they had
neither the resources nor the will to contemplate insurgent or under-
ground activity.
Student isolation helps explain the subsequent evolution of Indonesian
movements. Restrictions on student protest in 1974 and 1978 met little
defiance, despite fairly weak sanctions, principally expulsion from school.
But threats of expulsion worked because an expelled student had little
future in Indonesia’s mainstream, and no movement network could
provide alternatives to that mainstream (a movement career or a funda-
mentally changed Indonesia). Activists preserving mainstream futures for
themselves conformed to state prohibitions, and this rendered protest
extraordinarily compliant.2 Individual demonstrations acquired meaning
largely in the immediate, usually limited concessions they could win, not

1
McVey points out, however, this capacity was certainly over-stated. The PKI had never
been attracted to insurgency, preferring instead moderate parliamentary politics.
Indonesian communists hence made no credible counter-strike against the anti-
communist campaign. McVey 1996.
2
Heryanto 1999.
156 Repression and protest in comparative perspective

as movement-building events. Student study groups and mass advocacy

in the 1980s stimulated new ideas about cross-class alliances, but still
complied with state proscriptions. In deference to 1984 Mass Organizations
laws, LSM activity remained localized and fragmented. Stronger and
more coordinated movement activity only re-emerged under keterbukaan
– but remained weak relative to Philippine parallels.
Philippine authorities did not prevent links between legal and under-
ground or insurgent organizations. As in Burma, martial law clamped
down on urban centers and drove many legal activists underground by
closing representative institutions and the press, arresting opponents,
imposing curfews, banning assemblies, and generally curtailing civil
liberties. Soon, however, space for legal dissent began to open, parlia-
mentarians emerged from jail, and institutions like the Church estab-
lished advocacy centers to promote civil liberties and human rights. From
the first, however, legal activists had an insurgency to join or emulate
when state pressure grew too strong, and underground networks had
formidable legal associations that provided them with support and
cover. CPP cadres, unaffiliated activists and young senators, moreover,
had some history of cooperation before martial law, and renewed those
ties when their leaders met in martial law prisons. Soon, organizational
and tactical connections linked some legal opposition groups and
the illegal, underground resistance. These connections prevented
authorities from eliminating the civil space that claim makers required,
encouraged quite conservative opposition groups to adopt more radical
forms, and provided broad institutional support for anti-dictatorship
struggle.
The Philippine anti-dictatorship movement hence steadily accumulated
in ways not possible in Indonesia or Burma. The underground provided a
destination and sanctuary for political fugitives, and the idea of revolution,
regime change and a clean start fortified activists’ willingness to break
with the main currents of Philippine society. As the insurgency grew,
Marcos resorted more regularly to what he hoped would be demobilizing
reforms – but in the context of his dictatorship, these measures triggered
anti-regime mobilization and subsequent repression, not demobilization.
Cycles of reform, mobilization, repression, and radicalization produced
stables of well-known and experienced movement leaders, in whom the
skills and prestige earned over decades of struggle accumulated.
Movement organizations also accumulated: while an Indonesian land or
labor protest left ephemeral, experiential residue among participants and
Burmese struggles left hidden, largely underground legacies, Philippine
efforts almost always sought to establish more open organizational vehicles
that would last.
 Mass society, elite support and mobilization 157

Mass society, elite support and mobilization

State repression also influenced relationships between cosmopolitan polit-
ical forces and mass society in each case, greatly influencing contention.
Before each dictatorship, national political forces were developing styles
of mass politics that depended on, but also enabled, robust dissent.
Burmese peasant and labor groups were organized and attached to pol-
itical parties; PKI mass organizations shouldered an agrarian reform
campaign, and Philippine labor and transport strikes combined with
student protests and some congressional endorsement in the ‘‘First
Quarter Storm’’. In each place, mass poverty provided a strong material
basis for mobilization, while political activists (seizing opportunities like a
Burmese election, Sukarno’s favor or rifts among the Philippine elite)
channeled mass unrest into protest, elections and even insurgency. State
repression in each case initially disrupted connections between elite and mass
activists, but policed the division with varying degrees of resolve and success.
In Burma, the state assault on civil society marginalized both mass and
elite populations and initially divided one from the other. By directly linking
Township Peasant Councils (TPCs) and similar mass associations to
the BSPP, authorities severed connections between mass organizations
and activists – even activists supporting the new regime. Subsequent regula-
tions reduced the TPCs’ prerogatives and powers, even as arrests and
threats during the 1963 Peace Parley intimidated activists into paralyzing
caution. Soon, activist leaders and their organizations were either elim-
inated or driven into hiding. Yet by cutting down both mass and elite
political dissent, authorities inadvertently thrust all classes into a shared
marginality, inadvertently encouraging broader empathy between different
movement constituencies. Hence, university students in the mid-1970s
readily identified with striking workers, as no Indonesian student ever
could.3 This empathic potential produced rapid contagion and mobilization
across Burmese society during crises.
Indonesian student access to New Order leaders, student opposition to
Sukarno’s mass politics, and the idea that student power was moral and
intellectual (not political) made Angkatan 66 activists initially uninter-
ested in mass organizations, even had ABRI allowed such initiatives.
Under Guided Democracy, the PKI dominated organized mass politics,
and student activists and ABRI were equally wary of mass alliances. Of
course, Islamic organizations also played lead roles in the anti-PKI cam-
paign, but authorities swiftly denied organized Islam any share of power.

3
Budiman 1978.
158 Repression and protest in comparative perspective

When the killing abated in 1966, the regime began chipping away at
remaining political organizations, unions and parties, and by 1971, students
alone retained strong movement organizations. By then, however, barriers
to student-mass alliances were even stronger, and new legislation dissolved
mass membership in political parties and reinforced this decoupling.
Under attack as communists, pressured to join corporatist associations
and ignored by students, Indonesian mass society produced only local,
unorganized and short-term contention.
Things changed after the 1978 NKK/BKK legislation drove students
off campus. Forced to re-evaluate their seclusion, activists founded
NGOs (LSMs) to help them reconnect to village and factory life. The
effort advanced in small, mainly uncoordinated formations. Still, regular
LSM contact with mass society marked a critical departure from devel-
opments in Burma. From the early 1980s onward, Indonesian working
people did not need to wait for grievances to generalize to the point of
mass rebellion. Rather, LSMs helped local communities grapple with
local grievances. LSMs in the early 1980s emphasized self-help and
moderation, and their involvement rendered grassroots’ protest less
explosive than either Burmese equivalents or Indonesian precedents.
Even in later, more political phases, LSMs operated under de-politicizing
constraints that limited dissident expressions. Hence the most explosive
mass actions were unorganized, violent but local riots in which cosmo-
politan activists played no role, and the more organized separatist insur-
gencies that recruited mass support with no moderating thought to
preserving participants’ futures in mainstream Indonesia.
Martial law drove elite Philippine dissidents to stronger connections
with mass society, and most demonstrations had working-class constitu-
encies organized by movement cadres. Activists who left Manila in 1972
began building bases among rural populations. Had these activists been
Burmese, they would have been among those who fled to the countryside
in 1964, but could not mesh with BCP insurgents. In fact, neither
Filipino nor Burmese students proved immediately adept at jungle war-
fare, but unlike Burmese students, Filipinos were starting mainly from
scratch: their insurgent setbacks led them to recalibrate revolutionary
practice, but they (rather than experienced insurgents) stood at the
party’s core. In Burma, more experienced BCP fighters purged students
in the late 1960s, and then turned away from the cities (where elite and
mass dissidents were both marginalized from power and isolated from
rural guerillas). Outside the Philippine insurgency, clear differences per-
sisted between elite and mass capacities – for elites remained elites, with
resources to contribute to the struggle, and distinct perspectives on that
struggle. Had Filipino activists in 1974 been Indonesians, they would have
 Supporting social institutions 159

joined anti-communist protests, and then adopted the moral force pos-
itions that distanced them from mass society. Eventually, of course,
Indonesian LSMs adopted a mass advocacy line that initially replaced
national political struggle, and state proscriptions on movement building
kept elite-mass alliances weak and fragmented. In the Philippines alone,
therefore, committed activists guided virtually all mass protest toward
one of several national anti-dictatorship networks, virtually from the
dictatorship’s inception.

Supporting social institutions

Apart from reconfiguring movement collectives and organizations,
repression also profoundly changed the social institutions available to
support anti-state activity. All three dictators set out to control and
subordinate elite political party members, but adopted different strategies
to do so. The Burmese Tatmadaw swiftly imprisoned civilian politicians
and expropriated their holdings, and so effectively eliminated local dis-
sidents that when U Nu left prison and began organizing his resistance, he
settled on Burma’s frontier, and relied more on foreign assistance than
domestic support.4 Parliamentary dissent posed even weaker challenges
to the Indonesian New Order, for Guided Democracy had already mar-
ginalized most parties and their leaders in the late 1950s. After 1965,
most politicians reluctantly accepted their consolidation into the PDI
and PPP parties and so were mainly unavailable to support anti-regime
movements.5 Marcos alone had powerful political adversaries with strong
and independent resource bases. Even after the regime closed political
institutions, Marcos’s elite opponents would still materially support
opposition movements.
Burmese and Indonesian authorities were also more willing than
Marcos to repress elite educational institutions. Suharto and Ne Win
set themselves against political rivals who differed utterly from the dicta-
tors both with military backgrounds. U Nu, BCP students, Sukarno,
Indonesian party members, and Indonesian student leaders in the
1970s, all came from privileged social strata unfamiliar to either general.
Not surprisingly, both men had no compunction about moving against
university campuses. Marcos, on the other hand, himself graduated
from the University of the Philippines and sent his children to study
there. He also needed to move carefully against national universities

4
U Nu 1975.
5
Although disgruntled PSI remnants did support the Malari protests.
160 Repression and protest in comparative perspective

that still-powerful elites cherished and would defend. Shuttering these

campuses would surely broaden and radicalize the opposition and ran
against the grain of Marcos’s own sociological disposition. Hence, despite
the comparatively strong hold that activism had on students, Marcos
never shut down the campuses. Despite significant state surveillance
and repression, universities hence provided movements with recruitment
bases and arenas of struggle.6 Ne Win deprived activists of university
resources so central to pre-1962 protests, and Suharto did the same after
1978.
Religious institutions also provided stronger support for Philippine
opposition movements than either the Burmese Sangha or Indonesian
Islamic institutions. Some authors have argued that the Philippine
Catholic Church was inherently quite resilient against regime repression,
but Ne Win and Suharto also more actively restrained potential religious
opponents than did Marcos.7 In 1965 Ne Win established a state agency
to replace the independent Sangha and drove the monastic resistance
underground, from which it periodically re-emerged in connection with
broader protests, like the U Thant funeral demonstrations in 1974. In
Indonesia, ABRI’s deep mistrust of political Islam led the regime to keep
its organizations in check: despite Muslim assistance in the anti-PKI
campaigns, Suharto never restored Islam’s position in national politics,
and party consolidations undercut Islamic parties no less than others.
Underground Islamic groups were crushed with great violence in the
middle 1970s, and the sole basis legislation in 1984 primarily strove to
reduce Islam’s political appeal.
Viewed in this light, the comparative strength of Philippine Catholicism
seems significantly a consequence of less dogged state repression. Marcos
concentrated on state building, rather than on his adversaries, and the
Church had not in any case been as strongly political as it would later be.
Although Jesuit priests sponsored moderate labor and peasant associ-
ations like the Federation of Free Workers(FFW) and the Federation of
Free Farmers(FFF), they were among the easiest groups for Marcos to
co-opt. Church diversity also allowed Marcos to direct policies at its
different branches, arresting strongly dissident clergy while conciliating
the hierarchy (with its early ‘‘critical collaboration’’ posture). Hence the
Philippine Church survived the construction of martial law relatively
intact, and was able thereafter to increase its criticism of Marcos. By
1976, martial law’s early open moment had passed, and authorities

6
Abinales 1985.
7
Youngblood 1990.
 Movement strategy and patterns of contention 161

could no longer freely rework social relationships or directly inhibit

the Church (as Ne Win and Suharto had their respective religious
opponents). Perhaps Marcos’s most effective threats then were relatively
private warnings about potential tax increases on Church property.8
While other social institutions influenced mobilization patterns, they did
so in ways that conformed to patterns suggested in the above examples.
Burmese authorities generally eliminated public associational life at all
strata between the RC and the neighborhoods. Universities, monastic
associations, even production groups fell before this state campaign,
leaving virtually no social institution to support any dissent. Opposition
moved underground: writers penned cryptic, heavily disguised stories they
hoped to pass by censors, hushed tea-shop conversations replaced open
discussion, and people were otherwise frightened into silence – but that
silence also served as a strong box that protected dissident perspectives for
the future. In Indonesia, as organizations and associations fell under
stronger state regulation, those looking to prosper under the New Order
shied away from dissent. Potential sources of opposition – parties, Muslim
associations and the Universities – grew compliant. Dissent more often
mobilized outside these institutions, in ad hoc, temporary or small-scale
networks. But the marginal and ephemeral character of these collectives
limited their power. Only in the Philippines did independent social institu-
tions survive the dictatorship’s first repressive wave to play strategic roles
in subsequent struggles, sustaining and directing activism and mediating
alliances between open political and armed underground struggle.
Moreover, independent civic organizations also encouraged Marcos to
continue attempts to reconcile moderates to his regime by introducing
weak participatory reforms.

Movement strategy and patterns of contention

The memory of state repression also shaped movement strategies and
mobilization patterns by suggesting the costs and consequences of collective
action. State action, particularly the violent convulsions at the dictatorships’
rises, eliminated some modes of contention, and rendered others so precar-
ious that activists could only contemplate them under extraordinary condi-
tions. These legacies helped activists determine what forms of resistance the
state would tolerate, and how far activists would risk offending state toler-
ance under given conditions. These calculations influenced particular acts
of protest, but in time also produced distinct patterns of contention.

8
Wurfel 1988.
162 Repression and protest in comparative perspective

Burmese protest occurred in bursts of activity, separated by long

periods of almost total calm. While we have but three real examples of
these cycles, they follow rather clear patterns, particularly once arrests
and harassment in 1964 eliminated all parties but the BSPP. From that
point, sustained dissent survived in weak, isolated underground cells, but
seldom risked exposure via precipitous mobilizations. Instead, cells func-
tioned mainly as study groups, periodically producing opposition fliers or
graffiti. Rare public demonstrations usually started in informal school or
factory networks, and responded to strong generalized grievances like rice
shortages or currency devaluation. Initial, spontaneous mobilization
emboldened the cautious underground. In 1967, protest began with
rice riots, led to pro- and anti-Chinese demonstrations and finally to
small but explicitly anti-regime protests. In the 1970s, workers’ strikes
against low wages and harsh working conditions ignited student interest
and sympathy. After mobilizing outside factories, students protested the
regime’s funeral plans for U Thant, and opposed government officials
who visited the campuses. In both instances, unorganized episodes of
unrest broke a sustained public calm, and led to more organized and
political demonstrations.
Burmese state repression eliminated movement leaderships and tradi-
tions of collective struggle to shape protest across each contentious cycle.
Early mobilized activist circles began almost from scratch, following
leaders who did not pre-date protests: brave men and women became
movement leaders within specific cycles via particular acts of defiance or
eloquence.9 Movement collectives formed around institutions like uni-
versity dorms or particular tea shops. Cell members understood the
dangers of protest, and strove above all to preserve their precarious
organizations: the underground, consequently, only weighed in once
protest acquired a certain momentum, but its activity changed protest.
In the 1970s cycle, for example, underground cadres planned and
controlled protests surrounding the Thakin Kodaw Hmine anniversary.
From that point, both activist slogans and the strike committee member-
ship changed. As the cycle progressed, demonstrations became more
pugnacious, for activists did not expect amicable settlement with the
regime, but rather to replace authorities or be crushed by them.10
During the period when students alone were allowed to organize under
Indonesia’s New Order, the campuses utterly dominated contention.

9
The activity, referred to as ‘‘signaling’’ by collective action theorists, was particularly
important in Burma because few organizations or associations existed to provide that
information. McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2000.
10
Htun Aung Kyaw 1997.
 Movement strategy and patterns of contention 163

Demonstrations then (particularly those related to complicated economic

positions) required substantial groundwork to mobilize movement
consensus, usually accomplished by formal student organizations. But
protest also coincided with important changes in the New Order: it
accompanied the first post-coup elections in 1971 and Sumitro’s
seemingly serious challenge to Suharto’s leadership in 1974.11 In both,
students partly mobilized because they identified themselves as New
Order insiders, and even their more direct anti-Suharto criticisms
through 1974 mainly weighed in on a power struggle among the regime’s
factions. Hence, at the height of their organizational power, students
seldom suggested alternatives to the New Order, but rather advocated
positions to be taken within the existing arrangement.
Indonesian students hence avoided mass mobilizations, seeking
instead private and exclusive influence within the state. Still, as they
turned more critical of the regime, one might expect student activists to
have cultivated mass support (as did pre-war Philippine bureaucrats who
fell out with Philippine Commonwealth President Quezon). The Indonesian
students’ forbearance on this point certainly reflects the dangerous New
Order association between mass politics and communism. But students
also had developed their own perspectives around ideas of a moral, rather
than political force, rendering mass support less necessary or attractive.
This orientation harkened back – sometimes nostalgically – to the largely
cooperative original relationship between the Angkatan 66 and the state.12
When students turned more critical of the regime in the 1970s, state
restrictions on political organization foreclosed sharper, broader or
more sustained resistance, and left students a little marooned, socially
and politically. In fact, restrictions on opposition organization made
resisting the New Order juggernaut from the outside nearly inconceiv-
able: despite an apparent desire to force Suharto’s resignations, students
in 1974 only pursued that goal in cooperation with regime insiders, and
hurriedly demobilized when working-class crowds joined them. Students
seemed only fully to grasp the importance of organizations and mass
support after the 1979 NKK/BKK legislation began to take effect.13
By then, of course, it was too late. Student acceptance of the NKK/
BKK, and their shift to an off-campus NGO (LSM) strategy, was an

11
Aspinall 1995.
12
Note for instance, the language used by students in 1974: ‘‘No matter what, we are only
a group of youths who in 1966 had a meaningless share, which is nothing compared to
the share in establishing this New Order Government. . . We are only made of soft flesh
and hopeful eyes looking toward the future.’’ Budiman 1978: 619.
13
See Akhmadi 1979.
164 Repression and protest in comparative perspective

instructive surrender that both reflected the balance of power during

1978, and weakened activist power thereafter. LSMs directed activism
toward short-lived, issue-based engagements, seldom toward nationally
coordinated campaigns and never into broad, permanent or clandestine
opposition organizations. Urban demonstrations against price hikes, new
traffic laws or a state lottery never built durable organizations, or expanded
into heterogeneous or extensive protest. Authorities met some protest
demands, but more often needed only threats and curfews to end
unorganized protests. Unable to apply real pressure on government offi-
cials, activists still expressed themselves in terms of moral positions and
political ideas, and concentrated on influencing the courts and reform-
minded officials, rather than on building a strong movement apparatus.14
Even when LSM activists adopted stronger anti-regime postures, they
obeyed government proscriptions on organization.
The dynamics of protest in Indonesia and Burma differed significantly,
particularly in terms of mobilization and demobilization processes.
Explosive but unorganized mass protests against economic hardship in
Burma triggered more organized activity by the cautious underground.
The very breadth of the events necessary to trigger organized Burmese
protest assured that big demonstrations concentrated in the country’s
largest cities. State moves against mobilized demonstrators – arrests or
murder – eventually crushed protests, but demonstrators often grew
violent as well, building to centralized, cataclysmic confrontations. In
Indonesia, student activists and later LSM organizers frequently initiated
protest, either on their own (in the late 1960s and early 1970s) or in
connection with mass communities. Events that triggered protest ranged
from new state impositions – laws, projects or policies – to disputes
among New Order factions that produced new allies for activists (as in
1974 and 1988). Protest was scattered and localized – as likely in a
Javanese village as in Jakarta. Government threats and military patrols
usually ended clusters of protest, often with little violence or detention
(except when mass activity escalated into riots). Decisive state action, in
the form of policies against organizational forms that activists had used to
good advantage, usually followed, rather than ended protest.
Authorities in the two countries, moreover, imposed different kinds of
sanctions on adversaries. The limits and circumspection built into
Indonesian protest allowed officials to tolerate demonstrations with little
fear of broader contagion. Urban Javanese demonstrators adhering to
state restrictions seldom encountered harsh repression – and the prospect

14
Lev 1996.
 Movement strategy and patterns of contention 165

of reconciliation moderated interactions between the state and such

activists. Rural or outer island protesters encountered more regular and
intense repression, and built more durable and clandestine organizations
to cover their activity and protect their members. In Burma, protest cycles
ended in gunfire, bloodshed and lengthy imprisonments designed to wipe
out dissent altogether. Rarely, authorities negotiated with dissidents (as
during the U Thant burial agreement) but police, soldiers and military
intelligence more commonly hunted activists down, even following such
negotiations, and few activists were themselves disposed to negotiate. In
sharp contrast to Indonesia, Burmese authorities reacted with greater
urgency to urban and cosmopolitan protests than to armed frontier
insurgency. More than once, Ne Win relieved pressure on his military
by deputizing insurgent armies within their territories. For much of the
socialist period, anti-insurgent campaigns unfolded in seasonal thrusts,
rather than constant assaults, although they were savage affairs once
underway. In contrast, ABRI has been more relentless and cruel against
its insurgent and separatist movements than against central anti-regime
protest, and routinely resorted to broad and brutal attacks in East Timor,
West Papua and Aceh.
Despite these contrasts in strategy, however, protest movements did
not accumulate over time in either Indonesia or Burma. The Burmese
state eliminated activist remnants at the end of each cycle, and demon-
strators in the mid-1970s and in 1988, report initially knowing nothing
about movement politics or tactics (although such knowledge often
re-emerged when underground activists joined the fray). In Indonesia,
state measures restricting opposition organizations, fragmented protest
and limited activists’ careers. No LSMs, student activists, labor or farmer
associations ever developed a strong and broadly based anti-regime net-
work to support extended oppositionist careers. In an important sense,
the initial student framework for regime change – that it required spon-
sorship from inside the state – survived throughout the New Order. When
the regime seemed willing to allow more political liberties in the late
1980s, activists had already internalized the rules of Indonesian protest.
Keterbukaan produced freer dissident writing and more protest, but little
movement building, coalition politics or cross-class associations.
In the Philippines, legal dissidents and underground insurgents existed
throughout the Marcos dictatorship, reinforcing one another even with-
out explicit cooperation or coordination, though such cooperation also
occurred. Open civil associations established moderate political centers
that provided cover for the underground, and also resisted too sweeping
attacks on civil liberties. Repression of underground activists often pro-
voked broad protest, for many victims also worked in formally legal
166 Repression and protest in comparative perspective

organizations, and Marcos was unable convincingly to discredit such

groups as mere fronts. Hence expanding state repression in the 1980s
took the form of surreptitious murders (dubbed ‘‘salvagings’’) and other
acts of clandestine brutality to which authorities never admitted (unlike
winking denials about the petrus killings in Indonesia). The Philippine
underground reinforced even moderate regime resistance and offered
organized and guided radicalization as an alternative to demobilization.
This heterogeneous movement complex grew despite (or perhaps
because of) the Marcos strategy of implementing disingenuous reforms
to prevent broad center-left alliances. Theoretically, reforms and elec-
tions could divide those who sought broader participation in the polity
from those more committed to armed revolution. The IPB campaign of
1978, however, illustrates that elements of the left allied with Aquino’s
LABAN party were more flexible than Marcos anticipated, and moder-
ates who build opposition organizations in time also proved resistant to
facile co-optation. Moreover, and crucially, Marcos would not actually
implement reforms. Initial liberalization always encouraged broad anti-
regime activity that triggered new repression. Hence the central dynamic
of Philippine contention was the mobilization of moderate regime oppon-
ents under conditions of temporary liberalization, regime crackdowns
and then dissident radicalization – causing a parallel expansion of the
more radical left. Particularly after recent liberalization, renewed author-
itarian controls bitterly disappointed parliamentary and moderate regime
opponents, and drove them toward radical action and alliances.
Compare this dynamic with Indonesian events, where sham elections
also regularly occurred. State attacks on independent political organiza-
tions in the early 1970s shaped the numb pageant of Pancasila electoral
democracy, where apron-string opposition parties raced one another
to endorse the president and his policies. Certainly most Indonesians
disliked their electoral system no less than Filipinos disliked theirs. Why did
equally unfair Indonesian elections seldom provoke sustained protests as
in the Philippines? The answer may lie in how the political opposition was
structured and related to authorities. With no strong elite opposition
when he took power, Suharto never needed really to pacify or coopt
elite or parliamentary opponents, and so could simply proscribe oppos-
ition activity that he disliked. In fact, the regime felt the strongest pressure
to maintain its initial electoral timetable from students within the New
Order coalition, rather than from displaced parliamentarians. The New
Order regime did not occupy a pole in a divided society as did the Marcos
dictatorship, but monopolized political and economic life by its sheer
mass. The disgruntled could protest election results, but did so with no
strong support from an organized opposition, confronting a state that
 Movement strategy and patterns of contention 167

controlled most avenues to power and prosperity. Hence, the period

leading to elections and the Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat (MPR,
National Assembly Meeting) produced demonstrations geared toward
influencing policy, or cultivating support within sections of the state’s
several factions. But protests ended soon after the election itself, because
activists had no leverage against authorities.15
In contrast, Filipino activism rose during the elections, but radicalized
after poll results underscored the regime’s betrayal. Election malfeasance
increased cooperation between moderate and radical dissidents, and
more generally broadened the opposition. Further, Marcos’s political
crackdowns ripened conditions for national democratic protest. ND
groups, unlike more moderate associations, did not anticipate winning
reforms from mass protest, but sought to shepherd moderates toward
revolutionary struggle by demonstrating the limits of legal protest. State
repression provided the precise conditions to accomplish this goal.
Moreover, because the NDs had stronger organizational control of their
base, they could command demonstrations, and so for them, political
opportunity was less a question of individual participants’ willingness to
protest than of a leadership’s decision to deploy resources. After the 1981
repeal of martial law, smaller cycles of openness and closure provided
conditions under which opposition organizations grew larger and more
powerful; under keterbukaan, protest and dissent became more prominent
and frequent – but powerful opposition organizations never emerged, and
movement power remained diffuse.
Economic dynamics, factors we have touched on at different points in
the case narratives, interacted with the political considerations to reinforce
emerging patterns of contention. For different reasons, neither Burmese
nor Indonesian society ever produced a strong economic elite in opposi-
tion. In Burma, generally desperate economic conditions meant that no
social group ever accumulated substantial economic power outside the
BSPP’s inner circle, with the possible exception of vastly dependent and
so politically tractable black-market merchants. Hence although protest
frequently mobilized among different social strata, relatively privileged
Burmese dissidents had few distinct resources, save education
and experience, to contribute to the movement. Everyone, excepting
insurgents, was more or less politically supine; everyone required some
powerful external stimulus to provoke waves of spontaneous rebellion.
In Indonesia, from the middle 1970s onward, rapid economic growth

15
An important exception, however, does exist: in the provincial assembly elections, local
protests over cheating constitute one of the main arenas of mobilization in Indonesia
since the late 1980s.
168 Repression and protest in comparative perspective

(so profound as to allow broad social advance even after rapacious

state corruption) compelled dissidents to balance their desire for political
reform against opportunities to make a comfortable living in the
social and economic mainstream. The pull of mainstream careers and
a flush economy took a toll on activist ranks, both by encouraging
moderation among protesters, and convincing many to end activist
careers and start working for pay. Generations of protesters hence
dissipated into New Order society, and this provided conditions under
which the New Order strategy of scattering and dis-organizing dissent
would work.
Philippine conditions were, in many ways, exactly the reverse. In his
rise, Marcos expropriated many established, landed elites, and then
shouldered aside others by establishing crony-run monopolies. As we
have seen, this produced an angry, wealthy stratum of anti-dictatorship
activists from early on. As economic conditions deteriorated seven or
eight years into the dictatorship (precisely, that is, at the stage when things
began radically to improve in Indonesia!) fewer and fewer Filipinos could
hope for mainstream, upwardly striving careers. This is not to say that
decisions to join or stay with a movement had economically individualistic
foundations, but rather that movements did not have to compete with as
apparent and accessible a gravy train as existed in Indonesia. The
economic crises of the early 1980s, of course, did much to push more
upper-class Filipino business people and organizations toward strongly
oppositionist stances. But particularly in contrast to strong and steady
economic growth in Indonesia, Philippine economic decline probably
helped solidify resistance and diminish the chances that activists would
break from the movement. In this light, the longevity of the Indonesian
dictatorship, and the state’s efforts to scatter Indonesian dissent and
resistance received substantial enforcement from an economically
conducive context, while patterns of state repression that still allowed
Philippine protest organizations to expand were reinforced by a steady
economic decline.
In short, conditions that allowed Philippine anti-dictatorship institu-
tions steadily to accumulate distinguish Philippine protest from that in
Burma or Indonesia. As movement organizations expanded Marcos
needed even more regularly (if disingenuously) to respond to dissident
concerns (unlike either Suharto or Ne Win). His strategy depended on
capturing support from moderate forces against the left, and so he needed
to distance himself from human rights’ violations, establish investigative
commissions, and periodically liberalize the rules of engagement (similar
developments marked only the end of Suharto’s rule, when things had
begun to collapse). In the Philippine atmosphere, protest was merely part
 Visions of transition 169

of a longer-term movement strategy, and often secondary to concerns about

organization building and insurgent struggle. Burmese protest radicalized
when activists lost hope of political advance (or often, survival) while
Indonesian protest petered out when participants lost faith in their ability
to influence authorities or continue demonstrating unmolested. In the
Philippines, closing opportunities and state intransigence drew more
people into movement structures, and helped convert spontaneous political
activity into organizational gains for the movement. Hence movement
leaders often planned their largest demonstrations in the very teeth of rising
state repression.
As movement networks thickened from the mid-1970s, Philippine
protest increasingly occurred when organizations decided to march,
strike or do something else. Different forces seized upon different events
as politically opportune, and whether one mobilized during liberalization
or repression, for instance, depended on one’s line of march. Often,
protest fell on holidays and anniversaries – Labor Day, Bonifacio Day,
or some martial law anniversary – for on those occasions, organizations
felt compelled to demonstrate their strength, and reiterate their positions.
Dynamics that emerged periodically in Burma or Indonesia (as when
activists attempted to drum up support in a specific campaign) were
more routinized for the standing armies of Philippine dissent. Propaganda
committees worked steadily and organization committees continually
sought likely expansion areas. Lacking strong or public organizations,
Burmese and Indonesian protests required external events to rouse people
into action. Organizational processes in the Philippines also influenced
unorganized individuals and new recruits, and encouraged all claim
makers to mobilize in ways authorities would have liked to prevent.
Movement organizations provided strong models for protest and focused
anger against the regime. Even when authorities proscribed movement
activity, the stronger opposition structure allowed Filipinos (more than
Indonesians or Burmese) to defy those proscriptions: one could have
a career as a Marcos-regime opponent, conceiving of the anti-dictatorship
struggle remaking Philippine society and sweeping the old regime aside.
This possibility helped radicalize the expression of all dissent, even from
comparative moderates.

