Army Joins Djakarta Students

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31108, 11 July 1966, Page 13

Army Joins Djakarta Students

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) DJAKARTA, July 10. About 20,000 persons held a rally in Banteng (bull) square yesterday in a show of support for the military men who have wrested control of Indonesia from President Sukarno, United Press International reported.

The rally was peaceful and there were few signs of the violently anti-Sukamo slogans heard at similar gatherings throughout the last week. Some 2000 troops and police joined thousands of militant students in a massive anti-Sukarno parade through the streets of central Djakarta, AA.P.-Reuter said. It was the first time the military had joined the students, indicating that the Army strongman, Lieutenant-General Suharto. backed the students’ demands, political observers said.

The students, ranging from children of 11 to student ac-

tion front leaders in their early 30s, are disgruntled over the surprise People’s Consultative Congress move this week giving President Sukarno a say in forming a new Cabinet The students want General Suharto to form his own Cabinet without consultation with the President. Earlier the students massed at Djakarta university and pledged they would continue demonstrating until the new Cabinet was formed and prices lowered. Armoured cars and machine-gun armed soldiers looked on as the student leaders whipped up support for General Suharto. President Sukarno was scheduled to preside over a meeting of the ruling six-man presidium—the inner Cabinet —at his summer palace at Bogor, 40 miles from Djakarta, today. They will discuss the formation of a new Cabinet, informed sources said. The President will also head a meeting of Kogam, the powerful “Crush Malaysia Command.” The central Java Governor, Brigadier-General Munadi,

yesterday reported to Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr Adam Malik, on Communist activity in Central Java. The brigadier warned that Communism was rooted in the hearts of most people in the area. He called on the Government to take immediate steps to courtteract Communism by improving the economic situation.

A week-long cartoon exhibition at the press house in Djakarta, delayed for one day because several anti-Sukamo drawings were reportedly confiscated, was opened yesterday by students, United Press International reported. About 100 visitors drifted into the exhibition hall to see caricatures of corrupt Cabinet Ministers and the suffering common people bearing an increasingly heavy burden while a selected few were getting rich. There was a series of drawings that pictured the dying of Communism in Indonesia. Also labelled “Please No” was a scene portraying the past where a hundred ministers were obediently carrying out orders of a dictator, next to another scene of the future

where a hundred parties were battling for power in liberalism.