Budi Sugiharto/Hendra & GB, Surabaya – Around 250 demonstrators from the Solidarity Front for PT Mepoly Labourers staged a demonstration at the East Java Legislative Council (DPRD). They accused the company of hiring the thugs who threatened them and stabbed a colleague at a demonstration at the factory on November 1.

On Monday, the demonstrators gathered and protested by sitting, eating, drinking and chatting at the East Java Legislative Council in the provincial capital of Surabaya. Roadways were blocked and public access disturbed. Orations were also held.

The Solidarity Front for PT Mepoly Labourers is associated to numerous organisations concerned with labour issues including the People's Democratic Party (PRD), the Association of Catholic Students (PMKRI), National Front for Indonesian Labour Struggle (FNPBI), National Democratic Students' League (LMND).

At the Council on Monday, they demanded the police release nine workers and activists from the Solidarity Front and the PRD detained at the North Surabaya Police Headquarters. The nine were taken in when the police confiscated several molotov cocktails brought by demonstrators to a strike protest on November 1.

During the November 1 demonstration for better working conditions and pay, the workers claimed they were brutalised by thugs hired by the owner of PT Mepoly Industry Corps, Frank Panji.

Violence broke out between the protesters and the thugs and police and one PRD activist, Sutrisno, was stabbed repeatedly in the stomach by the thugs bearing small blades.

The demonstrators demanded the police arrest Panji for hiring the thugs and accused them of being one-sided because their colleagues were arrested for possessing molotov cocktails while the ones who almost disemboweled Sutrisno escaped.