Visions of transition, oppositional cultures and

implications for the struggle
Within the established relations between these states and their societies,
broadly different oppositional cultures developed. Burmese pursued
protest and demonstrations at great personal risk, as a kind of cataclysmic
170 Repression and protest in comparative perspective

undertaking that would either topple the regime or bring state violence
down on demonstrators. More circumspect Indonesian protest attempted
to compel political change by exerting moral pressure, and by establishing
relations with authorities inclined to echo or sponsor movement demands.
Philippine movement organizations steadily amassed constituencies and
liberated territory behind a vision of steady revolutionary growth dislodging
Marcos and remaking the government. These orientations, of course, are
partly aggregations of the smaller institutional and political legacies we
traced earlier in this chapter; yet they also suggest that important themes
in oppositional cultures do not inhere in one setting or another, but reflect
regime structure, and histories of patterned, often violent contention.
Burmese movements, particularly after peace parley arrests cleared the
political stage, were closely chained to volatile mass anger. Activists had
neither intact organizations nor continuous traditions to help sift earnest
participants from informers, and movement decisions often emerged in
the public flow of events, where daring, often reckless, acts demonstrated
commitment and trustworthiness. These conditions, however, diminished
chances that reasoned debate would finely tune or temper movement
strategies, for those who disagreed with the dominant opinion on the
streets risked drawing suspicion as spies,16 and demonstrators even
attacked foreign journalists (who could have helped their cause) in the
1970s. Particularly after 1962 and 1975, activists surely understood that
security forces would try to kill or imprison them, and could not con-
template staged or protracted struggles. Instead, they tended to bet on
intense but limited clashes. With no strong social institutions to protect or
support protest, activists collected individual donations of food and
money from the fragmented society – and in these public collections
(rather than the secret efforts that often backed Filipino and Indonesian
activists) the movement seemed to embrace, and be embraced by, the
entire population. Finally, movements often had no political program,
nor any clear demands, at least initially. Students who traveled to inves-
tigate workers’ strikes in 1975 did so out of curiosity and a kind of nascent
rebelliousness, but weighed workers’ demands against only a raw sense
of justice. As we will see later, Ne Win himself first broached the concept

16
I attribute the suspicion surrounding political debate in Burma to the absence of
movement organizations, which provide a structure for continuous interaction, and so
stronger trust, among activists. One can compare this more or less typical condition
inside the Burmese movement to the atypical suspicions that surrounded political
debate during the Kahos purges in the Philippine left (1987–1988). In Kahos, cadres
became convinced that military spies had infiltrated their organization, and the party
could not longer certify any cadre as legitimate. In that context, debate and
disagreement (as in Burma) came to be viewed as evidence of betrayal. Abinales 1996.
 Visions of transition 171

of multi-party elections in the 1988 democracy movement; it did not

come from the activists’ program of struggle.
But because protesters expected state violence, because authorities so
successfully marginalized and disrupted dissident networks, and because
activists had virtually no political or strategic models, these brief and rare
moments of protest bore vast, cataclysmic burdens of aspiration and
hope. Participants seldom seemed to expect that their activity would
produce regular or more accepted opposition vehicles – although student
leaders at the U Thant protests had hoped to acquire a mausoleum office
from which to manage future demonstrations. Rather, demonstrations
constituted all-or-nothing gambles, wagered against an ante of state
violence. Activists attempted to hold violence at bay by sustaining mass
mobilizations – and sometimes the regime did hold off while protests were
large. But the entire gambit balanced atop the shaky calculus that massive
unrest alone could bring down the regime, that before mass support
dwindled, the movement would sweep away the regime. Protesters did
not appeal to state reformers, and had no reason to expect government
concessions. Instead, they escalated the struggle, calling forth (or perforce,
accepting) more violent contention that they often could not control.
As the underground grew more active across any cycle, speeches and
demonstrations changed as well. Activists adopted more explicitly pol-
itical terms – often drawing comparisons between Burma and other
countries that would never have occurred to original demonstrators.
Underground activism also brought forth some of the important symbols
of the anti-colonial struggle – the fighting-peacock flag, student unions,
meetings at the Shwedagon Pagoda – for it was mainly the underground
that nurtured these traditions. The vast gulf between the insular Burmese
state and society lent resonance to images that first emerged in opposition
to foreign colonial rule.
Because Indonesian protest was fragmented, decentralized and hetero-
geneous, it is harder to summarize the ideas of struggle it embraced.
Separatist insurgencies combined armed struggle and protest (particularly
when they had access to international audiences) to press for autonomy or
independence. Periodically, in localized, violent outbursts, mass commu-
nities took direct action – seizing and redistributing a Chinese merchant’s
stock, or ransacking a factory whose owner paid low wages. LSM-led
local protests often sought to resolve specific land tenure disputes or labor
struggles, leaning heavily on a discourse of legal rights. Anti-regime
protests in urban centers either targeted specific policies in sometimes
forceful protests, or larger issues of democracy, corruption and human
rights violations in more restrained, limited actions. Some of the boldest
rhetorical attacks against the regime were also the most tactically tame:
172 Repression and protest in comparative perspective

speeches, lectures and articles by members of the urban, semi-professional

pro-democracy lecture circuit.
Often, excepting separatist insurgencies on their home ground, con-
tention demonstrated a peculiar combination of radical, and sometimes
violent activity on the ground that in the larger scheme of things was
nevertheless manageable for authorities. Even riots, though furious, were
unorganized, largely reactive and usually local; military authorities
seldom had trouble restoring order in such cases, and some evidence
suggests that military men sometimes incited riots to advance one agenda
or another. Because LSMs could not build mass organizations, their
protests remained episodic. Labor strikes initially occurred at the factory
level or (if more extensive) were entirely symbolic. After violent and more
organized strikes in 1993 called forth substantial repression, worker
support for off-factory actions once more waned. National student
groups and pro-democracy professionals kept their activity unorganized,
and usually complied with curfews and military warnings. Over-bold pro-
democracy speeches often called forth oblique but effective warnings in
the press: typically something like an affirmation of the right to free speech,
coupled with expressions of regret about those who used that right irre-
sponsibly, and sometimes, speculation about communist involvement.
Authorities arrested and tried activists in explicitly public ways, usually
inhibiting protest for months thereafter. The New Order’s entire propa-
ganda and language policy supported these trends to depoliticize society.17
How, then, was Indonesian protest supposed to work? Limited issues
generated some of the most sustained and focused protest during the
latter New Order, and perhaps these very limits emboldened participants.
Broader, more cautious pro-democracy protests were directed toward
fissures in the New Order and responded to signs that members of the
state itself wanted change. Keterbukaan initially reflected disagreements
within the state. ABRI’s 1988 rejection of Suharto’s vice presidential
candidate shocked Indonesian society; Benny Murdani’s dismissal and
the regime’s turn toward Islam (and away from the military) emphasized rifts
that further encouraged protest. By the late 1980s, New Order repression had
shaped protest so that it was seldom associated with organizations, but with
social groups, like youths and peasants. Ideas were still discussed as if they
were more important than political power, and this allowed orators or
editorialists to imagine their rhetorical support for democracy as full-blown
struggle. Despite the devalued currency of language in the New Order, then,
speech acquired an unfounded reputation for import.

17
Heryanto 1999; Crouch 1992.
 Visions of transition 173

In most respects, Filipino dissidents’ self-confident assertions starkly

contrast with Indonesian caution. Filipino activists disagreed about how
Marcos would be driven from power: some planned insurrections, others,
protracted insurgency, and still others, effective electoral campaigns.18
But this lively debate indicates something more than mere disagreement.
It suggests that for activists, strategy and tactics mattered, for most
seemed confident that they (not larger social processes, or internal state
convulsions) would eventually overcome the dictator. This idea, valid-
ated by steady movement expansion, lent broader meaning to individual
protest actions. Each march, each sit-in or class boycott had significance
as a building block toward that eventual transition. Activists planned the
seizure of state power as if it lay inevitably on their path.
In this context, even acts of defiance that could not produce short-term
gains could make long-term sense. ‘‘Outrage rallies,’’ conducted on the
very heels of state repression, ran greater than normal risks, but also
promised to recruit moderates to radical struggle. More stylized protest
at political anniversaries and holidays, graffiti and lightning rallies sig-
naled the movement’s presence. Students routinely left elite universities
without degrees, for what qualification trumped a prominent role in a
regime transformation? This particular way of imagining a connection
between eventual revolutionary transformations and finite acts of resist-
ance helped cultivate a more overt culture of resistance and revolution in
the Philippines than elsewhere. Cadres submitted their romantic lives to
party authority. Activists described beach outings as ‘‘consolidation exer-
cises.’’ Small protests, student arguments with teachers, even, one former
activist recalls, complaints about filthy university toilets could all fit into a
larger, revolutionary agenda. The movements produced protest songs,
activist cafes and bars, and a fashion that would have cut against the grain
of activists’ restraint in Indonesia19 and been suicidal in Burma.
Opposition culture pervaded the Philippines. People knew University
of the Philippines’ students as activists, understood that an active under-
ground existed close at hand. They read revolution from graffitti-stained

18
Rivera 1985.
19
On the subject of student activist fashion in Indonesia, a group of protesting Gadja
Mada university students once told me that some of the activist fashions common in the
Philippines, particularly clothing and jewelry association with ethnic minority groups,
would not work in Indonesia because activists wanted to emphasize their message about
a united Indonesian society, rather than associate themselves with any individual group
living within Indonesia. More evident at that interview were women activists in Jailbabs,
one of which, in the privacy of the interview room, had unbuttoned the garment to
reveal a Che Guevara T-shirt. Guevara’s image is particularly popular in Indonesia
because of his resemblance to East Timorese activist Xananna Gusamao.
174 Repression and protest in comparative perspective

walls, and sensed something building in shanties bordering strike areas,

and out past Manila in particular villages and along specific mountain
ranges. The revolution weighed on mainstream Philippine society, and
pushed ideas of struggle and opposition further into the realm of public
debate.
At the same time, activist leaders’ increasingly explicit quest for center-
left unity steered protest away from some of the most explosive elements
of contention in the other two cases. Riots, looting and mass property
destruction virtually never occurred in the Philippines – except, iron-
ically, in urban bombings fueled by the outraged sensibilities of moderate
elites themselves. Organized political movements recruiting from main-
stream society took pains not to frighten off moderates. Long-term strug-
gle based on increasingly broad alliances made Filipinos (unlike Burmese
counterparts) disinterested in pushing each confrontation to murderous
conclusions. Strong movement organizations also made Philippine
demonstrations less likely than those in Indonesia to spin off unintended
violence, looting or vandalism. And finally, the sociological similarity
between many movement leaders and their government adversaries
(more like the Thai situation than anything in Burma or Indonesia) also
moderated the conflict.20 Hence, an apparent paradox, resolved: the
movement posing the strongest revolutionary threat to its regime exer-
cised the most restraint in its public demonstrations.

Conclusion
Authoritarian regimes in these three countries began as hard-pressed
organizations using repression strategically to defeat specific challenges.
To understand how environmental changes influenced contention – let
alone what changes constituted mobilizing opportunities – one must
evaluate protest, repression and social support for either in terms of
established interactions between states and societies: the logics they
obey, and the legacies they leave. Activists and authorities both attempt
to press their advantage within a specific context, in light of particular
relationships to one another. I have argued that initial patterns of state
attacks evolved into institutionalized programs of containment with rela-
tively clear practices and logics that create distinct patterns of contention,
producing some collective options and cutting others off. Movement
actions prompt different state reactions across the three settings, because
the meaning of political activity (its threat or subversiveness) resides in

20
Anderson 1990.
 Conclusion 175

unique histories of conflict between states and societies. Even as repres-

sion rewrote political rules in the three dictatorships’ genesis, it remained
intelligible in terms of ongoing histories.
Nor, of course, do differences between the cases merely reflect different
degrees of democracy, or repression, or opportunity or support. Were
Indonesian or Burmese authorities, for instance, more repressive? Does
the question even make much sense? Both killed dissidents, both resorted
to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. It was probably safer in Burma to be
an insurgent than a protester, while in Indonesia precisely the opposite
was true. In both cases, and in the Philippines as well, dictatorships took
whatever measures they felt necessary to consolidate and preserve power,
and these measures varied from place to place. Quantitative assessments
of these factors, I have tried to show, do not provide the information
necessary to interpret the dynamics of repression in any of these settings.
To understand when protest mobilizes, what forms it takes, how powerful
it may be requires an appreciation of the larger strategic contest between
authorities and challengers: Who enjoys democratic rights and who does
not? What kinds of people (or collective forms) do states repress, and
why? What risks do activists run, using specific strategies against particu-
lar states? We require qualitative information about patterns of strategic
interactions between dissidents and state authorities, histories of strike
and counterstrike, to answer these questions.
The disadvantage to the approach, of course, is its unwieldiness. The
complex and structured comparisons that inform this analysis (far less
detailed, of course, than a country-specialist might desire) yield caution-
ary notes and models for further work, rather than immediate general-
izations beyond these cases. At present, however, one pay-off does seem
clear: in the final section, building on these comparisons, we examine the
democracy movements that ended each dictator’s rule. If my arguments
hold water, comparisons between these democracy struggles will make
sense against the history of regime and movement interaction, in patterns
that began in state violence, proceeded as more institutionalized repres-
sive policies, and eventually shaped movement participants’ most basic
strategic and tactical calculations.
8 People power and insurgency in the
Philippine transition

Many descriptions of the 1986 Philippine anti-Marcos rebellion empha-

size the largely mistaken notion that an unorganized force (more moral
than political, in the Indonesian sense) swept the dictator from office.
This impression, however, neglects how organized political struggle
against the regime maneuvered to set up this transition.1 In that process,
each side strove to polarize Philippine society in ways that would leave its
opponent isolated and vulnerable to direct violence: authorities looked to
isolate the NDF by co-opting moderates away from potentially broad
revolutionary alliances, while the left sought to recruit among the political
center by demonstrating the limits of state-sponsored reform and the
wisdom of the revolutionary alternative. Still, the regime did not end in
violent revolution, nor did authorities launch a military counterstrike
against anti-dictatorship protests. Non-violent protests supporting mili-
tary defectors and fortified by domestic and international pressures did
Marcos in, and he left office without a bloodbath. Here, then, we find a
puzzle: with the regime and its most organized and apparently powerful
opponents both angling for social polarization and one another’s violent
dispatch, what explains the peaceful transition in which neither prospered?
The answer lies in how cycles of reform and repression under Marcos
nurtured open and semi-legal anti-dictatorship organizations. Marcos
continued to try dividing moderate and elite dissidents from those who
adopted armed underground struggle, though the boundary between
these camps constantly shifted, often as moderates radicalized following
regime repression. By 1981, the relaxation of martial law and growth of
NDF front organizations encouraged open resistance to the regime, and
diminished Marcos’s ability to attack his opponents without stirring up
broad protest. A great deal of subsequent repression (which expanded
steadily into the 1980s) aimed at legal and semi-legal activists.2 Economic

1
Boudreau 2001.
2
Overholt 1986: 1151–1152; Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights 1983;
Kessler 1989.

176
 People power and insurgency 177

deterioration in the early 1980s provided the opposition with new allies
and divided regime elites. The 1979 oil shock and a forty-percent decline
in the country’s terms of trade created widespread hardship,3 emphasizing
unhappiness about flamboyant regime expenditures like the Cultural
Center of the Philippines, the ill-advised Bataan nuclear power plant,
and an $8 million bust of Marcos in Northern Luzon.4 Business groups
complained about state corruption, particularly the conversion of crony
liabilities into public debt,5 while local economists chronicled extensive,
and often politically motivated state intervention in the economy.6 The
Catholic Church broadened its criticisms of the regime, notably in the
Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines’s (CBCP) 1983 pastoral
letter, and the organization of Basic Christian Communities in poor
barrios swelled.7 In the light of these developments, the dilemma between
revolution and authoritarianism (a dilemma that once froze moderate
political initiative) began to ease. As centrist political forces roused
themselves to action, they sometimes joined radical groups, but increas-
ingly also formed politically moderate, though tactically radical, protest
organizations.
Marcos’s obviously deteriorating health created further opportunities
by raising the issue of presidential succession. Since the late 1960s Marcos
had personally controlled the state apparatus, and his inner circle remained
stable but constipated: so unmoved by either purges or promotions that
many who helped implement martial law remained in power.8 (In con-
trast, Suharto rose within a military that threw up powerful rivals to his
authority, and secured his position by periodically purging those who had
grown too strong. Shifts in the Indonesian regime sometimes, therefore,
produced allies for protesters.) The comparative stability of Philippine
state personnel, in contrast, initially created fewer top-level renegades to
support or encourage the opposition – and even those who did defect (as
we will see) typically joined the movement as individuals, rather than
allying with the movement as factions.9 Yet when Marcos fell ill in August
1982, a minor, premature succession crisis rippled through his regime,
eventually producing an Executive Committee tasked with leading the

3
Manning 1984–1985: 396.
4
Rafael 1990; Diokno 1982.
5
De Dios 1984: 17; Mayo 1984.
6
University of the Philippines, School of Economics 1984.
7
Youngblood 1990; Consolacion 1983.
8
Miranda 1990.
9
Two illustrative examples are Primitivo Mijares, who did Marcos substantial damage by
publishing the scathing The Conjugal Dictatorship in 1976, and Victor Corpuz, whose
defection from the AFP to the NPA captured widespread attention. See Jones 1989.
178 People power and insurgency

country should anything befall the president. That committee became an

arena for second-line competition in which Fabian Ver and Imelda
Marcos eased out men like Juan Ponce Enrile and Fidel Ramos, opening
new rifts in the regime.10 Entering the critical years of the middle 1980s,
therefore, an increasingly viable political center had begun more assertively
to rise against a newly divided regime. And then Benigno Aquino was
killed, and that changed everything.

The Aquino assassination

Benigno Aquino almost certainly returned to the Philippines in 1983
because of the politically auspicious combination of a weakened president
and a disturbed economic elite. He had pursued a broad range of opposi-
tion activities throughout the dictatorship: had campaigned against the
regime from prison in 1978, backed the LAFM and the A6LM in the late
1970s, founded the LABAN party and also influenced Salvador Laurel’s
UNIDO.11 For many, he perfectly combined a flamboyant oppositional
style with essentially moderate political perspectives, and represented the
greatest hope for political change.
His assassination at the Manila Airport on August 21, 1983, moments
into his return from exile, triggered broad and intensive protests.12 Many
of the 2 million who joined Aquino’s funeral march were neophyte
activists, but the sanctioned, familiar ritual of mourning eased them
into the protests that followed. The breadth and power of these protests
encouraged fairly extensive cooperation among the different opposition
currents. Social democrats joined the ND-organized Justice for Aquino,
Justice for All (JAJA) and later the National Movement for Freedom
Justice and Democracy (NMFJP).13 NDs attended prayer rallies and
marches that social democrats set up. Despite his recent rift with NDF
organizers, Senator Jose Diokno accepted a leading position in the
NMFJP – at least partly because ND groups demonstrated greater inter-
est in and respect for the integrity of centrist partners to the alliances.
Cardinal Sin condemned the murder in his strongest anti-regime state-
ments ever, calling Aquino a martyr. The United States and the Vatican,
among other foreign powers, expressed concern over the murder. Military

10
Overholt 1986: 1153; Muego 1983; Kessler 1984.
11
Franco 2000.
12
Thompson quotes government estimates that 165 ‘‘rallies, marches and other
demonstrations’’ occurred in the month following the assassination, with more than
100 between October 1983 and February 1985. Thompson 1995: 116.
13
On JAJA, see Diokno 1988: 133–135; and Lane 1988: 4; Kessler 1989.
 The Aquino assassination 179

officers (not associated with Fabian Ver) expressed condolences to

Aquino’s widow, and Defense Minister Enrile even visited mourners.14
The assassination provoked further economic worry, and international
creditors began more carefully to scrutinize the Philippine economy. In
the light of this new attention, the IMF discovered that the Central Bank
has been overstating its currency reserves by between forty-two and fifty-
eight percent.15 Sensing disaster, investors shipped dollars abroad at a
calamitous rate of 5 million a day before settling, in 1984, at a still-
crippling 2 million per day average. The IMF suspended import credits
and nearly 1,000 firms went bankrupt in the next year.16 In response,
Philippine businesses began sponsoring weekly protests, known as
confetti demonstrations (after the shredded yellow telephone directories
that cascaded from the skyscrapers).17 While no activist organization
initially coordinated these events, corporate resources sustained regular
demonstrations, partly by closing offices and reconstituting workforces as
movement bases. Not coincidentally, the canyons of office buildings in the
Makati business district provided relatively safe, pleasant and familiar
places from which employees could watch or join the activity.18
Spontaneous anti-regime protests persisted for months after the
Aquino assassination, but established groups also expanded, working
mainly through broad coalitions and sectoral organizations. In time, the
demonstrations began to dwindle, and to attract fewer unorganized par-
ticipants – but they did not end. Rather, organized forces that had
previously directed spontaneous mass activity shouldered larger and larger
demonstration burdens (for example, food and transportation costs)
rather than merely planning events and hoping that people would show
up. Protest forms shifted from mixed mass marches directly following
Aquino’s death, to demonstrations of more discrete participant categories –
a phalanx of workers one day, youths on another, farmers on a third.19
Protest thus grew more tractable for organization leaders, but also more
expensive. Still, movement organizations were particularly successful in
recruiting middle-class and elite activists following Aquino’s assassination,
and this new constituency underwrote repeated and sustained mobilizations
around issues of democracy and regime brutality.20

14
Fact-Finding Commission 1990: 120–122.
15
De Dios 1988: 109–111.
16
Hutchcroft 1998: 170–184; de Dios 1988: 120–122.
17
Macaranza 1988: 39; Diokno 1988: 136–137; Tiglao 1988; Lindsey 1984: 1201–1204.
18
Coronel 1993.
19
Franco 2000; Thompson 1995.
20
Diokno 1988.
180 People power and insurgency

As the crisis peaked, Marcos allowed repression to fall more heavily on

legal and semi-legal dissidents.21 Security forces fired upon Manila
demonstrators on September 21, 1983. By the end of a constitutional
referendum in January 1984, clashes between anti-referendum activists
and security forces had killed eleven activists and injured thirteen
others.22 By mid-1984, authorities regularly repressed protest – mainly
with teargas and truncheons, but sometimes also with bullets. Moreover,
authorities seemed no longer clearly to distinguish between moderate or
radical regime opponents, and even attacked one demonstration that
included Catholic nuns and priests. The next day, newspapers related
that, ‘‘Riot Police fired into the air and clubbed nuns and priests with rifle
butts and truncheons.’’ It would be hard to conceive of a more inflam-
matory story line. Still, repression was random enough that demonstrators
did not always expect repression, and people were not frightened away
from marches. Protest thus became a regular event, but increasingly
mainstream participation made periodic state violence more shocking.
As stronger resistance mobilized, cooperation within anti-dictatorship
coalitions waxed and waned.23
Under earlier polarized conditions, moderates were torn between
supporting the state and the radical left, and they often had to piggy-
back on more organized NDF efforts. By the mid-1980s, however,
business associations, human rights offices, political parties and the
Church hierarchy, as well as a mobilized public, provided stronger
and more assertive bases for politically moderate anti-regime strug-
gle.24 Hence, the assassination both strengthened relations between
left and centrist activists (by mobilizing the latter and orienting the
former more strongly toward protest politics) and granted moderates
the political strength to walk out on radical alliances without caving in
to authorities. For instance, anti-dictatorship actors from Cardinal Sin
to the NDF formed KOMPIL (Kongresso ng Mamamayan Pilipino,
Congress of the Filipino People) to boycott 1984 elections, sparking
the largest demonstrations since Aquino’s funeral.25 But KOMPIL’s
boycott consensus collapsed when several coalition centrists, including
UNIDO,26 PDP-LABAN, the Kalaw wing of the Liberal party,
Cardinal Sin and Corazon Aquino decided to participate in the

21
Clarke 1998: 172.
22
Reuters North European Service, January 28, 1984.
23
Crouch 1985: 7; Diokno, 1988.
24
Consolacion 1983.
25
Over a half million people welcomed a smaller delegation marching from Central Luzon
to Manila. Soriano 1984.
26
United Nationalist Democratic Organization.
 The Aquino assassination 181
27
elections. Boycotting groups established an anti-election coalition
CORD (Coalition of Organizations for the Restoration of Democracy)
that included such anti-dictatorship luminaries as Diokno, Tañada,
Aquino, former president Macapagal, and the Liberal Party’s entire
Salonga wing.28 Through March and April, CORD held several powerful
boycott demonstrations, highlighted by provincial marches leading to
a large Manila rally. But opposition candidates also drew strong popular
support. Corazon Aquino emerged as an effective campaigner and
Cardinal Sin explicitly endorsed opposition candidates, to great effect.
To guard against election-day cheating, the opposition revived
NAMFREL (National Movement for Free Elections) organized with
US support in the 1950s, but dormant for decades.29 Despite violence,
widespread government cheating, and limited media access, anti-Marcos
candidates won 60 of 183 contested legislative seats, and 15 of the 21 in
Manila.30 Elections still divided Marcos opponents precisely as the
President would have wished, but the divisions no longer forced moder-
ates toward the New Society. Both opposition’s center and the left were
approaching political viability, and the dictator was hence as likely as
anyone to be isolated by political polarization.
The electoral campaign, like the Aquino funeral the year before, pro-
vided a sanctioned framework for collective action that dissidents built on
afterwards. Some of the largest and most violent events in May and June
protested cheating – particularly in provincial cities like Cebu.31 As the
campaign faded, however, demonstrations once more depended on organ-
izational resources more than on spontaneous mobilization, creating
tactical flexibility at increased movement expense. NDF groups, for
instance, led 700,000 people (nationally) in demonstrations on the anni-
versary of Aquino’s murder. After the government released its account of
the assassination on October 25, Agapito Aquino (Benigno’s brother) led
protests by NDF organizations, while Corazon Aquino led a less organ-
ized, more diverse protest. Overall, 10,000 people demonstrated on that
day. Prompted by the confetti rallies that began around this time, NDF
groups held several surprise demonstrations in Makati (also supported by
contributions from business people). Labor unions coordinated their
strikes across sectors, and when fuel and commodity prices rose in 1984,
transportation workers struck from October 22–23. But workers

27
Thompson 1995: 124.
28
Franco 2000; Diokno 1988.
29
Byington 1988.
30
Franco 2000; Thompson 1995: 125–131; Kessler 1984.
31
Franco 2000.
182 People power and insurgency

responding to organizational directives also struck concerning issues that

did not directly touch on livelihood issues. In 1985, for instance, as
corruption linked to the Bataan nuclear power plant came to light, the
NDF’s Bataan labor network paralyzed that province’s export processing
zone with a strike that freed workers to demonstrate at the plant site.32
With organizations shouldering greater mobilization expenses, activists
had more reason to establish broad movement coalitions, but these
remained fragile. In 1985, CORD and Nationalist Alliance leaders
began to meet with Liberals, Social Democrats and independent Socialists
to form a ‘‘Convener’s group’’ to plan what was to be an anti-dictatorship
front of unprecedented breadth: BAYAN (Bagong Alyansa Makabayan,
New Nationalist Alliance).33 But the NDF was more isolated in its 1984
boycott campaign than at any time since 1978, and the rising urban mass
movement made protest seem ever more crucial. Hence, despite agree-
ments distributing coalition leadership positions among participating
organizations, NDF delegates to the BAYAN conference elected mem-
bers from their own organizations to virtually all positions.34 The move stirred
resentment among liberals, socialists and social democrats, many of
whom abandoned the project and formed an alternative anti-dictatorship
coalition called BANDILLA(Bansang Nagkaisa sa Diwa at Layunin, The
Nation,Unified in Spirit and Purpose).35 These moves deepened and
ossified divisions between radical and moderate activists, and all positions
on the opposition spectrum subsequently had an anti-dictatorship coalition
to coordinate their mass organizations.36
BAYAN and BANDILLA committed their now formidable organiza-
tions to sustained protest, and almost any occasion sparked fresh demon-
strations. When agricultural input prices rose in January 1985, farmers’
organizations marched on Manila. Squatter organizations regularly pro-
tested community demolitions and labor unions struck against price
increase. In 1985, movement organizations demonstrated on August 21
(Aquino’s assassination), September 21 (the declaration of martial law)
International Women’s Day, Human Rights’ Day, May 1. July 4 demon-
strations denounced the US at its embassy, and during Holy Week, clergy
members staged protests that equated the plight of the Filipino poor with
Christ’s passion. On February 19, Cardinal Sin denounced the govern-
ment’s policy of ‘‘deliberate brutality and senseless violence’’ at protests.

