John Colmey, Surabaya – On the day Dita Sari was to be sentenced, the 24-year-old student walked into court with a red ribbon in her hair and handed out 200 rosebuds to each member of the audience. With a big smile she placed garlands of flowers around the necks of her three stern-faced judges. Then they sent Sari to prison for six years for "incitement to violence." She had been arrested while leading 20,000 workers in the town of Surabaya in a strike last July to demand that they receive the government-mandated minimum wage of about $2 a day and that the army stop interfering in labor issues. Still, she is not bitter. "I never blame persons," she said from her prison cell last week, "persons in this kind of undemocratic system are only tools, robots, living instruments. The judges are just doing their job."

While Suharto has faced and extinguished opposition of all types in his 30-year rule, none has proven more difficult to stamp out than the 100 current and former students who make up the People's Democratic Party, or prd, the radical fringe of Indonesia's pro-democracy forces. Like Sari, most of the members are in their 20s, disarming in their innocence and disabling in the dedication to their cause--even though 12 members are currently serving prison terms ranging from 18 months to 13 years. Over a two-week period in April and May, prd leaders and rank-and-file members from eight cities talked to Time about their roots, strategies and hopes.

The head of the organization's student wing, who goes by the pseudonym "Johan," says the prd first came together in 1991 as an evening study group at Gadjah Madah University in Yogyakarta to debate issues professors avoid, like democracy, Marxism and the 1965 coup. Harmless talk over beers escalated into their own political classes and, in 1992, the launch of a nationwide student movement. Although government prosecutors have labeled them as communists for using terms like "comrade" and "the masses," Johan says their most important influences are the democracy movements in Thailand, the Philippines and South Korea. "Sure we like some parts of Marxism," Johan says. "But the Marxists failed in Indonesia, in the Soviet Union, almost everywhere. Democracy is the thing."

They learned quickly that a student organization would never bring down the state. So in 1995, says Johan, they moved off campus and launched a web of non-governmental organizations, or ngos--mostly funded by their parents and friends--to organize workers, artists, peasants and the urban poor. The most effective is the labor wing. As of last week it had infiltrated 50 to 60 factories in industrial estates across Java and Sumatra islands. Students move into workers' quarters, hold political classes at night and wait for their senior leaders' orders to launch strikes. So far they have called 24 walkouts and helped organize more than 100 others. "The most important thing is to create new organizers from among the workers," says labor wing leader Mohammad Sali, 26, the most wanted man in East Java. "It usually takes about two weeks to a month."

Two years ago prd leader Budiman Sudjatmiko, who was sentenced last month to 13 years in prison for "undermining the state ideology," decided to hook up with Megawati Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party. "We saw the potential of Megawati," says Mahdilk, a 27-year-old political science graduate who has taken over for Sudjatmiko. "She had the grass roots support." Sudjatmiko was instrumental in setting up Indonesia's first independent election monitor. He also created a prd Web page to post daily reports to concerned parties in the West on torture, political trials and election violations. In 1995 Sudjatmiko held a key meeting with Edi Soerjadi--who later replaced Megawati in a government-backed coup in her party--and laid out the prd platform, calling for multiparty democracy, a repeal of laws restricting political parties and an end to the Army's role in government--all acts of treason. "Soerjadi supported our program," says Mahdilk. "He allowed us to meet the pdi masses and begin their political education."

None of them has any illusions that midnight graffiti raids, like one they mounted last week to paint walls in eight cities with the slogans "Hang Suharto" and "Democracy Now," will change Indonesia any time soon. For now they are content to live a life on the run with fake drivers' licenses (cost: $20) and passports ($200) and move from one slum boarding house to another every few weeks. "In the short time I have, there will be no change in the political configuration," says Sari. "So every moment and action must be taken to prepare the people and pro-democratic movement for a long, hard struggle." From her jail cell, as Sari begins to organize her fellow prisoners, she knows that the fight will be no bed of roses.