Habibie promises release of Dita
JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Manpower Fahmi Idris said Wednesday he has appealed for the release of all detained labor activists and that President B.J. Habibie has promised the release of at least one of them, Dita Indah Sari.
Fahmi said he had sent letters in the past few months to Habibie, Minister of Defense and Security/Armed Forces (ABRI) Commander Gen. Wiranto, Minister of Justice Muladi, Attorney General Andi Mohammad Ghalib and Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Feisal Tanjung, to request that labor activists imprisoned across the country be released.
One of them is Dita, who is serving a jail sentence in Tangerang Penitentiary for leading a labor strike in 1996. She was arrested in Surabaya with her colleague, Coen Husein Pontoh of the Center for Indonesian Workers' Struggle which she chairs.
Fahmi made the statement at a media conference during a seminar held by the International Labor Organization (ILO) on ILO standards and conventions which ends Thursday.
He was describing part of "various steps in democratization in labor." The request for the release of the activists was important to the realization of democracy and freedom of speech, he said. "In a cabinet meeting which I cannot identify, President Habibie promised the release of Dita Indah Sari."
He said he could not give details of the identities of the prisoners but only said that apart from Dita there were seven or eight other activists, all incarcerated outside Jakarta.
Fahmi further said the ministry has estimated some 20 million are now without jobs. "This is a preliminary estimate, and I hope things get better," he said.
ILO announced earlier this year its estimates that full unemployment would reach 6.7 million by mid-1998.
The Assistant Director-General for ILO activities in Asia and the Pacific, Mitsuko Horiuchi lauded the government for this year's ratification of the ILO Convention no. 87 on Freedom of Association.
Jakarta ILO director Iftikhar Ahmed said he hoped the talks would facilitate the ratification of three of seven ILO Conventions: the convention concerning Forced or Compulsory Labor, the Minimum Age Convention and the Convention on Discrimination regarding employment and occupation. The minimum age for workers in developing countries is 14, according to the convention.
ILO senior specialist in international labor standards and labor law, Alan J. Boulton, noted there were 1.6 million working children aged 10 to 14 according to 1997 statistics here, a figure which he said would have likely increased with the crisis. (edt/anr)