32
Macaranza 1988.
33
Weekley 1996.
34
Rocamora 1994; Abinales 1988.
35
Villegas 1985: 130–131; Boudreau 2001.
36
KSP 1984.
 The Epifanio delos Santos Avenue protests 183

Aquino’s widow Corazon more forcefully condemned state violence, and

moderate, middle-class dissent blossomed. On April 17, after military
men killed an Italian priest in North Cotobato, 300 priests and nuns
demonstrated outside Camp Crame in Metro Manila. Other human
rights’ violations (when the military killed twenty in Escalante, or a
reporter in Davao on September 23, or when the police fired into a
crowd of demonstrators on October 21) triggered some of the largest
anti-regime protests, and deepened elite support for the anti-dictatorship
movement.
As pressure mounted, the regime’s international support also waned.
US officials wished to avoid the mistakes of Iran and Nicaragua, where
they over-committed to faltering regimes that were soon eliminated by
revolution.37 Since a moderate and capitalist anti-dictatorship movement
had emerged in Manila, US policy makers had clearer policy alternatives
in the Philippines than in either Nicaragua or Iran.38 US support for
Benigno Aquino had been ambiguous before his death, but the late
Senator also had friends on Capital Hill, and a substantial PDP-LABAN
lobby formed in Washington after his death. As the US position began to
waver, Marcos finally made his move. Drawing on his standard plan for
dividing the opposition, he scheduled presidential elections for early
1986. Significantly, Marcos revealed this plan on American television,
perhaps more to appease Washington than his own population.
Several early developments suggested that the 1986 election could not
be stolen as deftly as those in the past. The US pressed the regime for free
and fair elections (although President Reagan and the Pentagon
remained more committed to Marcos) and gave some support to
NAMFREL and (more quietly) to opposition candidates. The US
Embassy also kept in touch with a group of officers (largely Philippine
Military Academy graduates) who had set up the Reform Armed Forces
Movement (RAM) ostensibly to promote democracy, but mainly to
protect Philippine Military Academy graduates from the growing influ-
ence of General Ver and political appointees inside the AFP. RAM’s
activity further restricted Marcos’s room to maneuver.39

The Epifanio delos Santos Avenue protests

The confrontation between Marcos and his opponents built through the
1985–1986 campaign, and ended in massive Manila street protests

37
Bonner 1988; Thompson 1995.
38
Staff Report Prepared for the use of the Senate Select Committee in Intelligence 1985.
39
McCoy 1999: 230–234; Villegas 1985: 124–126.
184 People power and insurgency

between February 23 and 27. As in 1984, the movement’s different flanks

disagreed on how to engage elections and who would lead the struggle’s
final act. After the failed BAYAN conference, the two opposition wings
were almost as wary of one another as of Marcos, and those tensions
informed the debate about whether to boycott the 1986 elections.40 Once
more, elections divided the opposition, but moderate political forces were
even stronger in 1986 than in 1984 – and the regime was weaker.
Following CPP directives, the NDF called its members to boycott the
elections, while Liberals, Social Democrats, Democratic Socialists and
even some dissident NDs supported the PDP-LABAN ticket of Corazon
Aquino and Salvadore Laurel.41 Provincial protest had expanded
between 1981 and 1985, and paved the way for Aquino’s rowdy and
mass mobilizing presidential campaign. But Aquino also enjoyed strong
support from NAMFREL, the Catholic Church, the Philippine Business
community, and (more obliquely) the RAM.
The protests that ended the Marcos regime began almost immediately
after the polls closed, when PDP-LABAN activists began planning a civil
disobedience and consumer boycott campaign.42 Poll counters (many
married to young RAM officers) exposed regime cheating, and locked
themselves inside the Commission on Elections headquarters. The NDF
announced plans for a national strike, and newspapers openly reported
electoral fraud. As domestic and international opinion turned against the
regime, members of the military, particularly inside RAM, moved against
the government. Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Philippine
Constabulary Commander Fidel Ramos planned to replace Marcos
with a military Junta, but General Ver’s agents discovered the plot.
Exposed, vulnerable, and besieged inside Camp Aguinaldo, Enrile and
Ramos crossed the EDSA(Epifanio delos Santos Avenue) highway to the
more logistically crucial Philippine Constabulary Headquarters in Camp
Crame, and appealed to Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin for help.43
Sin used the Catholic Church’s Radio Veritas to call citizens to support
the besieged generals. Political organizations involved in the Aquino
campaign viewed the rebellion as backing their own protests, and soon
tens of thousands streamed to the highway dividing the camps.44 But the
uprising was not primarily an organized event. Religious communities
came in parish groups or convents. Students came in classroom clusters,

40
Rivera 1985.
41
Weekley 1996.
42
Macaranza 1988: 48.
43
The best scholarly treatment of the coup conspiracy is McCoy 1999.
44
Magno 1986.
 Thinking about the Philippine transition 185

joined by neighborhood cohorts and families. The rally built upon net-
works mobilized during the election, and reinforced by earlier dissent
from journalists, ballot counters, teachers, and the clergy. In the rebel-
lion’s first days, Marcos (or possibly Ver) ordered attacks against protest-
ers – but soldiers refused. In any case, field officers who would have been
most useful against the demonstration were least likely to support Ver or
to turn against Ramos.45 Demonstrations greeted soldiers with religious
images, prayer, and explicitly peaceful overtures; as military men began to
side with the anti-Marcos assembly, intoxicating mass celebrations broke
out. When a helicopter gunship fired at Malacañang, Marcos gave in and
fled the Philippines aboard a US military helicopter on February 27.46
The coup plotters never intended to support an Aquino presidency.
But with nearly a million people in the streets demanding that Aquino be
sworn in, and celebrating Enrile and Ramos for making that possible, the
would-be generalissimos swallowed the pill, announced their support for
Aquino’s presidency, and accepted positions in the new government.
Many who joined the new regime had been officials under Marcos, and
switched sides at the last minute, but others among the anti-dictatorship
activists, particularly economic and political elites marginalized by the
New Society, had substantial political plans and skills. Hence the centrist,
yellow movement, more than any other force, set the initial terms of the
transition.

Thinking about the Philippine transition

Interpretations of Marcos’s demise often stress the discontinuity between
the normal politics of New Society repression (Marcos as shrewdly cal-
culating, society as largely contained and controlled) and the dynamically
explosive end game.47 In important ways, however, the 1986 rebellion
depended on developments continuously in play since the regime’s incep-
tion. Marcos’s plan for snap elections in 1985 resembled those he had
followed all along, and were designed to exorcize moderates’ political
ambitions while dividing them from radicals. The strategy failed, how-
ever, because the complex of movement organizations that initiates the
EDSA protests had steadily grown during the dictatorship. Organization
had been important to the underground left since the early 1970s, but
after 1981 all opposition tendencies deepened and expanded their organ-
izations, rendering even centrist regime opponents more capable of

45
McCoy 1999; Nemenzo 1987.
46
Arillo 1986: 82–83.
47
See Johnson 1987; Komisar 1987; Burton 1989.
186 People power and insurgency

creating their own opportunities and directing mass energies against

specific targets. The combination of open resistance (backed by formid-
able elite opponents) and an armed insurgency derailed authorities’ anti-
opposition strategy. Liberal reforms encouraged protest and opposition
participation in open political arenas; stronger state repression and
aborted reform pushed moderates to sharper dissent and provided the
NDF with new recruits. The financial crisis broadened support for the
movement, making centrists more autonomous from the revolutionary
left and more able to resist regime overtures.
As the opposition expanded, moderates began pursuing activity (pro-
test, demonstration, movement building and even terrorism) once asso-
ciated only with radicals, and the NDF built mass legal organizations.
Suddenly movement organizations along the liberal and social demo-
cratic flank could decide, as insurgents did, how and when to strike,
and regularly protested. As the struggle accelerated, the entire trope of
resistance radicalized to favor revolution, avoid co-optation, and invest in
organization.48 In this climate, authorities could no longer sort the radical
left from the political center by moving against specific forms of struggle.
As both moderate and radical organizations grew and occupied over-
lapping tactical territory, Marcos lost his ability to play either side against
the other, even when the opposition could not unite on a single anti-
dictatorship program.
Because organizational decisions strongly shaped Philippine protest,
movement ideas and strategies mediated activists’ responses to external
political events, creating diverse but more constant mobilization across
the ideological spectrum.49 Liberals and Social Democrats believed the
transition would occur through some combination of protest and elect-
oral struggle, and were most active around elections, surrounding the
Aquino assassination, and in efforts to utilize and expand participatory
rights. National Democrats thrived on events that polarized society
between the state and its radical opposition, such as when participatory
opportunities ebbed or repression increased, and used protest to generate
support for the armed struggle. Less organized forces often reserved their
protest for moments of moral outrage, when regime violence or duplicity
were particularly salient. Hence, whatever authorities did, some section
of the opposition was likely to mobilize.
Protest organizations also mediated the relationship between oppos-
ition elites and mass strata, with important consequences for contention.

48
Boudreau 1996.
49
Rivera 1985.
 Thinking about the Philippine transition 187

Movements typically incorporated mass demands for land reform, higher

wages, and even regional autonomy into multi-faceted anti-dictatorship
programs, and independent working-class protests seldom lasted for long
without attracting organizers from established and multi-class movement
networks. Indeed, aggrieved communities often assumed that contacting
more experienced national activists was part of the mobilization pro-
cess.50 Connections between movement summits and bases also steered
mass members in directions that did not threaten movement elites’ eco-
nomic and class privileges. In the National Democratic Movement, the
ostensibly temporary synthesis of mass and elite interests was explicitly
called the National Democratic ‘‘phase,’’ in which local capitalists dis-
placed imperialists; only in subsequent socialist phases would domestic
capital and proletarian interests directly clash.51 Outside the ND move-
ment, the synthesis of mass and elite interests was less formally theorized,
and more a tacit promise that anti-dictatorship struggles would trigger a
post-dictatorship golden age of just social and economic relations.
Everywhere, however, the organization-mediated harmony between
mass and elite interests-in-struggle, meant that all movement activists
viewed any political or economic crisis as undermining the state and so
benefiting the movement. In pressing a foundering Marcos regime, eco-
nomic elites and business people seemed never to fear mass anger, or to
think of moderating their anti-regime statements to prevent anarchy in
the streets. Mass anger was reliably mass base anger, linked to organiza-
tional leadership and discipline. Protest virtually never deteriorated into
looting and rioting, or turned against secondary targets of opportunity
such as Chinese traders. Indeed, many anti-dictatorship elites were them-
selves Mestizo Chinese, justifiably confident in their ability to rally popu-
lations against Marcos. Hence, the mobilization of movement energies
against Marcos was utterly unconflicted and committed, for even elite
activists never seemed to anticipate that their actions would have socially
revolutionary consequences.
The prominence of social and economic elites in this anti-dictatorship
complex had several other striking effects. Besides wielding substantial
movement organizations, elite activists had other resources: friends in
Washington or links to foreign investors. Many were prominent polit-
icians before martial law, or had won positions in Marcos-era assemblies.
Others were lawyers, professors, writers or priests, whose activism carried

50
See, for instance, how BISIG (Bukluran sa Ikauunlad ng Soyalistang Isip at Gawa, The
Federation for the Advancement of Socialist Theory and Praxis)typically recruited new
community groups in Boudreau 2001: 38–42.
51
Guerrerro 1979.
188 People power and insurgency

a striking sense of entitlement and self-assurance. From the outset, they

imagined themselves, rather than Marxists or reformers within the state,
as Marcos’s successor.52 When defectors from the state approached the
movement, activists did not defer to the new arrivals, or strongly hope for
internal state reform. Defectors were assumed to be joining the move-
ment, and submitting themselves to movement authority. Hence the
February-coup plotters, once discovered and vulnerable, had few options
other than to come out for Aquino.
Movement elites’ moderation and stature also made it easier for former
state officials to support demonstrations. State defectors and movement
leaders often were sociologically similar – graduates of the same univer-
sities, members of the same fraternities, often linked to the same families.53
While the struggle pushed many activists toward revolutionary rhetoric
and socially transforming programs, these positions partly resembled
promises that Philippine politicians had made since the first mass-
mobilizing elections, and could be regarded as safely empty rhetoric.
People fleeing Marcos’s sinking ship could trust that the transition
would still leave them on rather comfortable ground. If there was any
doubt of this, the relationship between the movement’s leadership and its
left flank helped clarify things. As the movement grew more internally
divided in the 1980s, the basic animosities between Marxists and liberal
reformers reasserted themselves, and probably assured Marcos defectors
that the transition would have limited social consequences.
These considerations lend the climactic Philippine anti-dictatorship
protests their distinctiveness. The emergence of an elite and moderate
movement leadership commanding strong mass support meant that pro-
test was a safe and effective weapon against the state – and organization
leaders intensified their resistance at every opportunity. Movement elites’
social standing, and organizational control also helps to explain why
disenchanted state officials joined up, rather than attempting to broker
or initiate internal reform. Movement elites and state reformers were
available to one another outside the regime, in what was for both the
relatively congenial vessel of a liberal and peaceful anti-dictatorship
movement. This movement could advance itself as the new regime, and
approached the transition through demonstrations rather than violent
confrontation. Without moderate protest that engaged participatory
opportunities (i.e. elections) and movement organizations that were
powerful and credible to disaffected state actors, the regime’s decay

52
Anderson 1988.
53
Wurfel 1988; Thompson 1995: 153.
 Thinking about the Philippine transition 189

might well have polarized society between authorities and the armed left,
and officials almost certainly would have closed ranks against the move-
ment. As things transpired, interactions between the repressive state and
its society created an organized but liberal anti-dictatorship option that
state defectors could support, and this made all the difference.
9 Protest and the underground in Burma

Several months after the September 1988 coup installed the military
State Law and Order Restoration Committee (SLORC) in Burma,
Intelligence Chief Khin Nyunt held a series of press conferences, largely
in English for expatriate journalists and diplomats to set forth the regime’s
account of the 1988 democracy protests. The conferences seemed
laughable and received substantial ridicule from anti-regime activists and
foreign observers. One conference exposed a rightist conspiracy in which
secret cells and subversive foreigners worked against the regime. The next
unmasked a leftist underground conspiracy to overthrow the state. At each
event, SLORC presented a lengthy narrative of the 1988 protests, augmented
with biographical dossiers on key conspirators, in what seemed obvious and
clumsy propaganda.1 That the press conferences occurred at all is notable, for
Ne Win never cared much what the outside world (save immediate neighbors)
thought. Butfew beyond the new government’s thrallseemed even to consider
the possibility that the state reports had any basis.
Neither, however, do alternative descriptions explain the events. Such
accounts often attribute movement power to its leaders (like Nobel
Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and Generals Aung Gyi and Tin Oo), to
widespread economic crisis and currency demonetization, to regime
brutality, to foreign radio broadcasts and even to the auspiciousness of
the August 8, 1988 (8–8–88) demonstration date. As a group, these
positions share an important feature: they all argue that protest blos-
somed spontaneously from the righteous anger of a society pushed to the
brink. There are, of course, political reasons why a spontaneous cry for
democracy is an appealing frame for the protests, and why Burmese might
choose to package the movement as unorganized. Burmese citizens were
deservedly angry at their country’s economic collapse and the govern-
ment’s reliable brutality and determined autocracy. But accounts of
largely spontaneous activism fail to explain the movement’s extraordinary

1
Khin Nyunt 1988a; Khin Nyunt 1988b.

190
 Protest and the underground in Burma 191

level of coordination, and the remarkably similar, sophisticated tactics

that its branches adopted in very short order. Across Burma, strike
committees formed, adopted the same symbols, published strike news-
papers, made similar speeches, and coordinated activity. That a society
with no protest experience for over a decade could achieve such organiza-
tion spontaneously makes little sense.
The extended interplay between state repression and social response
perhaps provides a context to help assess these competing interpretations.
Anti-regime protests under Ne Win often began with an economic crisis
sparking synchronized anti-state mobilizations, and so providing cover
for subsequent, more organized activists working in the particular,
Burmese version of underground cells.2 Cell members or veterans dir-
ected protest along more politically pointed and powerful channels. In
this light, might we take a less dismissive approach to SLORC reports?
Interviews that I conducted with 1988 movement veterans suggest that
underground activists in fact played important roles in the 1988 protests,
particularly after June. Moreover, these informants tended to confirm
many press conference details. As one put it, ‘‘The problem with the
SLORC intelligence is not its minor details, but the larger argument that
underground cells acted under central party supervision. Those ties were
disrupted in the 1960s, and the party neglected the urban arena ever
since. But you must take claims of UG involvement seriously.’’3 This
chapter does not depend on the SLORC press conferences, but on inter-
views conducted inside Burma during 1998, and with exiled activist
leaders both before and after that research visit. Still, the interviews
suggest that as protest spread and progressed, organized or semi-
organized underground collectives increasingly shaped it.
Burmese democracy protests passed through several distinct phases in
1988. Violent state action during what began as an apolitical March
disturbance, under conditions of simmering resentment against author-
ities immediately provoked strong university student protests, followed
by predictably violent repression. In days, unrest moved from the cam-
puses to the neighborhoods, and to several nearby cities. But the move-
ments’ leadership remained unorganized and inexperienced, and
demonstrations spread largely through word of mouth. Authorities closed
the campuses in late March, and sent students home for an enforced
vacation. When schools reopened in June, students resumed anti-government
protests – but the movement had changed, marking a new phase in the

2
Smith 1997: 367–368.
3
Interview B–13 (transcribed from notes immediately following the interview). Smith
(1999: 367–373) makes this same point, relying in part on interviews with BCP cadres.
192 Protest and the underground in Burma

conflict. An entirely new leadership controlled the protests, emphasizing

meetings, organization, and more explicitly political demands. Movement
practice acquired more uniformity, and strike committees emerged as its
main instrument, even in far-flung places. Activity accelerated over the
weeks that followed, particularly when Ne Win and then his successor,
Sein Lwin, resigned. But as strike committees multiplied and state
authorities withdrew in August, something else happened. More orga-
nized and experienced activists began losing control of the movement,
and the resulting confusion set the stage for a state counterstrike and the
re-imposition of authoritarian rule. This chapter explores these phases of
the democracy movement, and their relationship to established patterns
of state repression and social response.

Early protest, spontaneous mobilization and state

repression
By 1987, Burmese authorities faced acute and mounting financial pres-
sure that they had avoided for decades of socialist isolation. Burma then
had a staggering 3.5 billion dollar debt and currency reserves of only
between 20 and 30 million dollars; debt service ratios stood at over fifty
percent of the national budget.4 Sustained counterinsurgency required
continued involvement in the international market, and insured that the
government would try to meet these obligations, however difficult they
were. To ease the burden, the government secured Least Developed
Country (LDC) status from the United Nations Economic and Social
Council, and also required farmers to sell their harvests below market
prices, to create greater revenues through resale on the international
market. That latter policy deepened rural resentment and led to several
violent rural protests.5 At that point, Retired Brigadier General Aung Gyi
wrote an open letter, reminding Ne Win of 1967 rice riots, and suggesting
broad economic reforms.6 At a BSPP conference on August 10, Ne Win
responded by speculating that the Burmese Way to Socialism was con-
ceptually flawed. The government deregulated trade in important agri-
cultural products, including rice and beans on September 1.7 Soon after
these apparent concessions to Burmese producers, however, authorities
demonetized 25, 35 and 75 Kyat notes, and redirected foreign reserves
into debt repayment. The policy devastated sections of society more

4
Lintner 1989: 94–95.
5
Yitri 1989.
6
Aung Gyi 1988a.
7
Aung Gyi 1988b.
 Early protest 193

involved in the cash economy or with cash savings – including university

students preparing to pay their tuition.8
Almost immediately, students at the Rangoon Institute of Technology
(RIT) ran riot through town, smashing glass and traffic lights along the
Insein road.9 In response, Rangoon universities closed and sent students
home. Larger Mandalay protests involved more monks and workers, and
participants burned several government buildings, ransacked state coopera-
tives and smashed cars from a local fire brigade.10 While the highly
regulated media reported little of these events, students sent home carried
news of the protests. When schools reopened in late October, underground
campus groups in Rangoon and Mandalay published dissident pamphlets.
In November, university students in Arakan and Pyinmana demonstrated
several times and some bombs exploded in Rangoon. On December 11,
Voice of America (VOA) and BBC broadcasts reported the UNDP’s earlier
decision to grant Burma LDC status, which underscored the depth of
government mismanagement.11 Soon, police in Mandalay received threa-
tening letters from underground groups, and small, elusive protests flickered
around the RIT campus and its surrounding neighborhoods.12
These protests, though significant, mainly set the stage for what fol-
lowed. In March 1988, students in a Rangoon tea shop argued with out-
of-school youths about the music playing on the sound system. A brawl
followed, in which security forces arrested, then released a youth charged
with injuring a student. The next day, students protested at the local
police department, and authorities shot and killed one of their number.
The next day, more students marched and rallied at the RIT, but protests
soon spread to other Rangoon campuses.13 One Rangoon University
(RU) student recalls rounding up ten classmates on March 14 and setting
off to investigate events at RIT. At the rally, he encountered other RU
students (with whom, however, he had never discussed politics) and
gained an initial sense of their group as activists. They marched back to
RU, took up positions where students normally congregated, and
denounced government brutality at RIT. Thus, the movement came to
RU.14

8
Mya Maung 1992: 93–135.
9
Nyi Nyi Lwin 1992.
10
Interview B–6. The informant was a Mandalay lawyer whose original movement activity
involved assisting those arrested in these anti-demonetization protests.
11
BBC’s Summary of World Broadcasts (henceforth SWB) December 12, 1987.
12
Lintner 1989: 95–97.
13
Smith 1999: 1–14.
14
Interview B–2.
194 Protest and the underground in Burma

For early participants, it mattered immensely that RIT lay just down
the road from RU, for they could walk between campuses and spread
news of the events. Because campus political organizations did not exist
and early leaders were inexperienced, collective action identified poten-
tial comrades and fostered solidarity and courage. At RU, those who
spoke that first day acquired status and celebrity, at least through the
end of March. Yet their inexperience was also on display. Activist
speeches expressed discontent in very personal terms, describing how
demonetization wiped out family savings, or their humiliation about
living in the newest LDC. Yet the discussion produced few political
proposals or action points.15
On March 15, riot police (Lon Htein) moved into RIT to arrest stu-
dents. The next day, students from RU set off for RIT campus to lend
support, but met Lon Htein crouched in ambush near a small white bridge
at Inya lake. The information we have about what transpired next comes
primarily from a letter that Brigadier General Aung Gyi wrote to Ne Win,
which others cite at length.16 The soldiers opened fire on the advancing
students, shooting even those swimming away or scrambling ashore.
Police piled wounded students several deep in a sweltering paddy
wagon, where they remained for an inexplicable four hours during what
should have been a brief ride to Insein Prison. Eventually, the govern-
ment admitted that forty-one students died on that journey, but originally
it owned up to just two casualties.17 Perhaps 200 more died at the white
bridge, after which troops occupied the RU campus. With no political
vehicles at their disposal, and scant protest experience to draw on, stu-
dents resurrected the model that Ne Win destroyed in his rise and
organized a new Rangoon Student Union the next day. (In contrast,
Filipino activists constantly reinvented their organizations, and showed
little interest in reviving past efforts.) That same day, occupying troops
arrested around 1,000 more RU students.
As troops descended on the campuses, activists fled to the city, and
people from working-class neighborhoods joined in. In immediate con-
sequence, demonstrations grew larger but also more dispersed, for new

15
The RU student who first visited RIT demonstrations explains: ‘‘At the start of all this,
we were very young and inexperienced. When I stood to make a speech, it was mainly
about how I felt, about the frustrations I had at the government and my difficulties as a
student.’’ Interview B–2. See also interview with activist Nyi Nyi Lwin, who describes
how older students had to explain about earlier demonstrations in 1962 and 1975. Nyi
Nyi Lwin 1992: 16.
16
Aung Gyi 1988b; Lintner 1989. Smith cites other sources who also confirm these
stories of brutal and determined violence. Smith 1999: 2.
17
Burma Watcher 1989: 175.
 Hiatus, movement spread and organization 195

participants ceased to relate only to the university campuses, and

Rangoon landmarks like the Shwedagon and Sule Pagodas also became
sites of struggle.18 Protest grew more rambunctious and less manageable
for the loose student leadership. On March 18, demonstrators torched
government facilities (state stores, offices, and automobiles) near Sule
Pagoda and the Lon Htein began shooting demonstrators. Headstrong
high-school students and workers returned fire with rocks, firebombs and
other projectiles, drawing infuriated police and army units into one-sided
battles that killed scores more activists in several Rangoon neighbor-
hoods. That evening, the government closed schools and universities
and announced plans to ship students back to their home villages and
cities. Despite a few small protests, the March uprising essentially ended
on that Bloody Friday.
It is difficult to pin down precise casualty figures for these events. In
several of his open letters to Ne Win, Retired Brigadier General Aung Gyi
claimed that 283 died in the March protests. He reiterated this figure in
his later narrative of the Inya lake slaughter and of torture in Insein gaol.19
An AP wire report cited diplomatic estimates that over 3,000 protesters
were arrested, particularly noting that hundreds of Muslim students of
Indo-Burmese origin, not involved in the protests, were also detained.20
Bertil Lintner put the death toll near 300, and offers graphic evidence that
the slaughter was systematic.21

Hiatus, movement spread and organization

When schools closed at the end of March, authorities shipped students
home to prevent angry and idle youths from loitering around the tea
shops, looking for trouble. Yet the remove from Rangoon did little to
assuage student anger, and those who traveled home (as in 1987) carried
stories of repression and resistance. Provincial populations would have
had a vague idea that something had transpired in the city, but media
sources predictably described the unrest as hooliganism, and denied that
serious casualties occurred. Indeed, the only clear initial evidence of the
violence was the homeward flow itself. But students bore stories of Inya
Lake and Bloody Friday across Burma, and so authorities’ desire for

18
See Sein Win, 1988.
19
Aung Gyi 1988a (June 9). Aung Gyi’s August 6, 1988c contains more detail about
military atrocities in March, and a particularly vivid perspective on how methodically
Burmese troops beat protesters to death.
20
AP Wire Report, June 23, 1988.
21
Lintner 1989.
196 Protest and the underground in Burma

peace in the capital helped overcome the fragmented communication and

transportation networks that often limited social unrest. Student return-
ees also brought experience and a perspective on struggle to rural
communities that may not directly have experienced demonstrations in
decades. They re-introduced the Rangoon University Student Union,
with its familiar independence-era fighting peacock, and explained how
marches and demonstrations worked, rekindling a long dormant activist
spark.22
The full influence of these student returnees would not be apparent for
several months. When protests eventually spread to the countryside in
late July and August, students from larger cities established strike com-
mittees and organized demonstrations that closely paralleled urban activ-
ity. The absence of opposition institutions, however, made it hard to trust
any new arrival in town, particularly those claiming to represent move-
ment collectives, or urging local residents to action; such emissaries could
as well be spies ferreting out movement sympathizers and democracy
activists. Returned students, however, could quiz new arrivals about
mutual friends or shared experiences, and were also among the first to
contact activist leaders in larger cities concerning movement develop-
ments or plans:
At first, nobody believed (that a new arrival was really a student). You have to ask
a lot of questions. In our state, we had some students who studied in Mandalay
and in Rangoon (who had been sent home). So if somebody said he was from
Mandalay, students from Mandalay in our town would ask them a lot of ques-
tions: Who do you know? Where do you study?23

Hence, returning students represented a foundation for movement building

that allowed Rangoon and Mandalay protests to nationalize.
But students also spent the interval between March and June learning
from current and former underground activists. It bears repeating that
Burmese cells were seldom linked to a party structure or to movement
organizations, for neither existed in the lowlands cities, and frontier
insurgencies were too involved in battlefield struggles to take much
account of urban politics.24 State repression had eliminated protest
since 1976, and even underground groups had done little since then
beyond publishing rare pamphlets and preserving dissident knowledge.25
Not surprisingly, then, the Burmese underground had diverse origins and

22
Interview B–18. See also published interview with student leader Kyaw Kyaw Htut
1992.
23
Taped interview B–16 with Maung Win, in Washington, 1997.
24
Smith 1999: 367–373.
25
Aye Saung 1989.
 Renewed protest 197

orientations. Some cells contained independent social critics who read

and discussed Marxist literature, while others had more precise sympathy
for the BCP (i.e. detainees released after years in prison, or cadres
returned from frontier camps or Chinese study tours). Still others were
not Marxists at all, but liberals associated with the 1974–1976 U Thant
events.26 These activists helped to preserve knowledge and experience
scattered by state repression. After the school closings, interactions
between activists and underground cells changed protest utterly.
Particularly in Mandalay, movement leaders recognized underground
activists they had known as NUF members in the late 1950s. A strike
committee leader living near Mandalay recalls that, ‘‘A couple of local
underground people were at the center of the movement. I knew these
people years ago as BCP activists, and they hung around the village ever
since.’’27 A senior advisor to the Rangoon movement described the under-
ground as a loose circle of experienced activists, most effective as teachers:
In 1988, students approached (underground activists) including myself, for lead-
ership and support. Remember that Burma is a country with no recent tradition of
open struggle. When the demonstrations began, students had very little idea what
to do, and didn’t even know where to acquire this knowledge.28

Students sought activists with experience, even as underground cells

sought out students with energy. Htun Aung Kyaw, a veteran of the non-
communist demonstrations in 1975 and 1976, taught protest strategy
and tactics: how to distribute leaflets on the sly, or how to hold small and
lower-risk lightning rallies:
(Students) came to me in June, when things were rolling along. I told them how
we started the movement – how to use the media, how to organize people using
issues of economic hardship, political freedom. The slogans, I told them, had to
be short, precise and to the point so people will understand. I told them to form
small and closely linked groups, with four or five people to a cell, and then each cell
member should organize one additional cell. I told them also how to use a cipher.29

Renewed protest
On May 30, schools and universities reopened. Students who returned to
classes were newly angry, for the government had just released the
account of Bloody Friday that acknowledged a mere three casualties.

