Jean Rom, Brussels – Among the prisoners still held in Indonesia is Dita Indah Sari, the young leader of the PPBI, the trade union arm of the PRD opposition party, who has been languishing in prison since June 1996. Sentenced to five years' imprisonment in 1997 for "subversion", she suffered a particularly severe prison regime until the recent political changes in the country. Last July Fahmi Idris, the new Indonesian Labour Minister, promised a senior representative of the Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging (FNV, the ICFTU's Dutch affiliate) that she would soon be released. The minister declared himself to be "personally concerned" by the case, and committed to obtaining her freedom. Since then, Jakarta has gone silent on this question. Dita Sari's name was not on the list of detainees granted an amnesty last week, during the annual independence day ceremonies. All that has happened is that her sentence has been reduced by one month, according to information received by the FNV in Amsterdam. Her continued detention is all the more surprising as Coen Pontoh and Mohamed Sholeh, two militants involved with Dita Sari in the major labour movements of June 1996 and condemned to similar sentences, were among the waves of prisoners released following the fall of the Suharto regime.
ICFTU sources say the reason for Dita Sari's continued detention is that the release of detainees linked to the PRD is the subject of tough bargaining within the new authorities. Indonesian human rights activists have told the ICFTU that a list of "releasable" detainees has been presented to the government. The list, which had the backing of Justice Minister Mulada, included Dita Sari, but the military within the government then vetoed her release. According to the influential Tapol, published in London, and which is an authoritative source of information on human rights in Indonesia, General Wiranto, head of the Armed Forces (ABRI) and Defence and Security Minister, and General Feisal Tanjung, Minister-Coordinator of Political affairs and Security, maintain the upper hand in these decisions. A number of senior ABRI officers have apparently spoken against the release of activists close the PRD, which has recently been labelled "neo-Communist". The accusation of communism weighs heavy in Indonesia, where everyone remembers the anti-Communist purge which, in the 1960s, propelled General Suharto to power at the cost of over half a million deaths.
With many trade unions throughout the world placing further pressure on the Indonesian government to free Dita Sari (the ICFTU and FNV have again intervened during the last few days, in particular via diplomatic channels), the ILO mission, which has been in Jakarta since Monday morning, will be unable to bring up the case of the detained trade unionists with the government, at least not officially. The remit of the mission, referred to as "Direct Contacts" in UN jargon, is limited to advising the government on adapting the new Indonesian labour laws to international standards. The exercise mainly relates to the Convention on Freedom of Association (ILO Convention 87), which the government has just ratified after decades of ferocious resistance.
Meanwhile, the position of the official trade unions has being growing more complicated from day to day. Riven by strong opposition the current leadership, ever since the latter agreed to withdraw a demand for an across-the-board wage rise, before the government finally gave way under the pressure of unofficial strikes and demonstrations last June, the official trade union appears to have moved beyond the stage of falling apart. Last week, the 13 professional federations affiliated to the former FSPSI single trade union, which was closely controlled by the former regime, announced that they were withdrawing from the organization and would shortly be setting up a new democratic trade union confederation at an extraordinary congress. The leaders of the 13 federations are accusing the FSPSI of "making many mistakes which have caused heavy losses to workers".
Right now, the former leadership and the new structure are each preparing their own meetings. In turn APRO, the ICFTU's regional organization in the Asia-Pacific region, has dispatched its General Secretary, T. Izumi, to the country, to examine the situation closer at hand.
Pressed to define his stand on what the FSPSI President denounces as a "rebellion", the Labour Minister has taken shelter behind the international standards ...in order not to take a position. "The government is bound to respect ILO Convention 87 and to respect trade union freedom and independence... For this reason it cannot interfere in the FSPSI's internal affairs", Fahmi Idris declared a few minutes after receiving the declaration published by the 13 trade union federations.
During this time, movements by Indonesian workers to press their protests and demands keep shaking the country, where the military continue to maintain a heavy hand. Most of these are spontaneous strikes, however, a certain and growing number of actions now appear to be organized by embryonic independent trade unions.
One such case was the demonstration which was severely repressed by the police yesterday (25 August) in Djakarta. 250 workers had travelled to the capital from a textile factory in Surakarta (Central Java, 550 km from the capital) to denounce to the National Human Rights Commission (a semi-governmental body) the non-application of a ministerial decree raising their salaries by 15%. Whilst they were marching to the ILO premises some fifty policemen from a mobile brigade attacked them, beating them with rattan canes.
A number of workers were injured during the police intervention. The group finally found refuge in the premises of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (LBH), an NGO close to the independent trade unions, where they waited in vain for the arrival of an ILO representative, who had been invited to visit them. The demonstrators then set out again for the ILO, this time without the police intervening, and came across the leader of the Direct Contacts mission, the Dutchman P.F. Vanderheijden, and the ILO representative in Jakarta, the Australian Alan Bolton, who had gone out to meet them. According to AFP, it was on the street, surrounded by Police Lieutenant-Colonel Imam Haryanta and Regional Military Commander Widodo, that the ILO officials listened to the strikers' demands.