Dear Alistair Darling I am writing to you as a supporter of Jubilee Scotland to press you to take urgent action to cancel Indonesia's arms debt. In 2005 the UK government took a leading position on cancelling the debt that is burdening the poorest countries in the world. But if poverty is really to be made history, the UK government needs to take a stand against another kind of debt. It is a scandal that, throughout the developing world, money that should pay for essential healthcare and education is being used to pay off the debts incurred by dictatorial rulers. The victims of brutal and capricious dictators should not still be paying for weaponry which was used to secure unelected and violent regimes. Jubilee Scotland is calling in particular for the cancellation of Indonesia's arms debt because this is the most egregious example of such bad loans. General Suharto used UK weaponry to cement his undemocratic rule, but it is the people of Indonesia who are still paying for his planes, tanks and water-cannons – still paying, in effect, for their past oppression. The role of the Export Credit Guarantee Department in this scandal is particularly questionable. The ECGD should never have underwritten these arms deals in the first place, and should not now be allowed to recoup this money from the Indonesian people. The government has acknowledged debt cancellation to be at the heart of its international development strategy, but as long as these debts are owned by the ECGD the government's anti-poverty strategy risks being totally undermined. As Chancellor you are in a position to instruct the ECGD to drop this debt, without it being taken from the aid budget or counted as Overseas Development Aid. May 21st is a day that will be celebrated throughout the Indonesian archipelago as the tenth anniversary of the toppling of Suharto. I enjoin you to put this date in your diary as the day that you pick up the telephone to the ECGD and tell them to cancel this unjust debt. May 21st will then not simply be a day of celebration in Indonesia, but a day of Jubilee. Many thanks for taking the time to read this letter. Yours sincerely.