26
Recorded interview with Htun Aung Kyaw August 1997.
27
Interview B–4 (Transcript made from notes immediately following an interview.)
28
Interview B–12. Earlier in the discussion, the informant had taken great pains to explain
that the underground networks were no longer attached to the BCP.
29
Interview with Htun Aung Kyaw August, 1997 (taped).
198 Protest and the underground in Burma

Crowds gathered on most Rangoon campuses and leaflets appeared

almost immediately (an early sign of clandestine preparations). Activists
arrested in March began to return to universities, describing torture and
hardship, but also with new connections to those they met in jail. Against
this backdrop, Aung Gyi issued another open letter to Ne Win, this one
containing shocking details of the March repression (including eyewit-
ness reports of the Inya Lake slaughter, and an accusation of state pre-
meditation, and an estimate that 283 had died).30 The campuses were
ripe for unrest, but most March leaders remained in jail.
Other signs indicated that students were also more organized and
politicized than before. Demonstrations resumed at RU on June 15,
when activists with covered faces burst into a crowd near the campus
center, and delivered a well-informed speech. Years later, March leaders
recalled wondering who these new activists were, and where they came
from. Where earlier speakers mainly expressed personal anger and frus-
tration, May and June speeches featured data on Burma’s economic
decline and about other anti-dictatorship struggles. New activists decried
human rights’ violations and used speeches to announce plans for pol-
itical demonstrations.31 (The initial leadership had of necessity been fairly
open, making decisions at anarchic public meetings, usually following
some persuasive speaker’s suggestion; in June, nobody seemed to know
who planned things.) Similarly, the idea of a strike committee as the
movement’s basic unit arose at this time, but nobody from the March
leadership knew from whence it came. Small lightning rallies flashed
across the capital’s streets, and leaflets regularly appeared – but at
whose initiative? By June 16, all Rangoon universities had protests, and
students busied themselves organizing committees and linking campuses
together. Masked speakers continued to emerge suddenly from crowds.
Some, like Maung Maung Kyaw, were recognizable March leaders;32
others were unknown even to prominent March activists.33
On June 20 and 21, larger but more scattered demonstrations occurred
in Rangoon, in part prompted by the Education Ministry’s decision to
close Rangoon University.34 These actions posed new difficulties for
security forces. Individual neighborhoods became centers of activity,

30
Aung Gyi 1988a. In part, the letter ran: ‘‘The lady students suffered the worst beatings
at Inya Bund. Some were dragged by their hair and beaten; some jumped into the lake,
and upon clambering back, were beaten.’’
31
Interview B–2, from notes transcribed immediately following the interview.
32
Lintner 1989: 104.
33
Informant B–13 was an RU student and B–2 was a medical student. Both recall initial
confusion at the new June leaders.
34
Smith 1999: 4.
 Renewed protest 199

and repression that previously concentrated on university buildings now

had to contain entire sections of the city. Confrontations now played out
in full public view and rallied support to the movement. When riot police
attacked marchers on the 20th, protesters answered with jinglees (sharp-
ened, poisoned bicycle spokes, fired through a slingshot). Almost 100
people died in the exchange, over 20 of them on the government side.35
On June 21, students marching near Myenigone Market met Lon Htein
forces and scattered into the neighborhoods, while residents held soldiers
off. Elsewhere, smaller bands of demonstrators roamed the streets, dodg-
ing the Lon Htein, firing jinglees, and shouting demands. Students
briefly regrouped at the Shwedagon Pagoda, but were dispersed.
Battles between Rangoon residents and security forces lasted through
the night, ending late on June 21. Security forces captured hundreds
more students and imposed a sixty-day curfew. By then, authorities
could no longer end protest by closing the campuses. They had to shut
down Rangoon itself.
As support for the movement broadened, student (and underground)
abilities to control things generally diminished.36 June 21 most pitched
battles, for instance, occurred while student leaders discussed strategy
and organization at Rangoon’s Institute of Medicine, and they barely
prevented a crowd outside the meeting from killing a government agent
captured in their midst.37 Other towns began anti-regime activity, largely
prodded by Rangoon students sent home in March (only thirty percent of
whom returned in May).38
As in March, police and military agents brought hundreds of activists to
Insein Prison, temporarily ending protests. Again, however, the end of
movement activity initiated a period of organizing both inside the prisons
and without. In the prisons, differences between March and June detain-
ees jelled into factional divides, and both groups developed more cohe-
siveness than they might have on the outside.39 Released after July 7, they
rejoined the movement as powerful activist collectives. Outside prison,
underground organizers redoubled efforts to forge stronger connections
with cities and villages outside Rangoon. From late June to the end of

35
Bangkok Post, June 29, 1988.
36
Interview B–7 (transcribed from notes directly following the interview).
37
Lintner 1989: 108–110.
38
Moksha Yitri (a pseudonym for a Burmese activist) writes that, ‘‘Some student activists
had also gone to Pegu, a town 50 miles to the northeast, and the ensuing protests there
caused the deaths of a number of police personnel in addition to demonstrators shot
and killed.’’ Yitri 1989: 546.
39
Interview B–2, transcribed from notes immediately following the interview.
200 Protest and the underground in Burma

July, delegations from Rangoon collectives spread across the countryside

to recruit support.40
On July 7, Ne Win called a special BSPP congress, a meeting that
would produce a potent combination of outrage and hope, making
demonstrations between late July and mid-August the most volatile
since before 1962. At the congress, Ne Win announced the release of
detained students, and admitted that forty-two had died in police custody
that March day. He forcefully restated his earlier reservation about the
Burmese Way to Socialism, admitted personal responsibility for March and
June shootings, and in a stunning conclusion, resigned from the party and
government. He also suggested that a national referendum on multi-party
democracy might resolve the political crisis.41 But the dictator also left
grim legacies of his rule: Ne Win named Lon Htein commander Sein
Lwin, the man most responsible for the June slaughter, as his successor,
and then warned protesters to cease demonstrations, reminding them
that, ‘‘When the army shoots, it shoots to hit.’’42 These events galvanized
the movement in three ways. First, Ne Win’s resignation made it clear
that fundamental change was at least possible at the government’s highest
levels, inspiring hopes that the army might support calls for democracy.43
Second, Sein Lwin’s appointment redoubled social anger, and protest
flared once more. Third, ironically and perhaps accidentally, Ne Win’s
referendum suggestion was the first public statement of multi-party
democracy as a movement goal, and from that point forward, activists
had a clear programmatic rallying point.44 The hope for multi-party
democracy also welded movement constituencies onto a single national

40
Htun Aung Gyi’s Freedom Fighters of Burma, for example, decided in mid-June to
move to central and Northern Burma to build broader popular sympathy for the
Rangoon movement: ‘‘Some of my friends went to Prome and some of my friends went
to Mandalay and we tried to organize people, and tell them what is going on. Many
groups did the same – lawyers’ committees and workers’ committees.’’ Interview B–15
(taped).
41
Burma Watcher 1989.
42
Mya Maung 1990: 617.
43
Informant B–9, who was a close advisor to Aung San Suu Kyi, recalls that this was one
of her particular hopes: ‘‘Every day, she asked me, ‘What’s the news from Mandalay?
What is the military doing? Have the military changed sides in Mandalay yet?’ You see,
they were expecting that the military would split, and that it would happen in
Mandalay.’’ Taped interview B–9.
44
Informant B–12 recalls: The question of multi-party democracy was never one of the
movement’s agendas until Ne Win mentioned it in his speech. From the time he said
that there would be discussions of multi-party democracy, this became part of the
movement’s agenda. We took up this theme, and soon it was in all of the strike papers
and leaflets, and it passed from here to other towns as well.’’ Interview B–12.
Transcribed from notes.
 The 8–8–88 protests 201

framework more effectively than earlier student demands that expelled

activists be reinstated and soldiers be punished for campus violence.

The 8–8–88 protests

As the movement developed stronger organizational capacities, under-
ground cells became more active. One March leader recalls initial confu-
sion, as underground influence grew more apparent:
After that second wave of arrests, we began to hear rumors of some big action on
August 8th, and I remember a big, secret meeting among all the different
student groups sometime in the middle of July. At that meeting, we decided that
the time wasn’t ripe for a big mobilization, that we were not prepared
organizationally. . .Afterwards, we all went into the countryside to build move-
ment networks for a big mobilization drive in the future. When 8 August came, we
were all so surprised when the mobilization went ahead, despite our agreement.
There was only one person from the March leadership group left in Rangoon, so
we all rushed back, but didn’t get to the cities until days later. The groups most
involved in that 8–8–88 demonstration were the ones I have associated with the
communists – from the June leadership group.45
As underground influence increased, movement leaders began to make
sharper decisions. Consider its interactions with BBC reporter
Christopher Gunness. In July, Gunness interviewed Burmese activists
who described how soldiers had raped women during the March protest,
then announced that large national demonstrations would occur on the
astrologically auspicious August 8. Activists on the air thus circulated a
shocking story to Burma’s furthest reaches, and then tied that story to a
call for action – very sophisticated stuff. Yet at least one analyst has
uncovered evidence that movement activists invented stories of rape to
mobilize opinion against the regime.46 Even Bertil Lintner, in an account
consistently sympathetic with the democracy movement, includes a cur-
ious half-caveat when he describes those interviews: ‘‘One of the alleged
victims was said to be the daughter of an army major. Whether that
particular case was true or not was actually irrelevant. The rumor had

45
Interview, B–2. Transcribed from notes.
46
Kyaw Yin Hlaing (1996) interviewed many of the activists who went on the air with
Gunness, and they admitted to fabricating some of the stories. Informant B–12 agrees:
‘‘I knew a lot about what was being planned and who was doing the planning, and
I have talked a lot to the different movement participants since then, and nobody can
say for sure who it was that decided on this date and made the announcement, and
that’s why I have assumed that it was the small group of people that were directly
involved in the radio broadcast, and that that broadcast, more than anything else, was
responsible for that demonstration and focusing the movement around those dates.’’
202 Protest and the underground in Burma

spread and people believed it.’’47 For our purposes, the importance of
these fabrications rests with the capacity of secret activist groups in late
July to take movement-shaping decisions under cover of the broader
contention. They used the media to advance movement goals in ways
that sharply contrast with the suspicious aggression that led 1970s activ-
ists to smash reporters’ cameras.48
Posters and pamphlets also appeared in Rangoon announcing the
demonstrations, many bearing the fighting-peacock insignia of the under-
ground All-Burma Students’ Union. In Rangoon, the first strike commit-
tees (initially community defense committees) formed at this time on the
advice of underground activists seeking to broaden the movement’s base.
By July, underground forces openly organized neighborhood commit-
tees. A Rangoon cell member describes the process: ‘‘When the students
came onto the streets, leftist organizations tried to enter the field, and
eventually began to lead the students and their movement in the strike
committees. The movement thus became well organized and strike com-
mittees easily spread from one city to another.’’49 Some strike committees
were able to draw on influence that underground cells had cultivated
among workers and monks in the 1980s.50 As neighborhood defense
committees became more prominent, they emerged in working-class
neighborhoods, often following underground plans.51 Between August
2 and 10, protest occurred in virtually every Burmese town of any size,
using a relatively stable and consistent range of tactics and symbols: they
synchronized marches, protected rally speakers, published movement
newspapers and unfurled fighting-peacock banners.
In Rangoon, the first signs of movement resurgence occurred at the
Shwedagon Pagoda on July 28, the Buddhist full moon of Waso. Student
activists suddenly emerged from the crowd to denounce the government
and urge support for new democracy demonstrations.52 Protests blos-
somed over the next few days, with community defense groups and strike
committees barricading and defending neighborhoods, coordinating
information and mobilizing isolated townships for central demonstrations.

47
Lintner 1989: 99.
48
Soe Lwin 1992.
49
Taped interview B–9.
50
Taped interview B–9.
51
Lintner dates these local movement committees in July, but describes them as
spontaneously emerging in ‘‘almost every ward and township in Rangoon.’’ Lintner
1989: 126. Informant B–2 recalls that students assigned by central strike committees to
establish organizations in working-class communities often had great trouble dissuading
these groups from using violence or looting. Interview B–2.
52
Lintner 1989.
 The 8–8–88 protests 203

In many neighborhoods, strike committees built makeshift stages where

movement activists addressed crowds of supporters, and to which people
brought donations to support the rallies.
While activists’ recent protest experience perhaps explains how
Rangoon demonstrations mobilized so effectively, activists’ speed and
skill outside Rangoon is another matter. Demonetization produced small
1987 demonstrations in Mandalay, and people there followed Rangoon
events with great interest, but without themselves undertaking similar
protest. In August, however, Rangoon activists contacted Mandalay law-
yers and monks (two categories of people with strong internal networks
and some underground collectives as well) to urge them into activity.
When news of the August demonstrations reached central Burma, the
first Mandalay response came from a somewhat rough Buddhist monas-
tery whose members demonstrated with others in a group soon known as
the Galoni.53 Students from local and Rangoon universities participated
in the demonstrations, but these protests began off campus, and students
never clearly took the helm.54 The first August 8 demonstration march
circled the town, stopping periodically for people to speak. The day’s only
casualty occurred at the corner of 28th and 84th Streets, when a fright-
ened traffic policeman fired into the crowd, killing one and then fled.
Marchers continued to a space called the 45 Hta Field, and erected a
platform where monks and students made speeches. Such marches
recurred almost daily until September 19.
The Mandalay strike committee formed on August 18, uniting forty-
nine separate organizations, pulled together over the preceding days.
While monks and students led earlier protests, lawyers organized the
actual committee, beginning when the Mandalay Bar Council received
a fax from its Rangoon counterpart.55 The fax inspired one lawyer to
spend the afternoon recruiting support among his colleagues, including
many who (like himself) had been associated with the BCP or the
BWPP. The next day, lawyers organized what was called the Opinion
Taking General Assembly at the city’s Centenary Grounds, where orga-
nized and experienced activists (many in underground collectives) took
control. The Mandalay strike committee hence had a clearer and more
political orientation than the Galoni, and soon forced the Galoni (in the
words of one committee member) to stop making speeches full of

53
Interview B–6, transcribed from notes.
54
Many village strike committees followed the same pattern (taped interview B–16).
55
Informant B–6 received that fax. As he had already made several speeches and was
relatively certain that authorities could identify him, he decided to take a leading role in
convincing Mandalay lawyers to join the protests. Interview B–6.
204 Protest and the underground in Burma

nonsense.56 Afterward, debates concentrated on issues of multi-party

democracy and human rights. The many lawyers and monks in the
cohesive Mandalay leadership contrasted to the higher percentages of
workers and slum residents in Rangoon’s more decentralized and
organizationally inchoate movement – and helps explain why Mandalay
protests produced less violence and fewer casualties than those in
Rangoon. Even before the Mandalay Strike Committee formed, however,
organizers recruited support from nearby towns. For instance, organizers
arrived at one medium-sized town about twenty kilometers from
Mandalay on August 8, but made rambling, nonsensical speeches, rife
with parochial attacks and personal complaints, and similar to those that
Committee members ascribe to the Galoni monks. After the Opinion
Taking General Assembly in Mandalay, new organizers arrived at that
city, stressing, ‘‘concepts of multi-party democracy and democracy
struggle . . . From then on, all speeches made in (the town) emphasized
multi-party democracy, and the earlier emphasis on rumors and perso-
nality . . . began to fade.’’57
In smaller villages and cities across Burma, students and underground
members returned from the cities to direct resident activities. One who
left Mandalay for a town in central Burma recalls wanting only to stay
home and study after March. Around August 10, however, village mates
who had joined the Rangoon protests cajoled him into action – citing his
responsibility as a student. Farmers were then so angry at taxation and
marketing policies that the movement immediately won broad support –
and perhaps 2,000 participated in August demonstrations, from a village
of around 5,000 residents. Unlike Rangoon protests, these demonstra-
tions began by building organizations,
for this was the idea of students who had these committees in their city campuses,
and also of local monks. We established committees for organization, for propa-
ganda, and other tasks, but the strike committee’s real work was to organize
mobilizations and demonstrations.58
Soon, local students themselves sent organizers to surrounding vil-
lages, sometimes to establish strike committees, sometimes to spread
news of demonstrations. By August 26, the village committees formed a
township-level strike committee; when the local government threatened

56
Interview B–6; informant B–4 makes the same point. Interview B–4, transcribed from
notes.
57
Interview B–7 transcribed from notes.
58
Interview B–7 transcribed from notes.
 The 8–8–88 protests 205

reprisals, residents contacted the Galoni, who coerced administrators

into giving way.59
An account from a Kayah state village presents an essentially similar
story. Protests began when students returning from Mandalay and
Rangoon shared their experiences, and began to lay plans. Activists
soon formed a local strike committee, in part because some belonged to
the underground All-Burma Students Union. Having formed the Kayah
State Strike Committee, however, activists were at a loss as to what to do,
when one member suggested contacting strike committees from larger
towns:
We contacted some of the student-union organizations in Rangoon, especially
those in the ma ta ka (All-Burma Student Union). There is a township between
Mandalay and our home state, and we contacted their strike committee. Soon,
some students came down to talk. We planned how we would engage the national
strike, marching through the towns where we had established some strike com-
mittees. After, they sometimes sent down slogans and papers to distribute to
people.60
Rangoon demonstrations began on July 30 and built steadily until
August 8. On that day, hundreds of thousands converged on the down-
town from diverse Rangoon neighborhoods each group marching under
identifying banners – called forth by interviews broadcast over the BBC
and the VOA. Marchers appealed to soldiers for support and encircled
security forces to protect them from protesters’ hostility – explicit and
organized attempts to prevent earlier violence. By that first evening,
however, soldiers opened fire on demonstrators, scattering them into
smaller crowds that authorities pursued through the streets.61
Protesters often remained close to their neighborhoods and defended
themselves with rocks, firebombs and jinglees. On August 10, soldiers
fired into the Rangoon General Hospital, killing nurses and doctors
ministering to the wounded.62 Protesters also grew more violent, at one
point burning a police station and tearing apart four officers who fled the
flames. On August 12, after days of violence in which as many as 2,000
died, Sein Lwin resigned.63
The resignation produced confusion across Burma, but also jubilation.
Rangoon security forces exercised comparative caution, particularly in
working-class neighborhoods that demonstrators almost entirely controlled.

59
Interview B–6 transcribed from notes.
60
Taped interview B–16.
61
Yitri 1989.
62
Burma Watcher 1989: 177.
63
United States State Department 1988.
206 Protest and the underground in Burma

Activists were not initially eager to resume protests after the latest vio-
lence, but took heart when more established forces criticized the regime.
On August 16, the Burma Medical Association denounced the recent
hospital attack, provoking a solidarity demonstration at the hospital’s
gate. That same day, the US Embassy happened to lower its flags to
half-mast (for reasons unrelated to the protests); demonstrators read
this as a gesture of support, and gathered outside.64 When these demon-
strations provoked no violence from soldiers, the movement surged ahead
once more, both in Rangoon and upcountry. Security forces exercised
uncharacteristic restraint in the days of protest that followed, which also
allowed movement groups to deepen their organizations. The Mandalay
Strike Committee first met in this period, and across Burma, committees
began to publish the first newspapers reporting their activities.65
On August 19, Dr. Maung Maung – a more moderate Ne Win insider
than Sein Lwin – became president. Still, activists were poised to reject
anything short of multi-party democracy, and gamely took on this new
target. Movement groups were now more coordinated, and announced a
national strike for August 22 that paralyzed Burma and solidified strike
committees nationally. Committees developed regular communication,
published more and more newspapers, and sent stories by fax to one
another. But the most surprising consequence of Dr. Maung Maung’s
rise occurred on August 24, when he lifted martial law, and the military
stood down (in many places, disappearing altogether). The largely under-
ground movement burst into the open, and dominated political life for
the next several weeks, not knowing whether they had finally won or
merely entered a new stage in the struggle.66
In light of the rapid change following this announcement, it is worth-
while to consider things as they stood at martial law’s end. The democ-
racy movement had a coordinated network of strike centers, controlled by
people with some political experience and (recently secret) links to col-
lectives elsewhere. Demonstrators by then embraced more focused
demands for multi-party democracy, and had also suffered such stark
repression that most viewed the regime as an utter enemy. The strongest
remaining constraint on mobilization or organization ended when

64
Lintner 1989.
65
Informant B–12: ‘‘At the same time, the general strike committee took in representatives
of newly established strike committees in the quarters, so almost from the very
beginning the central committee had a great deal of contact and information . . . By this
contact, as well as the mediums of the newspapers and wallpapers, it was really amazing
how quickly and efficiently news spread throughout the movement.’’ Interview B–12
transcribed from notes.
66
Smith 1999, Lintner 1989; Yitri 1989.
 The national strike 207

soldiers withdrew on August 24, but demonstrators had been more will-
ing to challenge soldiers even before that – particularly where movement
organizations may not have been strongest. After August 24, organized
activists (in networks still somewhat lacking public standing or reputa-
tion) would have less difficulty mobilizing mass support – but more
trouble directing mass efforts in politically productive directions. The
movement underwent a new, uninhibited round of committee formation,
governed by more celebratory and anarchic dynamics.

The national strike

The apogee of the Burmese democracy movement stretched from August
24 to the military’s violent return on September 18. As the fear of state
violence receded, people began taking pleasure in giving voice to long
suppressed protests, and one might easily have mistaken demonstrations
for festival processions, but for their banners and slogans. One man
watched a Rangoon intersection from 7AM to 5 PM on August 26 as 372
separate strike unions marched by:
Everyone wanted to be part of the movement, and so all different social groups
eventually created a strike committee or a union. There was a gay union, a
housewives union, a kindergarten union, and a grave-diggers’ union. Can you
imagine a kindergarten union demanding its rights? . . . [D]emonstration was a
sort of fashion, but also a way to get food: the really rich people never joined the
rallies, but would donate money and, above all, food.67
Apart from marching, some collectives worried about the movement
machinery, particularly its lack of a credible or prominent national leader-
ship; others took over local governments – both matters that would
compete with mobilization for movement attention and energy.
The festival of democracy, however, also obscured problems eating
away at the movement. Because pre-demonstration underground net-
works were neither public nor connected to insurgent groups, they had no
strong public followings and no disciplined mass machinery. The move-
ment’s consequent radical democracy therefore meant that experienced
activists were quite effective building strike committees, linking them
together and getting the strike started, but had more difficulty maintain-
ing discipline, particularly as the movement expanded. When martial law
ended, the strike ballooned out of control. Strike activity was in particular
exceptionally vulnerable to external provocation.

67
From interview with informant B–3.
208 Protest and the underground in Burma

In Rangoon undisciplined community defense committees may have

first formed when students took refuge in working-class slums during the
June dispersals, inspiring the people who hid them to organize. Such
committees were probably mainly governed by local power dynamics,
with more the character of gangs than activist cells. In August, one
university teacher (paralyzed with fear) listened from his room as the
local committee captured, interrogated and eventually beheaded a couple
caught with what seemed a bomb (later discovered to be equipment
pilfered from their workplace).68 Outside his window, that committee
routinely extorted money from passersby, nominally for movement
defense. Across Rangoon, crowds accosted soldiers, policemen, or ‘‘sus-
picious’’ looking strangers – but every stranger seemed suspicious in those
days. Organizers sometimes attempted to temper this violence but lacking
a strong or public structure, had little authority in the neighborhoods.
Moreover, the movement was subject to rumor and intrigue at all levels,
and hardly less prone to violence at its summit than at its base. When
9,000 inmates escaped Rangoon prisons, many deemed it a state plot,
particularly when word spread that convicts were poisoning food and
water supplies, and shooting at crowds. A kind of panic set in, rooted in
the impossibility of screening movement participants or verifying
rumors.69
Beyond Rangoon, isolated strike committees organized by inexperi-
enced activists also ran into trouble. As in Rangoon, activists struggled to
direct mass protest, but these struggles depended on local conditions.
The Mandalay strike committee was largely non-violent (partly because
more organized monks and lawyers controlled things) but not necessarily
more effective.70 When security forces and government officials aban-
doned their positions, activist committees that replaced them soon
encountered problems of maintaining order, policing food supplies, pre-
venting smuggling and resolving local disputes. But strike committee
decisions to undertake local governance seem not to have been

68
Interview B–3, transcribed from notes.
69
Burma Watcher 1989: 178. Informant B–12 reflected on how difficult these rumors
made movement control: ‘‘It was hard to keep people calm when the rumors flew
round. There was a rumor that the government was putting out poisoned food and
water during the demonstrations. This was dangerous because we had so many people
donating water and food for those in the demonstrations, and it was an important
resource sustaining the movement. Those rumors flew round after the government had
done some beheadings, and so when people got enraged, of course they also undertook
some beheadings – it had already become an established model. But we tried as much as
possible to keep this in control.’’
70
Sheo 1992: 19.
 The national strike 209

underground decisions, and experienced activists argued against diverting

movement attention to government administration:
We students wanted to keep the strike committee focused on activities related to
organizing demonstrations and protest, but notable people in the village insisted
that we take over the village administration and run the local government: that we
manage the police department, the village fund, and the local rice supply – all local
government functions became our responsibility.71
In Mandalay, lawyers with underground experience advised against
taking on government tasks, and urged activists to spend greater energy
spreading the movement to nearby villages and publishing committee
newspapers.72 In one central Burma town, Mandalay activists convinced
the local committee to avoid village administration. One resident recalls
that
We set up a local court where people could bring grievances – on the suggestion of
the Mandalay underground people – but nobody used it. When the village
administration faltered, respected people in the quarter, rather than strike com-
mittee members, picked up its responsibilities.73
In places with weaker underground leadership, strike committees seem
to have turned more attention to taking control of apparently powerful
village administration offices. Activists first took over local offices in
Moulmein, after an angry and unorganized countercharge against offi-
cials who authorized a murderous state attack,74 and the isolated strike
committee in Kayah state also came to its own decision to occupy govern-
ment offices as well.75
To that point, personalities associated with the movement – Aung San
Suu Kyi, Tin Oo, Aung Gyi and U Nu – operated mainly on their own;
during the national strike, however, student activists attempted to forge
them into an explicit leadership council. Activists arranged a meeting
among them for August 26, but the invitees were lukewarm on the
project: ‘‘It was something of a forced marriage, and they had no inde-
pendent inclination to work with one another,’’ one meeting organizer
reports.76 Nor, either before or after that meeting, was the group entirely
in step with the mass action. On his release from prison on August 24, for
instance, General Aung Gyi addressed an eager crowd of activists without

71
Interview B–7.
72
Interview B–6.
73
Interview B–7.
74
Forty-seven activists were murdered in that state assault. Lintner 1989: 154.
75
Taped interview B–16.
76
Interview B–8.
210 Protest and the underground in Burma

fully understanding how they had been affected by the mid-August vio-
lence, or comprehending the crowd’s deep outrage at security forces. He
advised activists not even to think hostile thoughts against the military.
The crowd turned away in disgust and disappointment.77 U Nu made his
own error after August 26, when he declared himself the legitimate prime
minister and named a shadow government. The move eradicated any
remaining unity among the leadership group and confused the move-
ment.78 (Philippine movement leaders provide a useful contrast, for they
mainly rise through movement organizations that provided rather strict
guidance and constraint on individual initiative; very few leadership
moves in the anti-Marcos struggle occurred without careful planning
and coordination.)
By mid-September Rangoon protests grew more violent and lawless,
and soldiers also goaded demonstrators into making ill-advised attacks
leading to skirmishes that soldiers easily won. President Maung Maung
made several shows at meeting movement demands, but many activists,
particularly in student groups, ignored more moderate advice and mis-
trusted proposals for compromise or incremental reform.79 Instead, they
demanded the regime’s immediate replacement with an interim, transi-
tion government.80
On September 18, the military retook the country, in ways utterly
consistent with its established custom of using raw force against protest-
ers. In Rangoon alone, soldiers killed thousands, but bloodshed was not
confined to the capital. Everywhere, soldiers smashed strike committees,
pursued students into the jungle, and violently enforced new and rigorous
curfews. Early estimates of the September casualties ran as high as ten
thousand, but subsequent figures incline more to three thousand – still
remarkably high.

Thinking about the national strike

Consider the national strike within the flow of Burmese history. What
explains the rapid spread of strike committees? Why did massive and
sustained demonstrations fail to force a transition to democracy?

