Veronica Smith, Washington – US and international labor union chiefs led a raucous demonstration outside Indonesia's embassy Wednesday, demanding the release of a jailed Indonesian labor leader charged with subversion.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said the demonstration kicks off an international campaign to free Muchtar Pakpanan, general secretary of the unofficial Indonesian Prosperity Trade Union (SBSI).

Pakpanan is facing execution under subversion charges.

His case, and Indonesia's crackdown last year on dissent, have sparked harsh international criticism, including from the United States and the European Union.

"The American labor movement is united with the international labor movement," Sweeney told the crowd of about 200 labor and civil and human rights activists.

"We will not rest until they stop harassing and firing men and women for trying to organize unions, free and independent of government control...

We will not rest until they free M.P.," calling the labor leader by his initials.

Pakpanan is "one of the most remarkable leaders of our time," said the chief of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).

The national labor union has launched a campaign seeking the release of Pakpahan and other labor activists in Indonesia.

The demonstrators, chanting "Free M.P.!" and "Justice Now!," marched up and down the sidewalk in front of the stately building on the capital's Embassy Row.

Several figures could be seen watching from inside its curtained windows.

The drum banging and whistle blowing stopped for speeches by Sweeney, Bill Jordan, general secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), and Marcello Malentacchi, general secretary of the International Metalworkers Federation and chairman of the International Trade Secretriat (ITS) General Secretariats.

The demonstration came as the ITS General Secretariats held its annual meeting this week for the first time in Washington, an AFL-CIO spokeswoman said.

The ICFTU represents free labor organizations on all five continents, with a total membership of 124 million. The ITS groups national unions concerned with a particular trade, profession or industry. The AFL-CIO was formed in a 1955 merger of the United States' two largest labor unions.

The ICFTU's Jordan said he had visited Pakpahan in his cell a few weeks ago and told him that labor activists around the world "are going to go on fighting until the Indonesian government releases him." "He was emotional," the British leader said.

Jordan blasted the Suharto government as a "regime that sets its laws to favor multinationals at the expense of its own people." He said he, Sweeney and Malentacchi were presenting Indonesian Ambassador Arifin Siregar with a message that there is no evidence that Pakpahan is guilty of inciting rioting.

Instead, he asserted, an Indonesian commission clearly indicated the government itself incited it.

Pakpahan was arrested last July and accused of inciting mass labor unrest that degenerated into anti-ethnic Chinese rioting.

Sweeney met with Pakpahan in July 1996, before the SBSI leader was jailed, to express the support of American workers for the struggle of independent unions in Indonesia.

The Indonesian government only recognizes one trade union, the state-sponsored All Indonesia Workers' Union. It considers all others illegal and has backed a harassment campaign against independent trade unionists. vs/jsr