77
Informant B–2 was in that crowd, and recalls feeling that something important ended
that day. (Interview B–2.)
78
Burma Watcher 1989.
79
For President Maung Maung’s own, certainly slanted account of these events, see
Maung Maung 1999.
80
Informant B–9 reports that by late August, ‘‘in the middle of the demonstrations, some
military intelligence officers came to me, and they asked me, ‘what do you want?’ They
said ‘Let’s form a coalition government.’ But students refused.’’ Taped interview B–9.
 Thinking about the national strike 211

Answers to both questions lie in the institutional, political, and cultural

residues that state repression left on Burmese contention. When state
repression destroyed civil associations and eliminated the possibility of
open dissident expressions, it forced regime opponents and critics under-
ground. Because underground cells could not work through legal asso-
ciations or in alliance with frontier insurgencies, they never formed a
broad network. Still in 1988 the underground was experienced enough
to suggest models of struggle but these mainly came from pre-1962
protest (like the student union) or corrected old mistakes (as when activi-
tists attacked the foreign media in the 1970s).81 Underground activists
were also connected enough to coordinate activity, but ultimately unable
to discipline the movement’s base. As one underground activist put it:
A lot of the movement’s most important organizational structures arose in the
course of struggle, guided, I am sure, by the efforts of the UG activists, but also in
response to more fluid conditions. You know about the incident that occurred at
the General Hospital? There were some old people that were being brought in for
treatment and the military showed up and shot a group of nurses. This was
something that enraged our people, and very shortly, that hospital became the
sort of spiritual but also organizational center of the strike.82

Activists created strike committees, community defense groups, move-

ment courts, security patrols and newspapers almost entirely from
resources generated during mobilization. The underground cells’ only
resources existed in the realm of knowledge, experience and connection,
and such resources could shape movement claims and tactics, but could
not, ultimately direct movement politics.
Yet activists’ inability to achieve clear and lasting reforms probably also
reflects other legacies of repression. Long-term repression destroyed any
moderately empowering perch for dissidents: no opposition parties,
newspapers, or even consultative state offices existed to provide dissident
intellectuals or elites with some stake in an incremental transformation or
standing among regime elites to allow cooperation in that transition.
Writers, lawyers, monks and intellectuals had scant option save to ally
with mass social strata. That alliance had few internal programmatic
differences or tensions, for pervasive repression and poverty, especially
after 1987 demonetizations,83 drove everyone toward similar circum-
stances (particularly compared to persistent class differences within

81
Informant B–9 (recorded interview) and informant B–12 (interveiw transcribed from
notes) both stressed the line of descent between earlier struggles and underground
formations and the 1988 strike committees.
82
Interview B–12, transcribed from notes immediately after the interview.
83
Mya Maung 1990.
212 Protest and the underground in Burma

both Indonesian and Philippine democracy movements). While the pat-

tern of state society relations influenced Burmese protest, it also nar-
rowed options available to any government official contemplating a
democratizing defection from the regime: the political distance between
regime and movement (in consequence of regime repression) was appar-
ently too great for many to undertake the journey. Moreover, the fate of
Retired General Aung Gyi – isolated from his former colleagues, imprisoned
for a period, in some ways leading a mass movement he ultimately failed
to understand, was probably a cautionary tale. Authorities’ retreat on
August 24 may have hampered prospects for a democratic transition, for
though it stimulated protest, it also widened gaps between potential state
defectors and movement leaders.
Hence, despite energy and popular support, the movement reached an
impasse by September, with the chance of progress hinging on three
hopes. The first was that daily demonstrations would leave the regime
little choice but to capitulate. Second, movement activists hoped that
soldiers would defect to the movement – even during violent August 8
protests, demonstrators protected members of the Tatmadaw, and
attempted to engage their sympathies.84 Third, the movement appealed
to international audiences for help and August rumors circulating among
activists suggested that US or UN troops would soon arrive. Let us
examine these three possibilities in turn, to see why none eventually
produced the transition.
Had the BSPP been a different kind of party, with a larger middle
stratum or deeper roots in society, popular pressure might have deprived
it of resources central to its stability. BSPP members did respond to
protests by turning in their party cards en masse,85 but the move merely
diminished insignificant outer circles, and never disturbed the BSPP’s
core. Local government officials permitted the movement to seize what
seemed like important positions in local government, but the Tatmadaw
ultimately benefited from these occupations, for they dissipated activist
energies into protecting rice supplies and arresting criminals. The move-
ment operated with a conception of power geared toward marginalizing
and replacing the regime rather than establishing influence within it.
Behind this vision, activists in late August and September regularly

84
We have already seen how Suu Kyi anticipated a military split that would benefit the
movement. Across Burma, however, activists also attempted to cultivate sympathy with
soldiers, and a Kayah state activist recalls how students, weak with hunger after a two-
day stand-off with soldiers, still passed their own food to the military: ‘‘We just want to
show that we really don’t hate soldiers . . . that we are not the enemy.’’ Recorded
interview B–16.
85
Lintner 1989.
 Thinking about the national strike 213

rejected intermediate proposals from the Maung Maung government,

declining, for example, to participate in a government commission to
solicit opinions for reforms, or to back any election administered by the
existing government. By the end of August, the movement demonstrated
virtually no inclination to compromise on the issue of these elections.
What, then, of military defection? By late August, some Tatmadaw
members reportedly did join protests, but only to a limited extent.86
The Burmese military remained far more cohesive than either its
Philippine or Indonesian counterparts, with neither the external political
interference that split the AFP nor the rivalries (central v. outer island
commands, finance generals v. professionals, service branches against
one another) that divided ABRI. Military elites who opposed Ne Win,
such as Aung Gyi or Tin Oo, tended to represent individual, rather than
factional positions in the Tatmadaw, and most such were regularly
purged.87 The few soldiers who joined democracy protests came mainly
from lower ranks of the Air Force (more politically marginal than the
army) and did not indicate struggles between higher echelon protagon-
ists. Moreover, Sein Lwin brought combat troops from insurgent areas to
deal with protesters, and they did so in ways modeled on their ongoing
war.88 Interesting counter-examples, however, also exist on this score: in
a village outside Mandalay, local youths erected a security checkpoint,
and were standing guard on September 19 when troops (long garrisoned
in the area) acted on the national order to retake the country. When the
soldiers arrived at the checkpoint, the officer in charge approached, and
asked the students what they were doing. ‘‘Guarding the village,’’ they
reportedly replied. ‘‘Who the hell told you to guard the village?’’ the
officer raged – but he sent them home, after spanking (!) each.89
Finally, the idea that international support would help demonstrators
unseat the dictatorship reflected the large role that foreign media services
like VOA and the BBC played in mobilizing movement activity, and on
the extraordinary international attention the demonstrations attracted.
Stephan Solarz, fresh from democratizing successes in the Philippines
and Korea, brought his road show to Burma in September, both encour-
aging protest and attempting to pressure the regime toward reform. US
President Bush sent the regime a diplomatic note reiterating the Solarz
message.90 Still, even had the US been more committed to doing

86
Callahan 1999: 1.
87
Interview B–9; See also Smith 1999.
88
Callahan 2001.
89
Interview B–7, transcribed from notes.
90
United States State Department 1989.
214 Protest and the underground in Burma

something direct in Burma, the regime had fewer ties to or dependencies

on the outside world than either the Philippine or Indonesian regimes,
and many closer states soon resumed relations with the new govern-
ment.91 Moreover, Burma’s proximity to China made Western states
even less willing to contemplate serious intervention than they otherwise
might be. Rather, from August through September the international
community made supporting gestures sufficient to inspire in activists
the hope of more concrete help, without delivering on those gestures.92
On the government’s side, the regime’s very isolation helped author-
ities close ranks as protests mounted. The Tatmadaw was not divided, nor
were many of its counter-insurgent soldiers particularly tied to lowland
Burma’s society. The state didn’t require strong social support, and was
not materially hampered by its withdrawal, particularly when demonstra-
tions grew more anarchic. The regime was not troubled by internal
dissent on the question of the coup and repression – those siding with
the movement left the party early on. Hence despite unprecedented social
mobilization and the truly surprising degree of organization among its
various centers, the protest movement never split the state or applied
significant drag on the repressive apparatus. Nor could it counter regime
gunfire with its own military counter-strikes (apart from street-quality
weapons like rocks and jinglees): the BCP, the movement’s most logical
armed ally, only got around to forming a position on the democracy
movement after the guns of September had fallen silent in Rangoon.93

91
Yawnghwe 1995.
92
Bray 1992.
93
Lintner 1990.
10 Indonesia’s democracy protests

1998 Indonesian democracy protests marked an important break with

established patterns, in which state policies scattered and fragmented all
opposition movements (apart from those operating in insurgent areas like
East Timor and West Papua). Although sustained national protest took
almost a decade more to mobilize, keterbukaan in the 1980s paved the way
for this movement. On a number of important fronts, long-standing
restrictions on political activity relaxed, and activist institutions like the
student press or independent unions revived. By the early 1990s, the
regime’s ability to suppress political organization began to slip. Some of
the more radical local struggles, such as the Kedung Ombo Dam cam-
paign, produced (tentative) national coalitions among LSMs. Legal aid
groups, particularly Lembaga Bantuan Hukum (LBH, Legal Aid
Foundation) adopted a structural approach that systematically opposed
regime policy and built a national network.1 Incarcerated student leaders
in the late 1980s met and learned from members of the comparatively
well-organized East Timorese independence movements, and after,
began thinking more seriously about organizational styles and secession-
ist movements.2
Keterbukaan encouraged activists more extensively to utilize electoral
opportunites and institutions. In 1987, under Suryadi’s new leadership,
the Partai Demokrasi Indonesia (PDI, Indonesian Democratic Party) gra-
dually sharpened its opposition, recruiting members of the Sukarno
family to draw on the first president’s charismatic legacy, and attracting
in consequence young activists seeking new venues for dissent. Somewhat
unrealistically, Suryadi strove both to play by the regime’s rules and
expand the PDI’s power. New PDI recruits had other ideas, mounting
an unusually strong anti-Suharto campaign in 1992 (behind Sukarno’s
son Guruh Sukarnoputra).3 Despite internal support for this more

1
Lev 1996.
2
Naipospos 2000.
3
Tempo, June 20, 1992.

215
216 Indonesia’s democracy protests

confrontational stance, PDI leaders voted to re-elect Suharto at the

March 1993 MPR meeting, antagonizing party radicals without dispel-
ling authorities’ anger at the recent electoral campaign. At the PDI
congress in December, ABRI intervened to remove Suryadi and install
an interim caretaker council.4 Activists began shifting support to
Megawati Sukarnoputri (another Sukarno offspring). Despite ABRI
opposition, Megawati became the PDI leader in December 1993.
By then, Indonesia stood on the brink of something new. Authorities
could still enforce proscriptions on dissident organization, and predict-
ably also accused those who flirted with direct, organized resistance of
harboring communist sympathies. Years of New Order repression so
deeply planted state prohibitions and taboos in activist imaginations
that these rules became virtually self-enforcing. Hence, political conten-
tion remained fragmented, local and episodic – particularly in compari-
son to coordinated Philippine campaigns.5 But keterbukaan also undercut
some proscriptions on formal organization, sparked activist interest in
legal organizations like the PDI, and encouraged some brave souls to defy
other proscriptions and begin organizing. Anti-organization laws like the
NKK/BKK remained in effect, but students began testing their bound-
aries, experimenting with new and more powerful modes of struggle. We
begin with the PDI story, for that is where the opposition first found a
large, stable organizational vehicle.

The struggle for the PDI

The PDI under Megawati was something new to opposition politics. Not
since the 1970s could dissidents work within an organization with the
standing and security that official parties offered, for while the regime
could meddle in party affairs, the parties themselves were central to the
New Order’s governing philosophy, and so relatively protected.6 The
PDI provided activists with organizational resources long denied them,
although one shouldn’t overstate the case. Mass organization restrictions
remained in effect, and only the regime’s official electoral vehicle, GOLKAR
could maintain branch offices outside the major cities.7 Still the PDI
represented a marked improvement over the ephemeral collectives
through which activists otherwise worked. Moreover, when authorities

4
Zulkifli 1996: 89.
5
Or, as one Indonesian analyst has noted, in comparison to conditions that obtained in
1966 Indonesia. Soewarsono 1999b: 13–14.
6
Liddle 1996c.
7
Liddle 1996c.
 The struggle for the PDI 217

set out to unseat Megawati and re-install a suddenly more attractive Suryadi
as PDI head, activists’ general demands for democracy acquired a specific
focus. By 1996, the issue of Megawati’s leadership was a fulcrum on which
an organized and resilient campaign turned.8
With regime support (including strong pressure on media to secure
favorable coverage) Suryadi formed a breakaway PDI faction and sched-
uled its congress in Medan for June 1996. In advance of that congress,
Megawati supporters began to demonstrate in Jakarta and other large
cities.9 The main party leadership also adopted more activist overtones,
threatening to ‘‘bring tens of millions of people into the streets of every
major city and town in the country.’’10 Despite protests, which occasion-
ally flared to violence, the Medan congress continued as scheduled,
elected Suryadi as faction president, and then declared itself the true
PDI. Meanwhile, Megawati supporters dug in at Jakarta’s PDI head-
quarters, beginning a siege that would last over a month. Party head-
quarters provided activists with an operations base and helped sustain
and focus protest. On June 20, 5,000 activists rallied outside the building,
until police violently dispersed the assembly. The next day, 500 PDI
demonstrators returned to the party headquarters at Diponogoro
Street, but went home after receiving ABRI assurances that they might
return and protest in the days that followed.11 Fresh demonstrations
greeted the Medan congress results on June 24, and demonstrations
occurred every day thereafter. By June 28, 1,000 people marched to
support the Megawati faction. 2,000 marched to parliament on June
29.12
The stand off began in earnest when Medan delegates returned to
Jakarta to claim the PDI building. By then, activists guarded party head-
quarters, and soldiers patrolled its perimeter. Beside street demonstra-
tions, activists erected a podium at the PDI building for what they called
a mimbar bebas, or open forum, at which anyone could air grievances
against the regime.13 In ways that suggest the Burmese experience in
mirror image, speakers and speeches in these fora evolved. Party activists
prominent in the encampment’s early days (lawyers and writers focused
on the PDI’s leadership dispute) gave way to workers, vendors, farmers

8
Bertrand notes that even some powerful figures inside the regime, including members of
ABRI associated with Benny Murdani, lent support to Megawati during this period.
Bertrand 1996: 332.
9
YLBHI 1997a: 9.
10
Jakarta Post, June 13, 1996.
11
Jakarta Post, June 22, 1996.
12
Jakarta Post, June 30, 1996.
13
Wardhana 1997.
218 Indonesia’s democracy protests

and fisherfolk who described lives of hardship and injustice. The shift
suggests a growing sphere of party influence, beyond the functionaries
that the New Order permitted to members of a more prohibited mass
base. More ideologically explicit activists aired ideas about long-term
structural change, and used the forum to urge broader democracy pro-
test. The podium became a place to announce marches that fanned out
from the PDI headquarters to other points in Jakarta: 3,000 on July 14,
1,000 on July 15. On July 18, 1,500 demonstrators carried a one-
kilometer length of white cloth, on which passers-by wrote supporting
messages. In bolstering the movement by demonstrating popular
support, activists had departed from the moral force tradition, and were
playing at demonstrating mass power. On July 20, the military banned
further demonstrations, but PDI forces vowed to defy that ban. On July
25, between 500 and 1,000 people took to the streets; the mimbar bebas
inside the compound continued uninterrupted.14
Early in the morning of July 27, trucks containing people dressed as
members of the Suryadi faction pulled onto Diponogoro Street. The new
arrivals charged the building and began swinging rattan canes at its
occupants. As fighting spilled into the streets, soldiers and police arrived
on the scene, but initially took little action. When they did move, it was to
arrest and restrain Megawati supporters, not to interrupt the attack.
Megawati supporters then moved across Jakarta, burning buildings and
smashing cars. Bystanders, particularly from Jakarta’s poor and marginal
classes, joined the fracas and soldiers began to use teargas and rattan
canes against them. As evening fell, military head Faisal Tanjung issued
a shoot to kill order against remaining protesters, and rioting ended
around 8:30 PM. 5 people were killed, 23 were missing, and 124 were
under arrest in the worst Jakarta riots since 1974.15
The struggle for the PDI illustrates two important developments that
would be crucial to the 1998 democracy movement. First, actors within
accepted New Order institutions began to use those institutions to
demand more substantial political reform. Conflict within the state that
triggered keterbukaan allowed familiar New Order parties like the PDI
(and the PPP) to act more defiantly.16 Megawati’s leadership wove
radical demands for democracy into conventional complaints about

14
An account that takes careful note of the protest’s evolution from a PDI member-action
to one joined by Jakarta’s working and marginalized classes can be found in YLBHI
1997a; and Santoso 1997.
15
This account is based on Luwarso 1997; National Commission on Human Rights
1996; YLBHI 1997a.
16
Vatikiotis 1993; Bertrand 1996.
 The struggle for the PDI 219

procedural justice, in terms the regime had sanctioned. Megawati evoked

her father, and so the perjuangan (struggle) tradition that he deftly com-
manded.17 Hence, the first signs of a resilient democracy movement
materialized behind someone whose antagonism to the New Order
seemed (quite apart from her own actions) both moderate and irreconcil-
able. The combination attracted significant support. Nataduul Ulama
head and Democracy Forum member Abdurrahman Wahid spoke in
support of Megawati and the larger democracy agenda.18 LSMs like
KIPP and LBH issued statements of solidarity, and many at the PDI
site belonged to these groups.19
Second, new, more organized and militant groups also gravitated
toward the PDI encampment, none more influential than the PRD
(Partai Rakyat Demokrasi, People’s Democratic Party). The PRD leader-
ship consisted of young activists dissatisfied with decentralized,
LSM-based advocacy, who developed a model of explicitly organized,
clandestine movement formations of exactly the kind the New Order sought
most to prohibit. PRD cadres (some of whom had contact with Philippine
movement organizations) paid explicit attention to the advantages of
movement organization, and attempted to build a network in which
their central political leadership directed mass organizations with distinct
sectoral constituencies such as workers, farmers, urban poor and students
(an organizational pattern that ABRI linked to communist influence).20
The PDI conflict provided the PRD with a national focus and a new
arena: throughout the July stand off, some PRD groups gathered at the
PDI headquarters, while others staged coordinated solidarity actions
across Indonesia.21 According to PRD sources, the Solidaritas
Mahasiswa Indonesia untuk Demokrasi (SMID, Student Solidarity for
Indonesian Democracy) formed in 1992, but was announced only in
August 1994. Other PRD organizations began as apparently small and
scattered community actions (the sort generally permitted by the state)
that subsequently formalized.22 Among these, the Pusat Perjuangan
Buruh Indonesia (PPBI, Indonesian Center for Labor Struggle) was

17
Brooks 1995; Aspinall 1996. Megawati’s political weaknesses were also one display
from early on. For instance, she provided virtually no support for activists detained
during the PDI protests, and seemed more to distance herself from them.
18
This endorsement, poorly disguised as a legal opinion, came close to violating mass
organization restrictions, for the NU was barred from political activity.
19
The Economist July 26, 1996.
20
Honna 2001: 74.
21
Such as labor and student protests in Surabaya on July 9–12. Jakarta Post, July 10,
1996; Kompas, July 14, 1996.
22
PPBI 1997.
220 Indonesia’s democracy protests

particularly visible during the July 1996 confrontation. It staged a soli-

darity strike in Surabaya on July 8 to support Megawati’s PDI faction, an
action that also attracted support from students and other PRD
constituencies.23
Again, we should not over-emphasize these new capacities, for years of
repression left the state overwhelmingly powerful against social oppon-
ents. After the July protests, repression increased, despite objections from
pro-democracy leaders like Wahid,24 the ‘‘Petition of 50’s’’ General
Nasution25 and international human rights’ groups.26 PDI leaders
(Megawati, Alexander Litaay, Sophan Sophian, among them) and LSM
members were interrogated and detained. But investigators paid particu-
larly fierce attention to the PRD.27 Even before July 27, government
sources labeled the PRD neo-communist, and Suharto claimed that it
demonstrated the PKI’s ‘‘way of thinking and acting.’’28 In early August,
security forces arrested leaders of PRD mass organizations across
Indonesia.29 On August 11, more PRD leaders, including overall head,
Budiman Sudjatmoko, fell in raids. Altogether, thirteen PRD members,
as well as labor leader Dr. Pakpahan, were charged under the 1963 anti-
subversion act. Most were tortured and denied council for weeks –
practices not usually applied to cosmopolitan, elite and Indonesian activ-
ists.30 Still, despite authorities’ undiminished capacity and willingness to
use repression, the 1996 protests suggested that anti-regime forces had
begun to gain new kinds of organizational resources, and these gains also
partly explain the intensity of anti-PRD measures.31

Run up to the election

Between August 1996 and May 1997, elections spurred increasing pro-
test and violence that we can understand in terms of two interacting

23
Interestingly, however, even as the PRD lent its organizational muscle to the PDI
protests it remained a tractable ally for other members of the pro-Megawati coalition,
and in the aftermath of the July 27 confrontation, it anchored its own denunciations on
those of established pro-democracy forces in that coalition. See Sudjatmiko 1996b.
24
Jawa Post, August 5, 1996.
25
Republika, August 5,1996.
26
YLBHI 1997a: 31–34.
27
Honna 2001: 70–75.
28
Kompas, August 18, 1996.
29
Specifically, the chair of an artists’ group in Solo, SMID chairpersons in Jakarta,
Bandar Lampung and Bogor and the head of the SBSI, Dr. Muchtar Pakpahan (also
accused of provoking violence in the 1994 Medan strike) Soewarsono 1999b: 138–139.
30
For details of this torture, see Sudjatmiko 1996b.
31
McRae 2001: 5.
 Run up to the election 221

cycles. First, the gradual process of keterbukaan diminished prohibitions

on dissent, and provided some leeway for political organization, a long,
escalating cycle of mobilization. Activists in LSMs, labor unions and
political parties initially moved with great caution, and ABRI quelled most
demonstrations with threats or expressions of displeasure.32 Gradually,
stronger activist organizations allowed more defiant and sustained
demonstrations. Second, shorter cycles of mobilization and protest,
associated with elections, had been part of the New Order’s rhythm since
the early 1970s: Indonesian electoral campaigns, though entirely rigged,
provided opportunities for demonstrations. In the 1970s, regime elites
jockeying for position often engineered such rallies, but as keterbukaan
took hold, more truly oppositional activities (like PDI and PPP protests
in 1992) showed that oppositionists had begun more seriously to seize
opportunities to campaign against the regime. 1997 protests were
hence partly an election-based mobilization pattern that authorities had
withstood in the past, occurring, however, further along a keterbukaan-
driven cycle. The combinations of these two cycles made the 1997–1998
protests potentially more powerful than many previous mobilizations
from the outset (even before one factors in the influence of the monetary
crisis).
Strong movement organizations allowed dissidents to plan more
powerful actions for the election. Though ABRI banned street demon-
strations in December 1996, activists in Megawati’s faction (now called
PDI-perjuangan, or struggle) planned defiant new protests. On December
29, 500 marched against Suryadi in Surabaya.33 When the national
election board excluded Megawati’s name from the list of eligible candi-
dates, she denounced the government and the PDI-Perjuangan held
rallies and marches in Jakarta and in other Indonesian towns.34 The
government dampened Megawati’s own militancy by suspending her
parliamentary immunity on January 28, but as May neared, PDI mem-
bers began to threaten an election boycott. By April 15, pro-Megawati
demonstrations attracted nearly 2,000 in downtown Jakarta, and despite
prohibitions, about 100 marched to the Central Jakarta State Court to file
a lawsuit against Suryadi’s leadership the next day.35 The PPP launched
a sustained string of demonstrations from late April through May in
Jakarta, Surabaya and Jogjakarta, against rules requiring them to clear
campaign material with state watchdogs. Riots flared almost before

32
Bunnell 1996.
33
Jawa Post, December 20, 1996.
34
Kompas, January 22, 1997.
35
Jakarta Post, April 16, 1997.
222 Indonesia’s democracy protests

voting ended on Madura, and continued until June 2, when officials

announced plans to re-poll 121 stations. On June 14, PPP members
demonstrated in the East Javanese town of Jember, but party leaders
approved the official election results soon after, ending protests.
Other organizations also figured prominently in the building conten-
tion. Labor strikes in 1996 more frequently involved national organizers
from independent unions, or linked to the PRD.36 In a June 9 Surabaya
strike, for instance, activists from the STI (Seriket Tani Nasional, the
National Peasants’ Union), the SMID and PPBI all turned out. The
resulting multi-sectoral mobilization attracted allies committed to a
broad national reform – something alien to most groups except students
and LSM workers.37 As elections neared, protests made national policy
demands (for exmaple, against a proposed nuclear energy program and
opposing expanded alcohol sales).
Increased organization among activists allowed them to cultivate inter-
national support more easily, as secessionist movements had for some
time, and this support served to sustain and focus protest in new ways. In
early February, the US AFL-CIO launched a campaign for the release of
Muchtar Pakpahan, jailed in the August crackdown and facing the death
penalty.38 In March, British human rights’ activists protested plans to
train Indonesian officers at Kings College, and disrupted British
Aerospace’s annual meeting to protest company sales to Indonesia.39 In
April, international labor groups attacked Nike Corporation for using
child labor in its Indonesian factories, and over 10,000 workers in these
Indonesian plants struck.40 East Timor separatists, always cognizant of
opportunities provided by forces external to Indonesia, held demonstra-
tions when UN special envoy Jamsheed Marker visited Dili on March 23;
soldiers killed two protesters and injured twenty-eight others, triggering
months of protest from national and domestic human rights’ groups,
including the state’s National Committee on Human Rights(NCHR).
An alliance of East Timorese and Indonesian protesters staged another
rally in Jakarta when Marker arrived on March 26.41 Soon after, the US
state of Massachusetts imposed a largely symbolic trade embargo on
Indonesia. Indonesian unions, human rights’ organizations and separatist

36
PPBI 1997.
37
YLBHI: 118–120.
38
AFP Newswire, February 5, 1997.
39
The Guardian (London) March 18, 1997. These protests led to several acts of civil
disobedience over the next several weeks in Britain, aimed at disrupting arms sales to
Indonesia.
40
Antara News Agency, April 23, 1997.
41
Jakarta Post, March 27.
 Run up to the election 223

groups sustained relatively large and durable demonstrations in conjunc-

tion with each exercise of international solidarity.
More mobilization, however, did not always redound to activists’
power – and indeed rising unrest provided elements in the regime with
opportunities to reiterate that mantra of Suharto’s rule: that mass activity
was dangerous, chaotic and apt to spin out of control. Indeed, the new
organizations that grew up under keterbukaan were far from entirely in
control of things, and at times, movement leaders and public intellectuals
seemed as much to fear as to invoke mass political activity.42 This
ambivalence was naturally ripe for exploitation, and authorities may
have nudged some incidents down the road to riot and violence to
cultivate fear regarding all mass activity.43
Several uncharacteristically large episodes of community violence
broke out in the period before the 1997 elections. In October 1996,
anti-Chinese violence flared in East Java’s Situbondo after a court issued
what local Muslim groups regarded as a light sentence in a blasphemy
case.44 Human Rights Watch reported ‘‘evidence that the violence was
deliberately instigated, and local security forces made no effort initially to
stop it.’’ On December 26 in Tasikmalaya, Muslim groups initially pro-
testing a teacher’s torture at a police station turned on Chinese targets,
killing four and destroying shops, cars, factories and churches. The
NCHR suggested that ‘‘a third party’’ provoked the riot, but did not
name the group.45 In late January, Wahid accused rightist Muslims,
particularly in the Humanika Foundation and CIDES (Center for
Information and Development Studies) of provoking riots.46 Anti-
Chinese riots occurred in Rengasdengklok, West Java (after a Chinese
man allegedly insulted Islam); military sources again implied third-party
provocation.47 Through March, violence flared in West Kalimantan

42
Siegel 2001: 90–95. Quotations in the newspapers often revealed this same anxiety. For
example: ‘‘Pengamat politik Dewi Fortuna Anwar Khwatir dampak naiknya BBM dan
tariff listrik bias mengundang rakyat turun ke jalan.’’ (Political commentator Dewi
Fortuna Anwar worries that the effect of increased fuel and electricity rates could cause
the masses to take to the streets.) Inti Jaya, May 3.
43
Eklöf 1999: 50–74.
44
Wawasan, October 13, 1996; see also Gerakan Pemuda Ansor 1996.
45
Kompas, January 8, 1997. On January 13, police raided student residences in Jakarta
looking for documents that would implicate the students as members of the banned
Negera Islam Indonesia (NII, Indonesian Islamic State). The NCHR declined to confirm
that this group was the organization it suspected in the December riots. (Kompas,
January 14, 15, 1997.) See also YLBHI 1997a: 75–90.
46
Suara Karya, January 30, 1997. Jakarta Post, January 30, 1997. According to Wahid, a
leader of a local NU chapter had been ‘‘fooled’’ by members of CIDES and Humanika
into believing that the riots would be in line with NU policy.
47
Kompas, February 1, 1997.
224 Indonesia’s democracy protests

between Dayaks, Madurese immigrants and Chinese.48 Other clashes

followed confrontations between GOLKAR supporters and PPP parti-
sans, at least partly fueled by PPP election-rules protests. In Banjarmasin,
Kalimantan, motorcycle-riding GOLKAR campaigners disturbed Friday
prayers, leading to riots that killed over 120.49 No wonder that democracy
advocates would be cautious about broadly mobilizing movement
strategies.
By 1997 the concept of keterbukaan had developed its own particular
dynamic in Indonesia. Frequent protests, a sporadically assertive media,
and prominent and vocal public intellectuals all combined to make the
liberalization seem at least a superficially pervasive phenomenon.
Enough former or current regime members echoed the call to make
the demand for reform seem reasonable and mainstream, rather than
radical. Even Suharto incorporated terms like reformasi into his public
statements. But the New Order was neither willing to institute substan-
tial reform nor to allow others to make much headway. Keterbukaan still
operated within relatively restricted parameters, and authorities cracked
down without compunction on those who transgressed them. Hence in
1994, four newspapers were shuttered for discussing political dissent
too frankly, and as riots began to occur in 1996, media editors were
enjoined from devoting too much attention to the events.50 Activists,
particularly workers and farmers living outside major cities, were often
harassed, intimidated or physically harmed by security forces.
Periodically, more focused violence was brought to bear against some
dissident force. After the July 27, 1996 conflict, over seventy-five people,
many belonging to the PRD were arrested, and authorities roundly
denounced the organization. Perhaps more important, most dissidents
never ventured directly to oppose the regime, to undertake sustained
acts of resistance, or to build organized (as distinct from fortuitous)
movement associations.51

48
Suara Pembaruan, February 20, 1997.
49
YLBHI 1997b.
50
Jakarta Post, September 21, 1996.
51
In what seemed to me an extreme case of this, several student activists (who identified
themselves, perhaps accurately, as among those who planned the PDI activities on July
1996) described what they did on the evening of July 27. ‘‘We all gathered together, and
listened to as many radio stations as we could find, hoping against hope that the
violence would trigger something more sustained, like Philippine people power. But it
didn’t happen.’’ It never occurred to them, they revealed after some questioning, that
such follow-up activity required organization and planning – that it was not likely to
happen spontaneously. Interview with three PDI activists, March 13, 1998.
 The 1997 financial crisis and the MPR 225

The 1997 financial crisis and the MPR

Through this rising mobilization, government officials kept different
groups of claim makers separate from one another, and continued to
enforce enough anti-organization restrictions to prevent a national anti-
dictatorship movement from ever taking shape. The 1997 currency crisis,
however, synchronized and focused grievances across groups in ways that
pushed unrest past what the regime could contain. Village riots prolifer-
ated from January 3 (starting in the East Java towns of Tamanan and East
Jember) until February 13–16 (where they crested in the West Java towns
of Ceribon and on Sumatra). Near the end of that period, riots also
occurred on Sumatra (February 13) Sulawesi and Lombok (February
14).52 While riots had grown more common since mid-1996, this out-
break was, in significant ways, different. Earlier riots had often been more
or less contained episodes centered on single locations. Even exception-
ally violent outbreaks seldom spread, and if authorities did not always
move quickly to end them, they at least kept them contained. The 1998
events, though often sparked by particular local triggers, occurred in such
rapid succession that many saw them as a single wave of chaos creeping
across the countryside. Soon, the idea of spread – a domestic domino
theory – began to dominate the nervous responses to the riots. Security
forces blocked traffic flowing from Bandung to Jakarta to prevent riots
from entering the capital from the West. Bus terminals, many suggested,
were particularly dangerous, because the virus of contagion entered
communities (from infected areas) at such places. Eye-witness accounts
from successive conflagrations described men in black with short haircuts
who appeared before each riot to set things in motion – although to this
date, there is no reliable way to ascertain whether the riots were provoked
by conspiracy or something else.53
Provoked or spontaneous, however, the riots were profoundly isolated
socially, involving poor and restless sections of society, and never linked
with (or recruited into) some of the more explicitly pro-democracy pro-
tests. The crisis hurt many businesses with smaller capital reserves and a
dependence on international exchange, particularly when the Rupiah fell
to 12,000 per dollar in February.54 Many businesses failed, defaulted on

52
Data on these strikes comes from a review of reports in the Indonesian periodicals Jawa
Post, Kompas, and Media Indonesia; see also the table of strikes compiled in McRae
2001: 9.
53
See for examples of this coverage, front page articles in Kompas, February 15, 1996, and
Jaharta Post, on February 17 and 19, 1998.
54
This dramatic decline immediately announced Suharto’s nomination of B. J. Habibie
for Vice President.
226 Indonesia’s democracy protests

debts or drastically reduced production, and foreign investors across the

country pulled up stakes and took off, particularly as the riots grew. Still,
urban elites never pushed the crisis in order to unseat the president.
Indeed, most of their clearest efforts and demands suggested measures
to moderate economic hardship to stave off mass unrest. Many of the
democracy-minded intellectuals, in fact, seemed to regard democratic
reform and mass unrest as alternative trajectories, and enjoined govern-
ment officials to enact reforms to avert mass unrest.55 Hence, calls for
reform did not exactly overlap with the riot wave, and while the democ-
racy circles feared rioting in the streets, few ventured anti-regime
demonstrations.56
Rather, elite responses to the crisis were initially rhetorical. Discussions
linking the upcoming MPR and the economic crisis began on January 7,
when Muhammadiyah’s Amien Rais, Megawati and Abdurrahman
Wahid57 found themselves together to bless the fasting month of
Ramadan. Rais (and the press) made much of the meeting, and he later
called for a national dialogue between government and leaders like him-
self and the other two.58 These remarks dominated the media for several
days, and government figures announced themselves ready for dialogue;
in the same breath, however, most also undercut the idea, stipulating that
talks should follow constitutional procedures, fretting that they might
pre-empt the MPR, and ultimately dropping the whole thing. It was a
classic and effective New Order response: an initial welcome, followed by
increasingly explicit conditions and stipulations which, taken together,
constituted a warning. By then, however, the media and lecture audiences
had seized the next idea (in a pattern repeated several times over the next
months): Rais or Megawati might nominate him- or herself for the
presidency. Both government and opposition figures seemed to herald
this prospect – though officials mused that such candidacies should not
‘‘disrupt national unity’’ – another killing stipulation. By mid-January,
authorities launched a counter-offensive. Several military officers specu-
lated (in coded threats) that Rais might mobilize Muhammadiyah for

55
A leaflet produced by a group of critical intellectuals calling itself the ‘‘Thursday Night
Club’’ ended, after demanding reform, with the unintentionally self-revealing line:
‘‘Baiklah, kita tunggu saja.’’ (‘‘Alright: We’ll wait and see.’’) ‘‘Thursday Night Club’’
1998.
56
Rural riots tapered off during the second week of February, ending when authorities
began to release emergency relief stores of basic commodities. Only after the riots
ceased did pro-democracy demonstrations begin once more.
57
Wahid would soon suffer a stroke that kept him hospitalized over much of the next few
weeks; hence his absence from much of the account that follows.
58
Kompas, January 7, 1998.
 The 1997 financial crisis and the MPR 227

political goals (violating 1984 restrictions). On January 20, both Rais and
Muhammadiyah were in full rhetorical retreat. One leader denied that
Rais consulted the group about supporting Megawati, while Rais dis-
claimed any intention to turn Muhammadiyah to political ends. House
Speaker Harmoko put the matter to rest that same day by announcing
Suharto’s willingness to stand for a final term.59
By mid-February, the opposition began focusing on Suharto’s nominee
for Vice-President – a tactic military officers pioneered at the 1988 MPR.
At a February 11 democracy seminar, Emil Salim (Minister of Natural
Resources and an official that many activists respected) allowed that he
might accept a nomination for Vice-President, and this sparked a new
round of excited speculation.60 On February 21, Suharto’s son-in-law,
Lieutenant-General Probowo Subianto, described his friendship with
both Salim and Amien Rais, stressing that no impediment existed to
either making constructive criticisms against the government, within con-
stitutional limits: another threat. By the time Suharto nominated B.J.
Habibie, the prospect of an opposition candidate had fallen utterly apart.
Moreover, unspecified government sources leaked reports that Amien
Rais and supporters had convened a meeting at Gajah Madah University
to plan demonstrations. Most accused of attending the meeting spent the
next several days deflecting charges of subversion, and the alleged anti-
regime plans never came off.61
It would be possible, of course, to trace the rise and demise of other
rumors in the pro-democracy salons, moving from initial excitement,
through government embrace, warning caveat and disintegration. No
single rumor, however, was more important than the pattern that all
inexorably followed. Crucially, public intellectuals would not violate
anti-subversion laws in ways that really defied regime threats, and this
deep reticence utterly affected dissent. Sometimes, dissidents made
stronger motions toward political action.62 Suara Ibu Peduli (Voice of
Concerned Mothers) demonstrated outside the Hotel Indonesia (follow-
ing a press conference in the hotel’s coffee shop!) to denounce rising basic
commodity costs. That the women planned to march despite recent
regime proscriptions on street demonstrations marked it as a promising

59
Kompas, January 20, 1998.
60
Kompas, February 11–16, 1998; Suara Pembaruan, February 11–16, 1998.
61
Kompas, February 26, 1998; Suara Pembaruan, February 26, 1998.
62
At one Halal Bihalal ceremony, for instance, Amien Rais set out a sweeping critique of
the regime, asserted that Indonesians who launched a ‘‘people power’’ revolution would
be justified . . . but only if things were not properly handled soon. It was, in the end, a
typical deflection: apparently radical, ultimately tame, and in both respects
characteristic of the democracy circuit. (From author’s notes, February 23, 1998.)
228 Indonesia’s democracy protests

departure for standard democracy discussions, and the entire event was
planned with a fair amount of cloak and dagger (announced via secret fax
and e-mail messages to supporters, the press and, without doubt, a few
security types). Still, it remained an elite action, taken on behalf of
impoverished Indonesians rather than in league with them. Without
mass participants, the rally came off without any real violence – but the
urban, elite marchers were a vulnerable and small assembly, and soldiers
rounded them all up in less than two minutes.63
More organized activists (PRD members, students and LSM workers)
were caught between elite dissidents and mass communities. Although
a growing presence at the urban democracy forums, they also favored more
concrete action than public intellectuals openly condoned. With mass
unrest growing in early 1998, however, even organized activists seemed
unsure how far to push mass protest – particularly as rumors spread that
General Probowo was provoking riots to provide cover for authoritarian
retrenchment. Hence organized labor and land protests dropped in 1998s
first months, even as generalized unrest grew.64 Moreover, while author-
ities frightened elite opponents with veiled threats, they had recently
taken more direct measures to prevent organized challenges. On March 5,
1997 PPP leader Sri Bintang Pamunkas was arrested on subversion
charges, linked particularly to his efforts to organize an unofficial oppos-
ition party, the Partai Uni Demokrasi Indonesia (PUDI, United
Democratic Party of Indonesia).65 In April 1997, authorities sentenced
detained PRD members (arrested in the months following the July 27,
1996 unrest) to some of the harshest penalties meted out in years.66 In
early 1998, dozens of labor activists, particularly in the East Java indus-
trial corridor, were arrested or disappeared.

63
From notes taken after observing the rally.
64
Rustam Ibrahim for LBH described the diminution in labor and land protests to me as a
consequence of both the economic crisis (workers who had jobs didn’t want to provoke
lay-offs) and organizers’ disinclination to jeopardize the precarious collectives that they
had put together. Arrests and disappearances had increased during this period, and
mass protests seemed more vulnerable to repression than usual. Interview with Rustam
Ibrahim at LBH.
65
Jakarta Post, March 6, 1997.
66
Human Rights Watch 1997. In part, the report states that, ‘‘Budiman Soedjatmiko,
head of the PRD, was sentenced to thirteen years in prison, and Garda Sembiring, head
of the group’s student affiliate, to twelve. Seven others were sentenced to prison terms
ranging from eighteen months to eight years. In Surabaya, East Java, three other
students associated with the same organization – Dita Indah Sari, Coen Husein Ponto,
and Mohamed Soleh – were also sentenced to heavy terms. Dita’s sentence of six years
was reduced on appeal to five; the four-year terms of the two others were reduced to
three and a half years.’’
 The 1997 financial crisis and the MPR 229

More organized, but smaller and secretive demonstrations began once

more as the general assembly approached – just as the rioting began to
abate. Street protests started on February 9, when a group called the Red
and White Front (Barisan Merah-Puti) marched in and around
Bandung.67 Riots had recently occurred in the area, and the demonstra-
tors seemed interested in harnessing that unrest by demanding political
transparency, an accounting for the Rupiah’s fall, and reduced basic
commodity prices. Like many late New Order demonstrations, this
assembly, and those that followed over the next few days, were small
and brief, but they were also more organized and secretive – and initiated
nasty state reprisals. On February 12, eight Bandung student leaders were
kidnapped in moves later attributed to special forces under Probowo’s
command, briefly ending Bandung demonstrations.68 Beginning on
February 11 in Jakarta, a group calling itself the Tim Pembela Demokrasi
(Democracy Defense Team) held a series of demonstrations with
between 200 and 400 participants (including many veterans of the 1996
PDI conflict). Most marches were unannounced – although about twenty
minutes before each, organizers faxed demonstration plans to the press
club to insure a media presence.69 By February 20, these demonstrations
ceased as reports of activist abductions once more came in.70 (In July and
August 1998, Kopassus troops began to admit what many dissidents
suspected in March: that they abducted and tortured twenty-five activists
between February and March – of whom only thirteen resurfaced alive.)
Through the end of February, despite rising pockets of unrest, author-
ities managed to maintain at least the most crucial element of their
program against unrest and mass politics: they kept it fragmented.71
Elite activists and dissidents remained easily intimidated, more organized
and radical political activists had been hounded into watchful hiding,
and mass protests and rioting had been socially isolated and partially
mollified by the release of relief goods. Despite keterbukaan, monetary
crisis and increased anti-regime mobilization, the New Order kept dissent
internally divided enough to clip its wings.

67
Kompas, February 10, 1998.
68
Interview Mulya Lubis from KIPP(Komite Independen Pemantau Pemilu, Independent
Election Monitoring Committee).
69
Taped interview Naipospos February 1998.
70
On February 21, for example, I went to the main office of the YLBH in Jakarta, in the
company of a friend well known to the staff there. We were informed that the
foundation’s leaders were keeping a low profile because of all the disappearances, and
that parked cars containing people who seemed to be surveiling the office had been seen
in the area. (Field notes, February 22, 1998.)
71
See Siegel 2001: 91–92.
230 Indonesia’s democracy protests

At this point, however, the regime made a critical mistake, inadvert-

ently granting student activists the resources to form a single movement.
In a move that seems designed to further quarantine activist constituen-
cies from one another, on February 20, Major General Djadja Suparman
(denying that demonstrations were prohibited) stipulated that they
should ‘‘occur in participants’ respective places.’’ He went on to promise
that if activists moved into the streets, the military would take firm
action.72 Other authorities soon echoed the announcement. Students
took this announcement to mean that long-prohibited campus protests
would thenceforth be tolerated, particularly when other officials picked up
on Suparman’s distinction between the permissible and the prohibited.
From that point, campus lawns, university buildings, student and alumni
associations all became resources for movement activity.73 Prior to that,
and despite the partial revitalization of student institutions (the press and
university councils) under keterbukaan, authorities had prevented wide-
spread student movements, and used violence (as in Ujang Pandang in
1986) when protests grew too strong. From February 23, 1998, new and
stable access to university resources allowed sustained, daily student
protests across Indonesia. The protests soon grew less isolated as well: if
Indonesian students were in general allowed to protest on campuses, then
any university campus became a protest arena, and any campus action
became part of an apprehensible and single-student movement. Any
attack on a student assembly, similarly, came to be viewed as an assault
on a national student body – and reliably triggered further demonstra-
tions across the country. On February 25, a banner ‘‘New Order Struggle
Campus’’ stretched across the entrance to the University of Indonesia.74
After February 23, campus demonstrations spread rapidly across
Indonesia and adopted a dynamic array of tactics. Students held mimbar
bebas (open fora) that evoked the PDI siege. They marched and rallied
inside campuses, undertook hunger strikes, and organized aksi kaprihati-
nan (demonstrations of uneasiness) designed to avoid antagonizing
authorities and to send principled messages (in the moral force tradition).
Since most Indonesian elites had graduated from some university, many

72
Jawa Post, February 20, 1998. The exact words were: ‘‘Asal aksi itu dilaksanakan di
tempatnya masing-masing. Kalau sampai turun ke jalan, kami tindak tegas.’’
73
Others have described the shift in the student movement at this moment as mainly one
involving new actors in the protests – formal student organizations and members of the
campus faculty and educational bureaucracy. That these groups undertook
demonstrations on campus is presented as a natural consequence of the new forces
involved – but I think the key to the entire shift lies in the new permission given to use
campus facilities. See Soewarsono 1999a: 159–163.
74
Nusantara et al. 2001: 35.
 The 1997 financial crisis and the MPR 231

began to return to what seemed protected demonstrations, as alumni, for

the campus was, to use Suparman’s permitting phrase, ‘‘their place’’ as
well.75 Public intellectuals and university administrators defended the
protests, and kept security forces off university grounds. In early March,
Gajah Mada produced the largest demonstrations since the NKK/BKK,
when over 10,000 students marched down the university’s main avenue.
A small hunger strike preceded that action – a strike that soldiers had
harassed before General Suparman’s announcement, but left alone there-
after. Interestingly, students at that hunger strike, interviewed days before
the mobilization, expressed feeling isolated from larger political currents,
and ignored by their classmates.76
The sudden reversal of long-standing prohibitions on campus politics is
rather surprising. Since the early 1970s, New Order policies that fragmented
and localized dissent, and particularly prevented aggrieved individuals
from forming action-oriented associations that could sustain dissent.
Even as keterbukaan had liberalized many of Indonesia’s political rules, it
maintained established efforts to keep dissident organizations fragmented.
Moreover, by the late 1990s, most Indonesians, as we have seen, had
internalized most of these rules, making their enforcement quite simple.
The economic crisis, however, made fragmenting policies more diffi-
cult to sustain and less likely to work, particularly as international actors
entered the picture. In 1998, the IMF demanded political and fiscal
reforms (a revised national budget, an end to consumer subsidies that
successfully moderated village unrest earlier in the year, and measures
against corruption and nepotism). It also criticized plans to fix an
exchange rate, ending an alternative to which the regime had committed
a great share of its dwindling prestige. With Suharto visibly weakened –
and receiving almost daily, publicized calls from global leaders pleading
for reform – a broader and broader range of Indonesian society was drawn
into demonstrations. Faced with the deepening economic crisis, an
approaching MPR, stronger internal regime conflict and intense inter-
national pressure, the regime needed to create some space for itself. The
Suparman announcement inadvertently gave students new resources, but
seems more designed to segregate students from other potential demon-
strators. Security forces were almost certainly concerned to prevent
mixed street demonstrations, particularly as the 1998 MPR meeting
approached, and would have known that similar large and diverse rallies
had recently toppled other dictators in Asia.

75
Siegel 2001.
76
Interview with author, February 27, 1998.
232 Indonesia’s democracy protests

Beyond the MPR

The MPR meeting passed without producing any particularly large or
explosive protest, but also without undercutting the momentum building
on university campuses. From the beginning, these campus protests
defied new regulations and strove to gain the streets. Many initially
adopted tactics suited to fixed-site protest: the mimbar bebas, sit-ins and
the hunger strikes. Soon, however, parades around campus grew routine,
particularly as activists began regarding authoritarian control itself as the
dominant issue.77 From March 20, most campus demonstrations tried to
turon jalan (to gain the streets, a term that invoked student calls in the
early 1980s to turon massa).78 The effort drew students into clashes with
soldiers at campus exits. Students sometimes retreated after minor
skirmishes, but often stood their ground and fought it out with under-
matched security forces. Violent confrontations in one campus sparked
protests in others, and the movement gathered force daily, particularly
when missing activist reports began to circulate, or detainees returned
from custody with stories of torture, interrogation, and the first eye-
witness testimony linking Probowo’s troops to kidnappings.79 Student
activists did not initially engage mass society,80 and often when they broke
through to the streets, their demonstration dissipated with no clear sense
of purpose. At the same time, some students seem to have discussed
reform with some soldiers at university gates; cultivating ties to Navy,
Air Force and Marine officers led to later supporting relationships between
those service branches and student demonstrators. By April 15, the first
coordinated, multi-campus protests were taking place, on the initiative of a
broad activist front called the Urban Forum (Forum Kota, or Forkot).81
In May, IMF pressure forced Suharto to lift consumer subsidies on gas
and oil, and he lost his remaining ability to keep protest segmented. The
move had been scheduled many months before, probably on the reliable
assumption that protests would have abated after the MPR elections. But
access to campus resources prolonged student demonstrations, which
were in full swing when oil and electricity price hikes took effect.
Immediate and massive violence across the archipelago directly followed
these measures. Mobilized students joined these new protests, and

77
Pattiradjawane 1999: 121–138.
78
The efforts of students to leave campus in their demonstrations are reported as
something new in a Kompas article on April 3, 1998.
79
McRae 2001: 11.
80
Siegel 2001: 91–93.
81
Siegel 2001: 37–39.
 Beyond the MPR 233

suddenly defying military blockades at university gates was not a merely

symbolic act, but an effort to join something larger, building on the
streets. Unlike 1974 Malari protests, students and activists in 1998 had
considerably more experience with mass communities, and were initially
able to keep demonstrations focused on issues of democracy, corruption
and economic mismanagement. By May’s second week, sustained
demonstrations across Indonesia even won guarded approval from
some sections of ABRI – and particularly from Marine, Air Force and
Navy service branches.
On May 12, soldiers fired at demonstrators from Trisakti university,
killing four, and ongoing protests surged to a paroxysm of violence.82
Almost immediately, rumors began linking the worst violence to mysteri-
ous provocateurs sporting military haircuts, even suggesting that such
agents had executed the Trisakti students on purpose. Undercover
Kopassus men, angling to provoke chaos to justify martial law under
General Probowo, seem to have teased what might have been peaceful
demonstrations into looting and vandalism. Mobs ransacked and burned
some of Jakarta’s most affluent shopping centers, and more focused
attacks on Chinese people and businesses occurred in other neighbor-
hoods – attacks once more strongly linked to troops that Probowo com-
manded. The greatest violence occurred from May 13 to May 14 while
Suharto was in Cairo. On May 14, much of Jakarta was on fire, and would
continue to burn for three days. Troops then spread across Jakarta to
restore order, and students retreated to their various campuses, badly
shaken. Around 2,250 people died in the rioting. 31 remained missing
and over 150 Chinese women had been raped in what seemed a coord-
inated assault.83 (By November 1998, government and independent
human rights’ bodies agreed that troops loyal to Probowo raped
Chinese women in an organized and coordinated manner during these
days, and also reported that many of these actions were planned at a
May 14 meeting among twelve influential Probowo supporters.)84 40
large shopping centers, 4,083 shops and 1,026 private homes had been
attacked, burned or looted.85
After May 15, students went to their campuses to regroup. On May 18,
they again moved off campus, this time to the MPR building across town.

82
Siegel 2001; see also Sembiring 1998; Furom, June 16, 1998; Pattiradjawane 1999.
83
Tim Relawan untuk Kemanusiaan (Volunteer Team for Humanitarianism) July 28,
1998. These figures are generally supported by the government-sponsored Tim
Gabungan Pencari Fakta (TGPF, Consolidated Fact-Finding Team). ‘‘Pemerintah
Akui Ada Perkosaan Massal.’’ Reported in Media, September 22, 1998; Sumardi 1998.
84
Jakarta Post, November 4, 1998.
85
National Committee on Human Rights’ estimates, reported in Kompas, June 4, 1998.
234 Indonesia’s democracy protests

Students wore identifying university jackets, distinguishing them from

non-student elements they thought were most responsible for the riots.
Military officers, especially form the Air Force, Navy and Marines,
flanked the students to buffer them from hostile government forces, but
also echoed some student demands in guardedly supportive statements.
Several times students tried to march from Parliament to the national
monument near the Presidential Palace, but troops blocked the road,
containing protests at the MPR building, but not dispersing students.86
Outside Jakarta, similar rallies occurred: half a million gathered
on May 20 at the Sultan’s palace at Jogjakarta; thousands marched to
the provincial legislature in Benjarmasin; 20,000 demonstrated at
Surakarta’s city council – and so on across the archipelago.
The break came when Suharto returned from Cairo. Even in Egypt, he
expressed some inclination to resign his office, although back in Jakarta
he demanded the right to name a new transition cabinet. By then,
however, Suharto’s allies were fast deserting him, and conflict within
the regime, particularly between Wiranto and Prabowo, was escalating
dangerously. On the evening of May 20, General Wiranto pressed
Suharto to resign. At around that same time, GOLKAR head and MPR
speaker Harmoko also withdrew support for Suharto both publicly and
privately. On May 21, Suharto resigned and turned power over to
Vice-President Habibie. That night, a stand off occurred between troops
loyal to Wiranto and those backing Prabowo, outside the new president’s
house. Wiranto’s troops eventually escorted Probowo’s to the barracks –
beginning a series of demotions and transfers that eventually left a
marginal Prabowo in undeclared, self-imposed exile.87
The new regime was structurally, and in its personnel, little changed
from the New Order. Habibie replaced Suharto and named a cabinet that
included several reformers, but the New Order’s essential structure and
staffing remained. The democracy movement had not the capacity to
demand representation from its own ranks, let alone to displace old
regime members immediately. Those who remained in power had few
debts to the mass movement, and the transition initially emphasized
continuity and order. Still, authorities had to rapidly adjust the rules of
participation. Restrictions on non-state political organizations fell away,
and by June, new political and activist organizations, such as
Forkot GERAK (Anti-Anarchy Reform Movement) and KEPARAD
(Committee for the Struggle Against Armed Forces Dual Function)

86
McRae 2001: 14.
87
Straits Times, November 5, 1998.
 Beyond the MPR 235

regularly demonstrated. Many formerly weak associations, able for the

first time to expand, also joined the demonstrations.88 Habibie was forced
to authorize several inquiries into New Order brutality and corruption,
and these produced evidence of ABRI’s horrendous and sustained vio-
lence, particularly in Aceh and East Timor. On the strength of these
revelations, Wiranto was eventually promoted to defense minister, a sly
move from Suharto’s play book that removed him from the ABRI com-
mand; then President Wahid subsequently replaced Wiranto in the Ministry,
appointing the first civilian to that post since before the New Order. The
suddenly free media eagerly covered this activity, and helped publicize
more common activist campaigns. Activists resisted efforts to re-impose
authoritarian controls (such as ‘‘Government Regulation Number 2’’ forcing
all assemblies to register march routes and destinations with authorities).
Nevertheless, activists remained relatively weak and vulnerable to
external provocation and intrigue. Mysterious ‘‘ninja’’ killings in
Eastern Java in late 1998, reportedly yet another destabilizing plot from
a military faction, terrorized the populations. New freedoms provided
leeway for bloody communal violence, as in Maluku and Kalimantan.
Weak movement organizations had trouble directing mass action, and
political conflict often flared between activist collectives. When soldiers
killed seven more student demonstrators on November 1, 1998, democ-
racy activists mobilized once more, this time pushing through some
important elements of their program to dismantle some of the structures
of the New Order – pushing the democracy process further than many
officials would have preferred.89 Popular protest encouraged broader
investigations into human rights, the separation of the police from
ABRI, the reduction of military seats in the DPR, the further investiga-
tions into Suharto’s ill-gotten wealth, and a review of the regime’s policies
in East Timor.
Still, the movement’s general disarray meant that it was unable, as a
political force, to exact a share of political power, and access to govern-
ment positions only broadened in earnest after 1999 elections, in which
activist constituencies played strong roles. Elections followed in stages as
the New Order had mandated: a popular election chose a national
assembly in 1999, and that assembly chose a president (Abdurrahman
Wahid) in March 2000. But the elections also ushered in myriad
new political parties, with supporting mass organizations pursuing far

88
For a discussion of the variety of student organizations that emerged during this period,
consult Saunders 1998.
89
See, for instance, student protests against Government decree Number 2 on September 17,
1998. (Kompas, September 18, 1998.)
236 Indonesia’s democracy protests

less-restricted campaigns. Still, the work of rebuilding a democratic

Indonesia had only begun, and both entrenched forces like ABRI, and
unruly communal relations have threatened Indonesia’s new freedoms.
Nor have either of the post-Habibie leaders been particularly successful in
forging an apparatus that could both govern and represent. This, too, is
surely a legacy of the New Order’s particular style of repression.

Thinking about the Indonesian transition

The New Order decayed in ways that prevented both state agencies from
reconsolidating power, as SLORC did in Burma, and social movements
from acquiring strong, organized and coordinated perspectives on gov-
ernance, as occurred in the Philippines. Three forces combined to bring
down Suharto, but the process left no clear successor organizations to fill
the void the New Order left. First, social protest undoubtedly provided
some of the more important blows to the regime, particularly since
Suharto had premised his entire regime on its ability to restore and
maintain order. Yet Indonesian protest never was able to arrange itself
into a government in waiting, and for this reason advanced as much by
dint of demonstrating that the existing political arrangement could not
prevent unrest as by posing any clear alternative. Second, divisions in the
New Order destabilized the regime, but Suharto had done such a good
job balancing his rivals against one another that no faction emerged in
control of the state. While state officials were perhaps alone powerful
enough to convince Suharto to resign, they have been, individually and as
agencies, marked by weakness and vulnerability since. Wiranto dis-
patched Probowo, Wahid neutralized Wiranto and subsequent power
struggles in ABRI have been far more defensive than aggressive.
GOLKAR failed miserably in its initial post-Suharto campaigns, and
other political parties, such as those that supported both Wahid and
Megawati, have demonstrated their ability to mobilize supporters, but
not to help stabilize a government. Third, the massive Asian currency
crisis proved too much for the corrupt regime to manage, and as the
economy collapsed, both domestic and international forces bore down
on Suharto, demanding change. But in the absence of either a strong
successor faction within the regime or an organized and capable alter-
native from society, structural conditions weakening the regime did little
to promote an alternative.
Because the New Order countered most dissent with efforts to frag-
ment opponents, accumulating regime weakness did not immediately
signal an impending regime change. Proscriptions against organized dis-
sent, like efforts to foster service branch and personal rivalries inside the
 Thinking about the Indonesian transition 237

military, meant that even when state agents fell on hard times, alternatives
to the New Order did not immediately arise. The end of the New Order
therefore came both as a complete surprise and as the natural conse-
quences of decay begun a decade earlier. Although Filipino activists
doubtless benefited from economic collapse, they still had the organiza-
tional power, in Marcos’s final two years, to make their own political
opportunities, and drive the regime into crisis. Indonesian oppositionists
had no such capability, and relied rather more on the coincidence of
economic crisis and political election to generate the anti-dictatorship
movement’s final thrust. Initially, moreover, they had to rely on the
stronger positions of defecting regime officials, stirred less by assertions
of mass power than by desires to avert unfettered mass violence.
These processes have had important legacies for Indonesian politics
after 1998. Every successor institution – state or social – has been sig-
nificantly fragmented by the New Order’s political style, and this has
created a substantial social void. Political leaders do not control mass
energies so much as they have hoped to direct and claim them. Other
legacies of New Order rule (ethnic conflict resulting from forced or
state-sponsored internal migration policies; rural violence fostered by
state-sponsored militia designed to keep East Timor, or Aceh, or West
Papua in the fold; social dislocation resulting from the past impossibility
of building social or political organizations to direct social demands and
claims; and, continuing economic crisis) have also destabilized post-
Suharto Indonesia. More damagingly, it is difficult to imagine resolving
many of these problems without some level of organized political and
social life capable of connecting mass society with national leaders. The
absence of just such connections traces directly back to the old dispensa-
tion’s desire to rule by scattering its opposition, fragmenting its society,
and monopolizing political organization.
11 Democracy protest and state repression

How do patterns of contention shape transitions to democracy? Many

describe protest as essentially an accelerant, pushing state reformers
toward making broader concessions than they originally had in mind.
Others reduce democracy struggle to almost an epiphenomenon: waters
rushing along channels already carved by shifts in regime member inter-
est, by class development and economic growth1 or some other essentially
evolutionary dynamic. Some look to explain regime transitions via alli-
ances between reformers inside the state and moderates in society, as if
these identities were significant independent of, and prior to, democracy
struggle.2 Others argue that analysts should write a clearer role for pro-
cesses of struggle into explanations for these events,3 often examining
how mass-mobilization pressures regime and social elites into democra-
tizing agreements.4
Most of these approaches, to my mind, share a central flaw: the process
of economic development, changing elite interest or political struggle are
judged in terms of how they bring social and political arrangement
toward democracy, rather than in how they break down tyranny. Even
demonstrating shifts in some elite interests toward democracy falls short of
the task, because authoritarian regimes often persist despite the democratic
proclivities of some of their members. The real phenomena we should
address do not concern the emergence of forces demanding democracy,
but the evolution of conditions that undo programs of repression and
domination on which dictatorships depend. Any account of democratiza-
tion processes needs to explain mechanisms that pry open the dictator-
ship. Consider, as an example of one such effort, Elizabeth Wood’s work
on El Salvador and South Africa. In her account, the rising costs that
guerilla warfare in each country imposed on members of the oligarchy

1
Cutwright 1963; Lipset 1959; DiPalma 1990.
2
O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986; for a critique, see Collier and Mahoney 1997.
3
Bormeo 1997.
4
Bunce 1999; Ekiert 1996.

238
 Mobilizing opportunities 239

diminished political and economic elites’ commitment to repression,

dividing them from members of the security apparatus. In this reading,
repression required the joint efforts of political, economic and security
force elites, and with the business classes seeking a separate peace, the
military was unable to retain its authoritarian posture.5 More generally,
we have seen that authorities’ actions to consolidate power and defend
against specific challengers create unique political circumstances in each
of the cases. If we understand dictatorship in terms of particular mechan-
isms to bear down on particular challengers, then we should also under-
stand democracy movements via their abilities to break these strategies
down.
Three main themes emerge from the case narratives that will structure
this final chapter. First, events that encouraged democracy movements
acquire significance as political opportunities only in connection with
ongoing modes of contention. Opportunities that attract our greatest
concern do not merely encourage mobilization, but encourage modes of
mobilization with particular power to undercut established state–society
relations. Second, interactions between state repression and claim mak-
ing (i.e. contention) influence who will be available for the democratizing
coalition, and on what terms. Third, the political character of alliances
among democratizing forces in turn influences movement power, coherence
and capacity – factors that all matter immensely in the post-dictatorship
settlement. We might retrospectively describe transitions as pacted,
negotiated or something else, but the likelihood that a struggle will move
in one or another such direction has much to do with established patterns
of contention.

Mobilizing opportunities
In both the Philippines and Indonesia, long-term trends toward political
openness (martial law’s abolition and keterbukaan) increased protest
levels, but developments most crucial to increasing anti-dictatorship
pressure (as opposed to mere mobilization) allowed modes of struggle
that regimes had previously inhibited. Marcos’s recurring pattern of
reform and crackdown originally demobilized most moderates, and rad-
icalized others (sending them to ND networks.) After 1981, however,
economic crisis and martial law’s end combined to encourage more
resilient movement organizations of the political center, alongside strong
movement growth on the left. Under these conditions, state repression

5
Wood 2000.
240 Democracy protest and state repression

ceased to inhibit centrist protest, and in fact triggered large anti-regime

mobilizations in which more reform-oriented forces played larger roles.
The simultaneous operation of both moderate and radical networks,
moreover, rendered state gestures toward reform or popular participation
even less effective demobilizing strategies. Not only did reform (intended
to diminish support for armed struggle) continue to mobilize moderate
networks, but moderates were now more able to respond to repression
with their own mobilization – though some still radicalized into ND
groups. Hence, attacks on moderate leaders like Aquino produced the
broadest possible protest, and both participatory opportunities and
repression began to trigger assertive, sustained protest.
Despite keterbukaan, Indonesian authorities retained strong and succes-
sful prohibitions on opposition organization. Activists did begin to use
official parties to evade some New Order regulations, but this did not
reverse the general consequences of state prohibition. Anti-regime groups
usually could not command demonstrations (as in the Philippines), and
most powerful episodes of contention (like the 1996 PDI protests) required
direct and powerful external provocation. Without the economic crisis, and
the fear of rioting triggered by that crisis, protests surrounding the 1998
MPR would likely have been weaker, shorter and less threatening.
Authorities allowed student demonstrations on campus in view of these
developments, and that change gave protest a more sustained central thrust.
Simultaneous rural violence, economic crisis and urban protest, now more
coordinated by activist centers, hampered Suharto’s ability to maintain
order, and eroded his legitimacy. Massive May riots finally convinced
ABRI and GOLKAR leaders to withdraw support from the president.
The difference between events that produced movement opportunities
in these two cases reflects two separate factors. First, the centrality of
movement organization in the Philippines, and its virtual absence in
Indonesia, meant that anti-regime pressure worked off different triggers.
The Philippine anti-dictatorship movement decisively benefited from
opportunities that expanded organizational resources (over two years
before the dictatorship fell) and movements then purposively deployed
their forces, making their own opportunities as they went. Despite mod-
est Indonesian organizational growth, political opportunities that spurred
contention were more directly mobilizing, and less mediated by organiza-
tional structures or decisions. Indonesian activists could not coordinate
protest until powerful unorganized mobilization produced new (i.e.
campus-based) organizational resources. Second, particularly subversive
mobilization forms were subversive in relation to specific modes of state
domination. Philippine authorities depended so heavily on portraying
dissidents as communist that they rapidly lost support when ordinary
 Mobilizing opportunities 241

people (businessmen, housewives and clergy) moved to the opposition’s

fore. By easing the political polarization that Marcos required, moderate
resistance became far more subversive than radical insurgency. In
Indonesia, sustained multi-sectoral protest (as Marcos had endured for
years) was particularly corrosive to a state founded on the idea of order.
Broad and sustained unrest signaled Suharto’s inability to deliver on the
New Order’s central domestic objective: a docile and fragmented society.
Unlike either Philippine or Indonesian protests, Burma’s democracy
movement did not benefit from any liberalizing trend; Ne Win’s regime
on the eve of the March 1988 Rangoon demonstrations remained com-
mitted to preventing anti-state mobilization in lowland Burma. Routine
political processes did not contain participatory moments (like elections)
that periodically spurred mobilization in the Philippines and Indonesia,
and repression had driven activists to the insurgent countryside or into
fragmented and isolated underground cells. By utterly proscribing dis-
sent, the regime prevented anyone from demanding limited reforms.
Moreover, the arduous and precarious construction of underground
cells made their members unwilling to risk rash or early action, and so
nothing encouraged activists to probe for some sign of an authoritarian
thaw. Protest mobilized following steep economic declines triggering
mass unrest, rather than hints of political change exciting activist hopes.
With social networks and associations pruned back to the township and
village levels, only markets efficiently diffused grievances and unrest (as in
the 1987 demonetization). Furious local mobilization early on, such as
March 1988 student protests, responded to specific state attacks on
definite and proximate groups (i.e. students) but then established
networks that could coordinate later, broader mobilization.
As underground activists became more involved, however, new sorts of
events stimulated mobilization. As in Indonesia, the Burmese movement
lacked an initial organizational apparatus, but activists in submerged
networks soon began planning activities with a degree of control that
Indonesians never achieved. By late July, activists were already planning
nationwide demonstrations for August 8, indicating that mobilization no
longer needed a particular exogenous provocation (apart from general
anger at the regime) and movement leaders could create and define their
own opportunities. The rapid, simultaneous emergence of strike com-
mittees, strike newspapers, and national protests all reflect a degree of
central coordination more like Philippine contention than Indonesian –
although the movement’s descent into chaos also illustrates this coord-
inating authority’s comparative weakness.
As in the Philippines and Indonesia, Burmese subversion acquired
meaning in relation to the history of Burmese contention. Since 1962
242 Democracy protest and state repression

the regime had been most determined to prevent open dissent in lowland
cities, with important consequences for 1988. Beyond harsh, immediate
repression, authorities responded to urban dissent by closing universities
and sending students home – providing two advantages to the embryonic
movement. First, university closures halted urban activity (school life as
well as protest) so underground activists could begin contacting and
training university students. Second, the arrival of cosmopolitan activists
at rural villages spread news of the movement and established connec-
tions that underground activists would build on over the next several
months. Nevertheless, the national coordination of Burmese protest did
less than one might think to weaken the regime. Because authorities held
power by holding the cities, they withstood the movement’s assault by
murdering students, and chasing survivors into the countryside.
Authorities had good reason to prefer this kind of fight to protest in the
streets, for they had stable, almost routine ways of dealing with insur-
gency, and surely could accommodate an influx of inexperienced fighters
into enemy camps.
What, then, can we say about the events that triggered these democracy
movements? First, initial movement opportunities led to riper, democra-
tizing challengers by encouraging modes of resistance that authorities had
tried to repress, resistance that pushed directly against the state’s particu-
lar containment strategy. Hence events that mobilized and angered the
political center fueled democracy protest in the Philippines, while the
movement in Indonesia blossomed when events allowed sustained, and
eventually more coordinated protest from diverse social groups. In
Burma, economic crisis provoked such strong anti-regime protests that
underground activists could plan a more sustained and extensive public
attack than Burma had seen for decades (although by rising earlier in the
cycle and avoiding some prominent mistakes, the Burmese underground
also made the most of these opportunities).
Second, where activists could draw on stronger organizational
resources, protest required less exogenous stimulus. 1986 electoral cheat-
ing in the Philippines was not entirely out of proportion to earlier fraud,
but the mass mobilizing presidential campaign and the expansion of
movement organizations positioned activists to seize upon those events
to new effect. Indonesia had far fewer organizations, and protest consist-
ently required external events like the MPR meeting, or the Trisakti
student murders to trigger and coordinate activity. Indonesian protest,
moreover, was strongest when it threatened to loose the pent up energies
of mass society in a wave of chaos and destruction. In Burma, initial
mobilization required the massive provocation of demonetization, but
later protests were increasingly planned – until the state retreat opened
 Regime repression and the movement’s constituent alliance 243

the field of play to less organized collectives, and over-ran the movement
leadership’s organizational capacity.
Links between specific political opportunities and forms of struggle in
each case therefore retrace established patterns of contention. These links
not only explain why each democracy movement achieved broad scope,
but also imply why particular styles of mobilization subverted particular
regimes. Nevertheless, these associations tell only half of the story. The
other half involves constraints on the state’s ability to survive popular
pressure. In this realm, too, established patterns of contention influenced
state activity. As things began to deteriorate for each regime, the prospect
of widespread defections from regime circles increased. Whether or not
these defections occurred, however, depended on the availability of state
and social reformers to one another – an availability also molded by years
of contention.

Regime repression, modes of struggle and the

movement’s constituent alliance
Most theories of democratic transition emphasize the role that middle
classes play in that process, either because this class produces the demo-
cratic agenda, or because it moderates political demands by limiting
distributional claims in favor of procedural reform.6 Such arguments
undoubtedly carry a significant freight of truth, but not the entire load.
The cases suggest more contingency: patterns of contention influenced
how social reformers (middle-class or otherwise) and disgruntled regime
members would be available to one another, if at all. Some patterns of
repression drive all activists toward the political margins (where they
likely develop coalitions around radical challenges to the regime); others
distinguish between legal and illegal modes of dissent, between moderate
and radical claims, or among claim makers from different social classes.
Some repression criminalizes movement organizations or eliminates
experienced activists; other repression allows activists to survive and
lead subsequent protest. Repression directly influences how existentially,
politically or ideologically available social reformers will be to potential
regime defectors. This availability, in turn, shapes the likelihood of defec-
tions from the authoritarian coalition, and so the regime’s resilience in the
face of protest.
Years of Marcos-style repression produced an organized, moderate and
increasingly hardy faction of the Philippine anti-dictatorship movement;

6
Higley and Gunther 1992.
244 Democracy protest and state repression

as the regime imploded and communists gained strength, this faction’s

availability helped rouse nervous or dissatisfied regime members to action,
and certainly explains the movement’s subsequent centrality to the
transition. In Burma, by contrast, social elites were every bit as marginal
as mass members of society. Pro-democracy elites could hence never
present themselves as an incremental reform movement that provided
state actors an alternative to both a fundamental transformation (in which
all regime members would lose out) and deepening authoritarian rule.
In Indonesia, as in the Philippines, a distinct elite and moderate
pro-democracy force existed. Unlike Filipino moderates, however,
this stratum was left unorganized and fearful of mass unrest by regime
repression – with little option but to ask authorities to lead the reform
process. Violence and chaos, rather than potential support from social
moderates, therefore triggered actions against Suharto from within the
state, and also ensured that regime members would dominate the early
transformation. Hence the most successful and stable transitions
occurred where committed opposition leaders, astride independent
political bases, stood in useful proximity to wavering members of the
authoritarian regime. Where such leaders did not exist, or were unavailable
to regime members, the struggle moved toward open warfare (Burma) or a
palace coup (Indonesia). Let us look more closely at these two developments,
before returning to the more stable Philippine transition.
Ultimately, the Burmese struggle failed, despite sustained mobiliza-
tion, because no connection was possible between movement leaders and
regime members. The struggle, moreover, developed in directions that
shrank possibilities for such connections. Decades of repression wiped
out any open or accepted dissent and prevented a dissident discourse
from gaining influence within the regime. Indeed, most regime members
were shocked by concessions to reforming ideas that Ne Win seemed to
make at the 1988 party congress, and evidence suggests that they lobbied
for stronger authoritarian impositions, not reform.7 Impoverished, weak
and often fearful, excluded elites remained elite only in their intellectual
capacities and experiences: that poor man used to be a powerful lawyer,
that quiet woman was a respected student leader. Excluded elites were no
more able (or willing) to cut a separate deal with the regime than anyone
else, and this encouraged strong solidarity between the movement’s
summit and its base, governed by stable anti-regime orientations. Still,
as things developed, ties between movement leaders and mass society, if
extensive, were also quite weak. Recall how completely retired General

7
Mya Maung 1990.
 Regime repression and the movement’s constituent alliance 245

Aung Gyi misread mass sentiments in his August 24 speech, or how

underground activists could not dissuade mass members from seizing
local government offices. The divide between state and movement also
explains why the Tatmadaw never lost its ability to use violence. Troops
from bloody frontier counter-insurgency saw protesters as another
‘‘other,’’ and were summoned by authorities for exactly that reason.
With no bridge between Burmese society and the state, political con-
tention moved toward a peculiar combination of protest and insurrec-
tionary strategies, premised on the disbelief that authorities would ever
make real concessions to democracy advocates. With virtually the whole
society backing the protests in August and conditions utterly polarized
between the (absent) state and a movement at floodtide, sustained
massive demonstrations applied little additional pressure. Indeed, this
very polarization distanced authorities from movement appeals, and
allowed many sections of the movement to shun conciliatory overtures
from the Maung Maung government.8 Starting on August 20, strike
committees also embarked upon a more insurrectionary path, seizing
local government offices and assuming their functions. Administering
these offices often overshadowed the need to build stronger movement
mechanisms or to attract support from wavering members of the ruling
elite. Hence, the dramatic exercise of movement capacity never dimin-
ished the state’s ability to respond or divided regime unity.
In Indonesia, groups available to challenge the state had adapted to
repressive patterns restricting movement organization: free-floating pub-
lic intellectuals, cautious activists working in (mainly) small NGOs,
members of official opposition parties, and a small cadre of new and
secret activists in the illegal PRD underground. Mass society had little
direct place in this group, but counted in two indirect respects. First,
though political activists could not organize mass bases, they drew poor
communities into local campaigns, and advocated more general reforms
on behalf of the poor and marginalized. Second, greatly threatened by the
economic crisis, many poor communities rioted between late 1997 and
1998. Still, without significant organizational machineries, pro-democracy
activists did not possess the authority or experience to direct mass unrest
against authorities. As mobilization increased through 1998, therefore, it
was not clear how activists would translate their own dissent or mass
energies into political influence.

8
Maung Maung (Dr.) 1999; this account is partially confirmed by interview with
informant B–1.
246 Democracy protest and state repression

Unable to control the violence that periodically emerged from mass

society (often with military provocation), democracy activists never
acquired the insurrectionary self-confidence sometimes evident in a
more fragmented Burmese society (or, more predictably, in the
Philippines). Even at its most assertive, therefore, Indonesian protests
never angled to seize state power outright. Demonstrations appealed to
forces within the regime, often ABRI, to take charge of a government in
disarray. In the appeal, demonstrators occupied an ambiguous position,
speaking both on behalf of impoverished Indonesians and as a class
jeopardized by (and fearful of ) unruly mass riots. Sustained, more or
less coordinated protests (particularly escalating student clashes with
security forces from February through March) triggered broader support
from Indonesian society for a reform process. But the violence, especially
in May, also lent urgency to authorities’ efforts to contain student protests
and helped convince (perhaps allowed?) military and party leaders to force
Suharto’s resignation.
Only in the Philippines did state repression allow elite dissidents to
develop a machinery that both gave them control over mass constituen-
cies and allowed a stable movement leadership to form. Anti-dictatorship
leaders often grew within the movement, and could claim to represent
mass society by virtue of concrete organizational ties rather than a
privileged moral or intellectual vantage point (as Indonesian activists
frequently claimed). Moderate movement leaders were credible and
familiar to regime members concerned about the economic crisis, corrup-
tion, political polarization and presidential succession. The movement’s
strong elite base and established institutional support, moreover, helped
assure potential regime defectors and undecided elites that the democra-
tization process would keep the genie of social redistribution in the bottle.
Because democracy protests were organized, the movement could pre-
sent itself as an alternative to the regime (as Burmese activists did) rather
than appealing, for instance, to a faction of the AFP. Marcos’s repressive
strategy – which needed to leave some room for political freedoms – thus
enabled moderate leaders to develop ties to both mass society and the
regime.
This organizational power, emerging as it did in a society that Marcos
had contrived to polarize politically, made massive, peaceful and pro-
grammatically moderate demonstrations both possible and effective. A
powerful moderate movement wing, in turn, placed the relationship
between the movement and the regime on a different footing than that
in either Burma or Indonesia. Movement leaders never seemed caught
between a repressive state and a dangerously violent society (a common
theme in Indonesian protest). Rather, they embraced mass struggle as
 Regime repression and the movement’s constituent alliance 247

their own, apparently collapsing the class distance between movement

constituencies. Political contention cemented the movement’s internal
class alliances, allowing movement leaders to modulate mass activity and
produce comparatively little violence or property damage. In the
Burmese example (more like the Philippine than the Indonesian in
terms of its elite/mass cooperation) Rangoon strike committees often
sank to levels of violence beyond leaders’ preference or control. Burmese
underground groups were loosely connected with shallow social roots,
and could not exercise much control over these formations – although
stronger movement networks in Mandalay meant more control and less
violence.
The Philippine movement coalition produced a curious mix of radical
political tropes (many borrowed from the dynamic insurgency) and
essentially moderate political objectives, held together by a usefully plas-
tic and vague invocation of revolution.9 Under the prevailing conditions,
it was possible to contemplate a bloodless revolution against Marcos, for
moderate leaders could select peaceful struggle, and the movement’s
organizations could control mass members. Most groups made appro-
priate gestures toward redistributive reforms, but could also contain mass
struggle (and eventually compromised away most mass demands). But
what accounts for the subversive power that peaceful demonstrations
attained in the Philippines? Again, we must consider authoritarian
rule’s particular Philippine imprint. The burgeoning moderate move-
ment challenged a core Marcos claim: that he alone prevented commun-
ist triumph. By demonstrating an explicitly non-violent and democratic
alternative to either, the movement triggered defections from the state
and diverted international alliances in ways that critically weakened
Marcos.
Another set of contrasts between the Philippine case and the other two
also depends on differences in movement organization. Both Burmese
and Indonesian movements proved extraordinarily susceptible to exter-
nal provocation. In Burma, rumors that military agents and released
convicts were poisoning activists’ food and water created panic toward
the end of August – and movement participants killed more than one
person who, to their eyes, looked like spies.10 In Indonesia, movement
members made similar attacks on bystanders who could not, for example,
show student ID cards, and the massive May violence (to say nothing of
the mysterious ‘‘ninja killings’’ in East Java after Suharto stepped down)

9
For a fuller discussion of this, see my argument in Boudreau 2001.
10
Smith 1999.
248 Democracy protest and state repression

seem to have been instigated by state agents of some kind.11 In both cases,
external provocation triggered frightened and murderous activist reactions
because movement organizations could not screen outsiders, identify
threats and discipline participant activity. Mobilized activity, particularly
under circumstances where a repressive state might do anything, was
therefore governed by a fear that a comrade could be an enemy.
Violence provoked by state infiltration naturally would give some potential
movement members pause, and increase chances that some potential
dissidents would seek old regime protection. In the Philippines, stronger
movement organizations largely prevented this sort of provocation, and
the transition probably retained strong elite support because it never
entailed violent or unrestrained attacks on adversaries or secondary targets
of opportunity. Efforts to infiltrate Philippine anti-state movements seem
only to have worked when authorities devoted considerable time and
resources to the project, as with the long-term military efforts to infiltrate
the communist movement in the mid-1980s.12 Instructively, some have
linked the CPP’s vulnerability at that time to an earlier period of heedless
expansion, in which new recruits were insufficiently scrutinized.13

Movement outcomes
The failure of Burmese democratization, relative to Philippine and
Indonesian processes, can probably be explained both by factors dis-
cussed here and by those emphasized by other democratization theorists.
Burma had a small middle class, a cohesive state and a fragmented civil
society, all of which diminished prospects of a transition. Yet those who
would doubt that Burmese democracy had sufficient middle-class support
to divide the regime would also have been surprised by Burma’s strong
pro-democracy mobilizations, and would have difficulty accounting for
its defeat by the regime. This work helps explain why the regime could so
thoroughly crush the movement: in contrast to developments in
Indonesia and the Philippines, nothing in Burma altered authorities’
established line of defenses against social challenges. Kyat demonetiza-
tion, police violence and Ne Win’s willingness to speculate on alternative
governmental forms incited mobilization, but did not weaken authorities’
hold on power, alter state–society relations, or diminish the military’s
ability to kill, intimidate and imprison dissidents. Some speculate that
when soldiers retreated in mid-August, they set a trap to entice

11
Siegel 2001.
12
Abinales 1996; Garcia 2001.
13
Jones 1989.
 Movement outcomes 249
14
pro-democracy activists into the open. Troops vanished from the street,
participants recall, precisely as rumors began to describe military strike
committees joining demonstrations. It is difficult to corroborate these
conjectures, but whatever was then going on, the military eventually
lashed out at protesters with undiminished violence.
Philippine and Indonesian events were quite different, for in each, new
forms of mobilization undid established and successful repressive strat-
egies. In the Philippines, the combination of a newly viable centrist oppos-
ition and an expanding armed left constrained the regime’s ability to
repress demonstrations without creating an overwhelming social reaction,
and so prevented Marcos from achieving a political polarization between
the communists and everyone else. Ultimately of course, the regime itself
was so isolated that soldiers refused to follow orders to fire upon the EDSA
demonstrations.15 Organizational prohibitions fragmented Indonesian
dissident expressions, but an increasingly divided state and powerfully
collectivizing financial crisis overwhelmed authorities’ efforts to keep dis-
sident centers isolated from one another. Mobilization attained new power
in both cases, not merely in terms of raw demonstration size, but also in
relationship to strategies of repression and regime survival.
That said, the Philippines and Indonesian transitions also differed
vastly from one another. With its formidable organizational apparatus,
the Philippine movement could itself step into power, and was credible
enough to attract support away from the old regime. After an unsettled
period that included two serious coup attempts and several smaller
adventures, the military and state bureaucracy more or less fell into step
behind the new president. The movement itself supported the new
regime long enough, and with sufficient enthusiasm, to allow the
Aquino government to consolidate. While consolidation took the new
government far from its movement origins, and the movement fragmen-
ted after 1986, activists’ initial power, both relative to defecting regime
members and to Philippine society, seems to have stabilized the transi-
tion, if not to have democratized its social outcomes.
Suharto’s resignation did not end Indonesian protests. On the one
hand, the new president, B. J. Habibie, was no more beloved than
Suharto had been, nor viewed as entirely free of Suharto’s influence.
After the dictator left office, therefore, the new dispensation’s democracy
was by no means assured. But the atomized and fragmented movement
could not push the post-Suharto settlement in any single, clear direction,

14
Lintner 1989.
15
McCoy 1999.
250 Democracy protest and state repression

and instead championed competing political demands, ranging from

liberal reforms to a more Islamic ordering of Indonesian society. Not
surprisingly, therefore, the transition’s early stages remained largely in the
hands of the regime (minus Suharto). In the months that followed, the
liberalized rules of engagement allowed broader protest and new organ-
izational formations, but the old regime’s influence lingered. With neither
strong associations nor experience at building them, mass contention
often strayed toward communal violence or undisciplined direct action.
Those who emerged from the New Order with an organizational network
(including, of course, the military, but also business people and
GOLKAR members) used the unsettled months to make political and
economic hay. With no apparatus to link mass society to coordinated
political activities, and in particular to activities with national and cosmo-
politan referents, Indonesia was vulnerable, volatile and chaotic.
The contrast with the Philippine post-Marcos period is striking. Even
when various Philippine movement organizations began seriously to
question some of President Aquino’s decisions, they also worried that a
weakened administration would provide opportunities for a Marcos- or
rightist-resurgence, and so most activists provided critical support on
items like the new constitution. Movement leaders could even sell such
campaigns to their increasingly disenchanted mass bases. National pol-
itical calculations, that is, continued to govern mass political activity,
because that activity was organizationally mediated.16 If the results were
neither perfectly democratic nor (even approximately) just, there was a
participatory order to things that recalled pre-Marcos conditions.
Deprived of political organizations, Indonesian movements were less
able to represent social interests, or even frame coherent programs. In
some instances, people who led the democracy movement sought allies
from the old regime; after the 1999 popular election, but before the
Presidential vote, democracy leaders Amein Rais and Abdurrahman
Wahid both made overtures to GOLKAR’s Habibie. More important,
even political organizations that emerged during the regime transition
have been weak and difficult to control.

Larger issues: democratic transitions and political

protest
Why do we need a more contextually and historically rich social movements-
based interpretation of democracy movements? Principally, I have argued

16
Boudreau 2001.
 Democratic transitions and political protest 251

that to understand how regimes change, we need to understand the

precise formula according to which, for a time, they endure. I placed
repression at the very heart of that formula, both because it represents the
state’s exact answer to concrete social challenges, and because it indelibly
marks the social forces present at the dictatorship’s end. Democracy
movements rise when the state’s established repressive strategy, for
some reason, can no longer contain social challengers. In some cases, as
in the Philippines, social and political developments make styles of
repression (i.e. Marcos’s efforts to polarize society between the left and
the state) ineffective: while Marcos could still steal elections and attack
protests in the middle 1980s, those efforts enraged, rather than cowed
moderates. The Burmese democracy movement provides a strong
counter-example to both the Philippine and Indonesian cases: despite
massive and sustained protest, Burma’s 1988 movement never eroded
the state’s capacity for repression, and the military eventually crushed
protest, as it had for decades.
Democracy movements are less about building representative systems
than they are about cutting down practices (and practitioners) that
obstruct representation.17 To identify signs that favor transitions to
democracy, then, we must look for progress against those specific pro-
hibitions that have sustained an undemocratic regime. Interactions
between states and societies during the dictatorship provide a context
for these inroads, establishing both their political significance in the
struggle, and their analytical significance in our interpretations. At the
most superficial level, that context consists of a power balance between
the two sides – but this power is calibrated in terms of particular proscrip-
tions and prohibitions that authorities seek to enforce, and society
accepts, works around or defies. Regimes that have ignored distant insur-
gencies, therefore, may well survive their expansion; authorities that
tolerate peaceful protest may weather a cycle of demonstration. In such
cases, the apparent expansion of social power does not breach the state’s
main defenses, nor does it undermine state claims to hegemony. But
members of repressive states also draw lines in the sand, marking off
activities that are genuinely subversive to their power, and that marking
defines actions corrosive to regime prestige. A movement that defies such
proscriptions may both land a telling blow against authority, and signal
wider audiences that the hegemonic hold has loosened. Given the dicta-
torship’s ability to shape information and provide a covering bluster to

17
Tilly 2000.
252 Democracy protest and state repression

hide its failings, such confrontations are often necessary steps to making
political opportunities salient.
This, perhaps more than anything, may account for the acceleration of
events in the dictatorship’s closing hours – for one of the most universal
expressions to follow a democracy movement’s triumph has been par-
ticipants’ sheer disbelief at their improbable success. This surprise is no
accident. Apart from the determined application of repression against
those who defy the state, dictatorships survive by isolating their oppon-
ents, each of which seem frail against leviathan’s power. The Philippine
political center, accordingly, was caught between a left with which they
were uncomfortable, and an unjust state. Fragmented and localized
Indonesian groups and the disconnected, cautious Burmese under-
ground could never feel capable of exerting real power. Under such
conditions, who would first rise above the crowd to denounce unjust
authority? The military captain: employed, in power, but mistrustful of
politicians’ excess? The party leader, on whom it has begun to dawn that
the dictator permits no upward mobility? The technocrat who has seen
her best plans undermined, or the businessman forced to pay tribute and
bribes? All must balance their growing discomfort against undeniable
prerogatives and the suspicion that, should they take action, they would
do so alone. New and subversive (rather than routinized) forms of col-
lective action, however, signal shifts in the political wind. People who
have grown accustomed to a dictatorship’s boasts and threats will quickly
recognize activity that defies authority, will interpret acts of contention, as
we have attempted to do, within the established authoritarian context.
But if any of this is true, comparisons between democracy movements,
stripped of their context, are likely at best to be incomplete, and at worst,
misleading. In each case, similar developments preceded the democracy
protest: economic crisis mobilized all three societies, and in each, illness,
old age or both hampered a dictator of long standing. Regime fragmenta-
tion accompanied Philippine and Indonesian transitions, although in
both, regime divisions preceded the transition by several years. In each
case, one might even say, a dynamic woman outside the political main-
stream played a leading role in the anti-dictatorship movement. Do any of
these factors constitute clear, or clearly general causes of democracy
struggle?
The answer, I think, is that they do so in only the most superficial sense.
These developments influenced the balance between state and society
and provoked broader contention, but did so only within the larger, older
political relations between state and social power. The interplay between
how authorities exercise power, and how society attempts to counter that
exercise, provides the context for democracy struggle. Understanding the
 Democratic transitions and political protest 253

logic governing the thrust and parry between social and state forces helps
us to interpret whether events have weakened the regime, strengthened
society or left the balance between them unchanged. In striving to under-
stand the strategic games central to contention, we begin to apprehend an
episode of mobilization as progress toward democracy or a false start
down an unpromising road.
This interpretation of democracy struggle, I hope, is both compelling in
itself, and persuasive as an advertisement for a way of thinking about
contention under conditions of great repression, or outside the liberal and
industrial societies generally. The key to understanding contention in
such settings rests in the logic of its interactions, rather than in identifying
events that touch off collective action.18 In these cases, very different
goals and risks often animate activity. Activists may not merely pursue
policy reform, and state actors do not merely defend preferred policy
positions. Rather, they struggle over state power, over national auton-
omy, over political, social, cultural and individual survival. Because the
stakes of struggle are comparatively high, modes of struggle vary across a
tremendous range. In theory, everything from cyber-protest to warfare is
in play, largely because collective repertoires are drawn both from local
experience and international example. In practice, particular histories of
state–society interaction, and the institutional, organizational, political
and cultural residue they leave will push contention in one or another of
these directions.
For researchers, alas, this means that deeper and more theoretically
guided analysis of contention outside the industrial North will probably
not produce a tight and generalizable list of factors likely to stir mobiliza-
tion or regime transformation . . . but recent writing is already beginning
to despair of such lists, even relative to Northern contention.19 Rather, we
might pay closer attention to political context and history, and strive to
discover or interpret the strategies and perspectives that guide conten-
tious interactions between states and societies. Where repression has
significantly marked those interactions, it will naturally work its way to
the fore of activist calculations, and become recognizable as particular,
and context-specific contentious dynamics. As repressive regimes give
way to more liberal and representative arrangements, contention’s logic
may also evolve. In all settings, however, modes of activity, political
opportunity and democracy struggle acquire contingent, context-
specific meanings. Early struggle and repression structures subsequent

18
McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2000.
19
McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2000.
254 Democracy protest and state repression

contention and influences movement capacities, organizations, calcula-

tions and cultures. Influences like regime fragmentation or economic
crisis may increase chances and levels of anti-regime mobilization, but
in order to interpret the effect that such protests will have, we need to
consider interactions with established patterns of contention. Where lists
of events that qualify as ‘‘mobilization opportunities’’ have been more or
less accurate, therefore, we might suggest that the context of struggle has
been stable within individual settings, and similar among them – perhaps
a fitting description of conditions in advanced industrial society over the
past several decades. Even then, however, contemporary debates about
what constitutes a political opportunity and why events that trigger
mobilization in one country fail to do so elsewhere suggest the impor-
tance of context and history. If this matter is more obvious in places like
Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines, then surely that is another example
of how researchers may benefit from broad comparative study.
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 Index

1947 constitution (Burma), 84 Asian currency crisis of 1997–1998, 225,

30 Comrades, 43, 76 236, 240, 245
Abad-Santos, Pedro, 67 Aspinall, Edward, 113
ABRI see Indonesian military Ateneo de Manila, 143
ABSU, 202, 205 Aung Gyi, 190, 192, 194, 195, 198, 209,
Aceh, 103, 110, 119–120, 165, 235, 237 212, 213, 244
AFL-CIO, 222 Aung San, 43, 44–45
Africa, 17, 19 Aung San Suu Kyi, 190, 209
agrarian reform campaign (Indonesia), 60 Austerity Movement, 113
Akhmadi, Heri, 116 Aveneri, Shlomo, 33
Aksi kaprihatinan, 230 Avila, Charles, 144
All-Burma Student Union, see ABSU Ayatollah Khomeini, 125
Alvarez, Heherson, 62
Ambon, 110 baden perjuangan, 57
American Society of Travel Agents, 145 Bali, 7, 9, 128
Amnesty International, 7 BANDILLA, 182
Amoy, 43 Bandung, 108, 113, 117,
AMRSP (Philippines), 137 225, 229
Angkatan 66, 110, 157, 163 barangay, 134
Anglo-Burmese Wars, 40, 41 basic Christian communities, 177
anti-Chinese violence: in Burma, 88, 91, Bataan, 150
101, 155, 203; in Indonesia, 106, 113, Bataan nuclear power plant, 177
223–224, 225, 233 BAYAN, 182–183, 184
Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League Beissinger, Mark, 24
(AFPFL), 45–49 Benjarmasin, 224, 234
Anti-Fascist Organization (Burma), Bicol, 138
44–45 Bloody Friday, 194, 195
Anti-Fascist Students League (Burma), 97 BMP, 140
anti-Japanese violence (Indonesia), Bogor, 116
114–115 Bratton, 31
April 6th Liberation Movement, 144, Britain, 20, 59
144–145, 178 British Aerospace, 222
Aquino, Agapito (Butch), 181 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC),
Aquino, Benigno, 62, 136, 142–144, 148, 14, 193, 201, 205, 213
151, 166, 178–180, 181, 182, 183, Budiman, Arief, 112, 128
186, 240 Burma, 3, 29, 37–51, 53, 54, 65, 66, 103,
Aquino, Corazon, 179, 180, 181, 182, 104, 105, 116, 136, 137, 148,
184–185, 188, 249, 250 149–150, 152, 156
Aquino family, 81, 134 Burma Independence Army, 43–44, 48
Arakan, 193 Burma Medical Association, 206
ASEAN, 117 Burma Socialist Program Party, 39,
Asia, 17 84–86, 89–90, 92, 93, 95, 97, 98, 100,

282
 Index 283

154, 157, 162, 167, 192, 200, Chinese: Embassy, 91; in Burma, 90–91; in
212–213, 244 Indonesia, 51, 54; in the Philippines,
Burma Trade Union Congress, 46–47 69
Burmese: Assembly elections, 42; CIDES, 223
Communist Party (BCP), 8, 39, 42, 43, Cipinang jail, 131
45–46, 48, 50, 71, 75, 79, 79–80, 81, civil associations, 18
84, 87, 91, 96, 97–99, CNL, 137
154–155, 159, 197, 203, 214; Coalition of Organizations for the
constitution (1935), 42; constitution Restoration of Democracy
(1974), 43, 101; democracy (Philippines); see CORD
movement, 3, 35, 190–214, 238–254; Cold War, 8, 17, 34, 78, 81
labor strikes, 92–93, 93–94, 99; collective repertoire, 20, 22
military, 6, 8, 9, 37, 46, 48, 48–49, colonial education: in Burma, 65, 67, 75,
49–51, 77, 77–78, 86–87, 89–90, 93, 76; in Indonesia, 67; in the Philippines,
94–95, 98, 99, 101, 153, 154, 159, 65, 67
159–160, 165, 170, 199–201, 206, colonial rule, 37, 75–76 American, 41, 42,
208, 210, 212, 213, 214, 245, 249, 64–68, 69; British, 39, 40–45, 54,
251; military coup of 1962, 6, 37, 54–55, 56, 59, 75–76; Dutch, 41,
37–40, 50–51, 81, 83, 85, 86, 88, 101; 53–57, 59, 75–76; in Burma, 54,
military takeover of 1988, 210; 54–55, 56, 75–76; in India, 40; in
Nationalist Army (BNA), 44–45; Indonesia, 42, 53–57, 59, 75–76; in the
protest, 11, 12, 18, 152, 157, 158, Philippines, 64–68, 69, 75–76, 163
159–160, 162, 190–214, 217; Comintern, 43, 68
Revolutionary Council, 39; student Command and General Staff College
union, 37, 50–51, 81, 86, 99, 101; (Philippines), 71
student protest, 6, 8, 81, 90–91, 93–99, Communist Party of the Philippines/New
100; Way to Socialism, 39, 50, 84, 192, People’s Army (CPP/NPA), see,
200; Workers and Peasants Party, Philippine, Communist Party.
46–47, 89 Congress of the Filipino People, see
Bush, George, 213, 214 KOMPIL.
Constitutional Commission (Philippines),
Cairo, 233, 234 62, 73
Callahan, Mary, 44 Constitutional Referendum of 1984
Cambodia, 2 (Philippines), 180
Camp Aguinaldo, 184 contentious forms, 24, 26, 28–30,
Camp Crame, 183, 184 30–36, 35
caretaker government (Burma), Conveners’ Group (Philippines), 182
48, 77 CORD, 181, 182
Carter, Jimmy, 141 Cordilleras, 150
Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Corporatism, 60, 62, 80, 103
Philippines, 177 cross-boys, 109–110
Catholic Church (Philippines), 72, Crouch, Harold, 113
137–138, 141, 148, 156, 160, CSM (Philippines), 137
160–161, 177, 180, 184 Cultivation System (Indonesia), 54
Catholic clergy, 141, 180 cultural center of the Philippines, 177
Cebu, 181 Cultural Revolution, 90–91
Central Bank (Philippine), 70, 70–74
Central Intelligence Agency, 7 Darul Islam, 121
Central Java, 51 Davao, 183
Central Luzon, 78 Dayak, 224
Ceribon, 225 Democratic Students’ Organization, 39
Chauk, 93 demonstration effect, 30
Chico River Dam, 150 decolonization, 19–22, 75–77; in Burma,
China, 41, 197 21, 54, 54–55, 56, 69, 75–77; in
Chinese Communist Party, 43 India, 31; in Indonesia, 19, 21, 53–57,
284 Index

decolonization (cont.) Federation of Free Farmers (Philippines),

66, 69, 75–77; in the Philippines, 66, 72, 160
75–77; in Southeast Asia, 19, 21 Federation of Free Workers (Philippines),
democracy, 23, 32–33, 179, 200, 204 72, 160
Democracy Defense Team, 229 fifth force, 61
Democracy Forum, 130–131, 219 fighting peacock, 98, 101, 171, 196, 202
democracy protest, 1, 4, 16, 30–36, First Class Native Schools (Dutch), 53
238–254 Burmese, 171, 190–214, First Quarter Storm, 157
238–254; Indonesian, 172, 212, FLAG (Philippines), 136–137
215–237, 238–254; Philippine, Ford, Gerald, 140
176–189, 183–185, 212, 238–254 Foreign Broadcast Information Service
Democratic Alliance (Phillipines), 68 (FBIS), 14
Democratic Students Organization Forkot see Urban Forum
(Burma), 47, 96, 99 Francisco, Ronald, 24
demonetization (Burma), 192, 203, 211, Free Speech Forum, 217–218, 230, 232
241, 242, 248 Friar lands (Philippine), 65
DeNardo, James, 24 fuel hike protests (Indonesia),
Dewan Mahasisaw; see student councils 127–128, 164
Dharsono, General, 107, 117
diffusion, 30 Gabriella, 146
Dili, 222 Gadja Mada university, 117, 231
Diokno, Senator Jose, 62, 136, Galoni monks, 203, 204, 205
142, 181 Gandhi, Mahatma, 31
diplomasi nationalists, 55, 56 GAPUR (Indonesia), 113
Diponogoro St., 217, 218 GERAK, 234
Djadja, Major General, 230 Gerakan Anti-Anarki, see GERAK
Dohbama Asyiayone, 42, 55 Garuda Airlines, 121
Dorman-Smith, Governor, 44–45 global capitalist system, 33
DPR, 116, 235 global north, 29
dwifungsi, 59, 108 global south, 18
GOLKAR, 216, 224, 236, 240, 250
East Asia Youth League, 44 Gozali, Faisal, 121
East Java, 116, 247 Guided Democracy, 53, 57, 58, 59–62, 78,
East Jember, 225 80, 105–106, 157, 159
East Timor, 110, 119–120, 128, 131, 165, Gunness, Christopher, 201
215, 222, 235, 237
Eastern Europe, 33 Habibie, B. J., 227, 234, 235, 236, 249, 250
Edhi, Sarwo, General, 107 Hatta, Mohammad, 54, 55, 56, 57, 76
EDSA (Philippines), 185, 249 Haggard, Stephan, 30
educational institutions, 159–160 Hainan, 43
El Salvador, 31, 238 Harmoko, 234
Elections: Burmese, 157, 241; Indonesian, Hawes, Gary, 70
163, 166, 220–224, 235, 250; hell drivers, 109–110
Philippine, 142–143, 180, 183, helmet law protests (Indonesia), 128
183–184, 185, 188, 242, 251 Hlan Han, Dr., 97
Enrile, Juan Ponce, 74, 144, 178, 179, HMI (Indonesia), 115
184–185 Hsaya San Rebellion, 41, 42
Escalante, 183 Htun Aung Kyaw, 197
Ethnic minorities, 2 HUKs (Philippines), 68
Executive Committee, 177 Human Rights Watch, 223
Humanika Foundation, 223
Fanon, Franz, 31 Hutchcroft, Paul, 69
Fabian socialism, 43
fascism, 33 IBP (Philippines), 142–143, 150, 166
FBSI (Indonesia), 124 Idris, Kamal, General, 107, 117
 Index 285

IMF, 140, 148, 179, 231, 232 Jogjakarta, 56, 57, 112,
import substitution, 69, 70 221, 234
India, 41 Johnson, President Lyndon, 72
Indian Communist Party, 43 Justice for Aquino, Justice for All (JAJA),
Indies Association, 54 178
Indonesia, 3, 29, 39, 66, 136, 137, 148, Jusuf, Daud, Dr., 117
149, 152, 176, 214
Indonesia Foundation, 112 Ka Kwe Ye, 90
Indonesian: authorities, 2, 93; Army Kabataan Makabayan, 72
Strategic Reserve Command Kachins:, 44 troop defections, 46
(KOSTRAD), 7; Communist Party Kahin, George, 53
(PKI), 7, 9, 9–10, 37, 51–53, 54, KAK, 112
54–55, 57, 59–62, 64, 71, 75, 78, Kalimantan, 128, 235
80, 81, 83, 103–104, 105–109, 119, Kalompok Studi, see study groups,
122, 132, 155, 155–156, 157, Indonesia
157–158, 159; Democracy KAMI (Indonesia), 106–107, 111, 115
Movement, 3, 35, 215–237, 238–254; KAP (Philippines), 67
Islamic Revolutionary Board, 121; KAPPI (Indonesia), 111
military (Armed Forces of the Karagatan, 74
Republic of Indonesia), 6–7, 9, 51–53, Karen, 44, 45, 75; troop defections, 46
58–62, 77, 77–78, 80, 81, Kartowibowo, Sawito, 116
82, 103–104, 106, 106–110, 112–115, KASAPI (Philippines), 145
117, 117–118, 121, 125, 126–127, Katipunan, 76
130, 155, 157, 160, 165, 172, 213, Kaufman, Robert, 30
216, 217, 218–222, 223, 226, 231, Kayah State, 205
232–236, 240, 246, 250; Military Kedung Ombo Dam, 129, 215
takeover of 1965, 6–7, 9, 51–53, KEPARAD, 234
61–62, 80, 81, 103, 106–107, 154; keterbukaan, 126–133, 156, 167, 172,
Nationalist Party (PNI), 51; protest, 215–216, 221, 223, 224, 229, 230,
12, 18, 103, 103–133, 104–105, 152, 231, 239, 240–241
158–159, 162–164, 215–237, Khin Nyunt, 190
238–254; repression, 4–12, King’s College, 222
13, 35, 62–64, 79–82, 103–133, KIPP, 219
215–237; student protests, 103, 105, KM (Philippines), 138
106–120, 127–128, 129, 131–132, KMU, 146, 147
132–133 KMP, 146
Insein Prison, 195 KNPI, 115
Interim National Assembly, 140–141 Kommando Jihad, 121
Inya Lake, 194, 195, 198 KOMPIL, 180
IPMI, 127 KOPASSUS, 229, 233
Iran, 183 KOPKAMTIB, 113, 117
Irrawaddy Delta, 41, 46 Korea, 213
KOSTRAD, 106
Jakarta, 77, 80, 106, 110, 113–115, 114, Kuomintang (KMT), 43, 48, 77
116, 119, 121, 131, 164, 217–220, Kropotkin, 31
225
Japan, 43–45 La tondeña strike, 140
Japanese occupation:, 20 of Burma, 43, 56, Laban, 142–143, 166, 178
68; of Indonesia, 56, 68; of the labor strikes, 93–94, 95, 99, 101 in
Philippines, 68 Burma, 93–94, 95, 99, 101, 157, 162,
Java, 7, 9, 59, 131 170; in Indonesia, 103, 129–130,
Javanese aristocrats, 41 156, 172, 220, 222; in the Philippines,
Jember, 222 136, 140, 141, 153, 157, 162,
Jesuit, 142, 143 181–182,
jinglees, 199, 214 Lacaba, Jose, 73
286 Index

Lan Zin Lu Nge (Burma), 93 Marker, Jamsheed, 222

Land disputes: Indonesia, 128, martial law (Burma), 156
129, 152, 156, 171 martial law (Indonesia), 58
Latin America, 17 martial law (Philippines), 62–64, 71–74, 79,
Laurel, Salvatore, 143 81, 86, 134–148, 158–159, 160–161,
LBH (Indonesia), 122–123, 128–129, 167, 176, 182, 187, 239–240
215, 219 Marxism, 12, 43, 67, 68, 101, 188, 197
Lev, Daniel, 59 Masjumi, 58
liberal government, 11, 12, 18 mass organization legislation, Indonesia,
Liberal Party (Philippine), 73, 74, 180 105, 123–124, 128–129, 156
Light a Fire Movement, 144–145, 178 Massachusetts, 222
Lim, Ben, 144 Maung Maung, Dr., 206, 210,
Lintner, Bertil, 42, 195, 201 213, 245
Litaay, Alexander, 221 Maung Maung Kyaw, 198
logic of repression, 10 McCammon, 26
Lombok, 225 McCoy, Alfred, 69
Lon Htein, 194–195, 199, 200 McVey, Ruth, 53, 78
Long March, 130 Medan, 130, 217
Lopez Family, 62, 81, 134, 144 mimbar bebas, see Free Speech Forum
lottery protests (Indonesia), 128, 164 Mindanao, 139, 146
Loveman, Mara, 24 Minhla, 89
LSM, see NGO, Indonesian missionaries, 40
Lyceum University, 72 MNLF, 139
Monks, see Sangha
Macapagal, Diodado, 140–141 Moral force, 109, 109–110, 113, 114,
Machmud, Amir, 112 115, 117, 118, 120, 132, 159, 163,
Madiun Uprising, 57, 58 218, 230
Madura, 222 Moulmein, 209
Madurese, 224 Mountbatten, Lord Louis, 44–45
Mahasiswa Ujungpandang Bertanya, 116 Movement radicalization, 17
Makati, 179, 181 Movement objectives, 18
Malacañang, 73, 185 MPR (Indonesia), 167, 216, 226, 227, 231,
Malay sultans, 41 232, 233–234, 240, 242
Malari protests, 111, 113–115, 114, Muhammadiyah, 54, 123, 226, 226–227
116–117, 233 Mujahedin command, 121
Malaya, 59 Murdani, Benny, 172
Maluku, 119–120, 235 Murtopo, Ali, 114, 117, 121
Mandalay, 37, 46, 50, 193, Muslim organizations (Indonesia), 59
196, 197, 203–204, 205, 208–209, Myenigone, 199
213, 247 Myint Soe, 98
Mandalay Bar Council, 203 Myothugyis, 40
Manglapus, Raul, 62
Manila, 65, 72, 144, 145, 158, 174, Nacionalista Party (Philippine), 74
182, 183 Nagani Book Club (Burma), 43
Manila Airport, 178 Nahdlatul Ulama, 51, 62, 112, 130, 219
Manila Rizal Party Branch, 142–143 NAMFREL, 181, 183–184
Mao Tse Tung, 31, 90–91 Nasution, General, 59, 117, 220
Marcos, Ferdinand, 3–4, 7–8, 9–10, 18, National Committee on Human Rights
62–64, 69, 70, 70–74, 75, 78–79, (Indonesia), 222, 223
79–82, 86, 134–136, 138–139, National Covenant for Freedom, 147
140–146, 153–154, 159–160, 161, National Defense College (Philippines), 71
165–166, 166–167, 168, 170, National Democratic Movement
173, 239, 241, 246, 247, (Philippines), 135, 143, 146–148,
250, 251 167, 176, 178, 180–183, 184,
Marcos, Imelda, 178 239–240
 Index 287

National Movement for Free Elections, see Opposition Young Generation Group
NAMFREL (Indonesia), 112
National Movement for Freedom, Justice oppositional culture, 11–12, 28, 29, 35,
and Democracy, 178 169–174, 247 Burmese, 12, 28;
National Pride Committee (Indonesia), 114 Indonesian, 12; Philippine, 12, 28, 247
national strike, 207 ormas, see mass organization legislation,
National United Front (Burma), see NUF Indonesia
National Union of Students in the Outer Island Political Pressure
Philippines, 72 (Indonesia), 58–59
National Unity for Democracy and
Freedom, 143 P4 classes, Indonesia, 124
Nationalist Alliance, 182 Pakpahan, Muchtar, 128, 220, 222
nationalist movements, 19, 24, 37, 68, Pancasila, 166
75–77 Burmese, 6, 19, 40, 54, 54–55, Parliamentary Democracy Party (Burma),
56, 69, 98, 171; Indonesian, 21, 55, 69; 96, 97, 99
Philippine, 19, 21, 66 patterns of political contention:, 4, 10–11,
Nationalities Conference (Burma), 12, 161–169, 179, 211, 238–254 of
49–50, 61 repression, 26
NDF (Philippines), 138, 150–151, 176, PDI (Indonesia), 108, 132, 159, 215–222,
180–183, 184, 186–187 229, 230, 240
Ne Win, 3–4, 6, 8, 9, 18, 37, 48, 62–64, 74, PDP-LABAN, 180, 183, 184
75, 79–82, 85, 90, 93, 97, 98, 99, PDSP (Philippines), 137
101–102, 105, 134, 135, 160, 161, 165, Peace March of 1963 (Burma), 89
168, 170, 191, 192, 194, 195, 198, Peace Parley of 1963 (Burma), 87, 89, 95,
200–201, 206, 213, 241, 244, 248 99, 157
Negros, 143, 190 pemuda nationalists, 75
Netherlands, 51–53, 65 Pemunkus, Sri Bintang, 228
New Nationalist Alliance (Philippines), see Peninsular Games, 92, 100
BAYAN People’s Peace Committee (Burma), 89
New Order, 7, 10, 51, 80, 81, 82, 82–83, 86, People’s Revolutionary Party (Burma),
103–133, 153, 159, 161, 216, 218, 42, 46
218–220, 221, 224, 226, 227, 229, People’s Volunteer Organization (PVO),
231, 234, 241, 250 45, 45–46
New People’s Army, 74, 136, 138–139, Perhimpuan Indonesia, 54
146–148, 149 Pesantren, 55, 75, 124
New Society, 81, 82, 82–83, 139–151 PETA (Indonesia), 56, 57,
Nexus/Lexus, 14 ‘‘Petition of 50’’, 126, 128, 220
NGOs: Indonesian, 103, 120–121, petrus killings, 121–122, 166
122–124, 127, 128–130, 133, 152, Philippines, 3, 29, 54, 93, 104, 152–153,
156, 158, 159, 163–164, 165, 172, 213, 236
215, 219–222, 228, 245; Philippine, Philippine–American War, 64
145, 148 Philippine: Assembly, 42, 65–66, ; Central
Nicaragua, 183 Bank, 148, 179; Civil Liberties
Nigeria, 2 Union, 136; Communist Party
Nike Corporation, 222 (CPP), 7–8, 9, 62, 134–140, 136,
NKK/BKK, 105, 117–119, 120, 138–139, 140–141, 144, 146–148,
122, 123, 127, 152, 158, 163–164, 149, 156, 184, 240, 244, 248;
216, 231 Commonwealth, 71; Congress, 68,
Northern Protest, 18, 152, 253 72; Constabulary, 64, 69;
North Cotabato, 144, 183 Constitution of 1972, 134, 136, 140;
North Korea, 74 Democracy Movement, 3, 30, 35,
NUF, 39, 84, 85, 89, 197 176–189, 238–254; judiciary, 73;
labor groups (colonial period), 66;
Opinion Taking General Assembly, 204 martial law, 7–8, 9–10, 13; military
opportunity structure, 22 (AFP), 9, 62, 71, 81, 139, 178, 183,
288 Index

Philippine (cont.) Religious institutions, 160–161, 184–185

213, 246, 248, 249; Military Rengasdengklok, 223
Academy, 183; Muslim Insurgency, Repertoires of Contention, 1, 12, 26
8; Protest, 11–12, 18, 134–151, repression, 2–3, 12, 15, 16, 18, 19, 23,
152–153, 194, 210, 219, 237; 23–25, 24–30, 26, 35–36, 37, 75,
Repression, 35, 62–64, 79–82, 79–82, 82–83, 190–214
134–151; Senate, 68, 72; Supreme Research methodology, 13–14 in Burma,
Court, 72 13–14; in Indonesia, 13; in The
Pinaglabanan Church, 73 Philippines, 13, 13–14
PKP (Philippines), 68, 71 revolution:, 17, 18, 28, 33, 34, 76, 134, 146,
Plaza Miranda bombing, 74 158, 167, 173–174, 176, 186
Political Islam (in Indonesia), 57, 58, 61 Indonesian, nationalist, 77–78
Political Process Model, 18, 35 Revolutionary Council (Burma), 50, 79–80,
Political opportunity, 4, 25, 27, 28–30, 31, 82, 89, 154, 161
35, 169, 174, 187, 239, 239–243, 252, Revolutionary Period (Indonesia), 58
254 riot police (Burma), see Lon Htein
post-colonial state authorities, 21–22, 23 risk hierarchies, 27–28
Burmese, 23; Indonesian, 23 ROTC, 71
PPBI (Indonesia), 219, 222 RPKAD, 107
PPP (Indonesia), 108, 127, 132, 159, 218,
221, 222, 224, 228 Saigon, 17
PRD (Indonesia), 131, 219–220, 224, 228, Salim, Emil, 227
245 Salonga, Senator Jovito, 62
Presidential Security Force (Philippine), 71 salvage killings, 145, 166
Protest cycle, 26, 154, 171, 242, 251 SAMAKANA (Philippines), 146
Provisional Parliament (Indonesia), 116 Sangha, 40, 41, 89, 94, 95, 160, 203, 204,
PRRI Rebellion (Indonesia), 58 211
Public Intellectuals (Indonesia), 125–126, SBSI, 130
130–131, 133, 172, 226 Security and Administration Committees
PUDI (Indonesia), 228 (Burma), 87
Pyinmana, 193 Security Councils (Burma), 85
Sein Lwin, 192, 200, 205, 206, 213
Quezon, Manuel, 71, 163 Separatist movements: Burmese, 155, 241;
Indonesian, 103, 110, 119–120, 131,
Radio Veritas, 184 158, 165, 171, 172, 215, 222, 222;
Rais, Amien, 226, 226–227, 250 Philippine, 135, 139, 141
RAM, 184 Seriket Islam, 54, 55
Ramos, General Fidel, 178, 184–185 Shan Principles Paper, 49
Rangoon, 37, 46, 86, 89, 92, 93–99, 94–97, Shwedagon Pagoda, 171, 195, 202
193–198, 198–200, 199, 201, 204, Sin, Archbishop Jaime Cardinal, 137, 140,
205, 205–208, 210 180, 181, 182, 184,
Rangoon General Hospital, 205 Sinyetha (People’s Revolutionary Party,
Rangoon Institute of Medicine, 199 Burma), 42
Rangoon Institute of Technology, 97, 193, Sitibondo, 223
193–194 Sjahrir, Sutan, 55
Rangoon University, 6, 42, 79, 86, 93, 94, SK 028, 115, 115–117
98, 100, 193–194, 196, 198 SLORC, 190–191, 236
Reagan, Ronald, 183 SMID (Indonesia), 219, 222
Red and White Front (Indonesia), 229 SMPT, 127
Red Guards, 91 Social Democratic Movement
Reform Armed Forces Movement, see RAM (Philippines), 135, 139, 143, 145, 182,
regime transition, 30 defections from, 31, 184, 186
32–34 Social formation, 19–22
Regional Unified Commands socialist movement (Philippines),
(Philippines), 71 182, 184
 Index 289

Socialist Party: Burmese, 45, 48; Philippine, Sukarnoputri, Megawati, 132, 216–222,
67 226, 226–227, 236
socialist period (Burma), 80, 81, 82, 82–83, Sulawesi, 225
84 Sule Pagoda, 195
SOKSI, 60 Sumatra, 7, 9, 106, 116,
Solarz, Stephan, 213 125, 225
Sophian, Sophan, 220 Sumitro, General (Indonesia), 112,
South Africa, 31, 238 113–114, 127, 163
Southeast Asia, 15, 18, 19, 44, 67, 152 Suparman, 230, 231, 231
Soviet Union, 24, 95 Surabaya, 116, 221, 222
SPSI (Indonesia), 124 Surakarta, 234
state formation, 19 European, 19–20, 21, Surito, 127
State Law and Order Restoration Suryadi, 215–216, 217, 221
Committee, see SLORC
state socialism, 33 Taman Mini protests, 111–113
strategic hamletting, 141, 145 Taman Siswa movement, 54
STI (Indonesia), 222 Tamanan, 225
strike committees (Burma), 191, 197, 198, Tañada, Lorenzo, 142, 143
202–210, 208–209, 241, 245, 247 Tanaka, Japanese Prime Minister, 114
strike newspapers, 191, 202, 241 Tanjung, Faisal, 218
student councils (Indonesia), 111, 113, Tanjung Priok Massacre, 125
116, 117 Tarlac, 138
student protest, 2, 27, 93–99 Burmese, Tasikmalaya, 223
37–40, 41, 41–42, 47, 79–80, 83, 86, Tatmadaws, see Burmese military
92, 93–99, 100, 162, 170, 202–203, tats (Burma), 42, 43
241, 242; Indonesian, 10, 103, 105, TFD (Philippines), 136–137
106–120, 127–128, 129, 131–132, Thailand, 174
132–133, 155–156, 157–158, 159, Thakin (Burma), 42–43
162–164, 165, 166, 172, 230, Thakin Kodaw Hmine, 98–99, 100,
233–234; Philippine, 72, 136, 141, 101, 162
143, 173, 184 Thamaing Spinning Mill, 93
student representative bodies (Indonesia), Thayeb, Sjarif, Major General, 106, 115
118 Thompson, Mark, 145
Student Union, Burma, 6, 8, 37, 50–51, 81, Threat attribution, 26
86, 94, 99, 101, 171, 211 Tien, 24–30
Student United Front (Burma), 39, 42, 48, Tilly, Charles, 20
87 Tim Pembela Demokrasi, see Democracy
students’ vows, 116 Defense Team
study groups, Indonesia, 120, 121, 156 Tin Aye Kyu, 98, 99
Suara Ibu Peduli, 227 Tin Maung Oo, 96, 97–99
Subianto, Probowo, 227, 228, 229, 232, Tin Oo, 190, 209, 213
233–234 Toer, Pramoediya Anna, 131
Sudharmono, General, 127 Tokyo, 43
Suez Canal, 53 Township organizing committees, 85
Suharto, 3–4, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9–10, 18, 34, 37, Township peasant councils, 85, 157
62–64, 74, 75, 79–82, 86, 103, Trade Union Congress of Burma, 46
105–106, 108, 112, 117, 126–127, Traffic law protests (Indonesia), 164
130, 134, 135, 155, 160, 163, 166, Trisakti University, 233, 242
168, 172, 177, 216, 220, 223, 224, Tritura (Indonesia), 107
227, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236,
236–237, 238–254, 240, 241, 244, U Nu, 48, 49–50, 89, 92, 96, 97, 99, 105,
246, 247, 249–250 159, 209, 210
Sukarno, 9, 51, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58–61, 76, U Thant funeral protests, 94–97, 100, 101,
77–78, 106–108, 157, 159, 215 160, 162, 165, 171
Sukarnoputra, Guruh, 215 Ujan Pandang, 230
290 Index

underground, 18, 27, 64, 94, 97–98, Village Organizing Councils

99–101, 154–156 in Burma, (Burma), 84
87–89, 91–92, 94, 97–98, Visayas, 141
99–101, 154–156, 161, 162, 164, 171, Voice of America, 193, 205, 213
190–191, 191–211, 193, 196–197, Volksraad, 54–55
199–200, 201–205, 202–203, 211,
241, 245, 252; in Indonesia, 108, 118, Wahid, Abdurrahman, 219, 220, 223, 226,
121–122, 154–156, 160; in the 235, 236, 250
Philippines, 87, 139, 140, 147, 149, Wartasan, 127
153, 154, 154–156, 166 West Java, 125
UNIDO, 178, 180 West Kalimantan, 223
Union Party (Burma), 49, 89, 96 West Papua, 57, 59, 103, 110, 119–120,
United Front, 68 165, 215, 237
United Front Commission white flag communists (Burma), 46
(Philippines), 142 White Book of the Student Struggle, 117
United Nations, 59, 192, 222 White Group, 1973–74 (Indonesia), 112
United States, 9, 14, 17, 74, 81, 141, 144, Wiranto, 234, 235, 236
146, 150, 178, 181, 182, 183, 185, WOMB (Philippines), 146
206, 213 Civil Rights Movement, 32; Wood, Elizabeth, 31, 238–239
Economic influence, 73 Working Cabinet (under Guided
University of Indonesia, 113, 115 Democracy), 59
University of the Philippines, 159 World War One, 41
University Student Councils (Philippines), 72 World War Two, 19, 20, 42, 55,
Urban Forum, 232 77, 78 in Burma, 20, 43; in Indonesia,
55–57, 56; in the Philippines, 20, 68,
Van de Walle, 31 69, 78
Vatican, 178 Wurfel, David, 62
Vatican II, 72
Vatikiotis, Michael, 120, 121 Young Man’s Buddhist Association
Ver, Fabian, 71, 144, 178, 179, 183, (Burma), 41
184–185
Vietnam War, 72 Zambales, 138