Students arrested for inciting labor protests
SURABAYA (JP): Police detained two student activists and arrested 11 others yesterday on charges of inciting massive labor protests here on Monday and Tuesday.
Apart from the 11, police released 22 activists they had rounded up from the streets directing the demonstrations, which met with a harsh response from security authorities.
Those detained were identified as Dita Indah Sari, the chief of the Center for Indonesian Workers' Struggle and Coen Husein Pontoh, an activist of the same organization. Both are students from Jakarta.
"We have to detain them because we have strong evidence they masterminded the labor demonstrations," the spokesman for the East Java police command, Lt. Col. M. Sofwat Hadi, told The Jakarta Post.
The two demonstrations involved about 10,000 workers from 10 factories at the Tandes industrial estate in the southern suburb.
The workers demanded that their daily wages be raised to Rp 7,000 (US$3). The minimum daily wage for Surabaya, set by the government last April, is Rp 5,200 (US$ 2,26).
The military singled out student activists of the Democratic People's Party as the prime movers of the industrial strike. Most of the students were injured as the military forcibly dispersed them.
Subversion
Chief of the Brawijaya local military command Maj. Gen. Imam Utomo threatened to bring the student activists to court on charges of subversion, which carries a maximum penalty of death.
Dita and Coen were visibly unhealthy yesterday, with bruises on their heads. All of the other students arraigned at the police station on Tuesday night also had injuries. Heavily guarded, they were barred from talking to journalists.
Their colleagues, members of the Indonesian Students Solidarity for Democracy group, have approached prominent lawyer Trimoelja D. Soerjadi and the Indonesian Legal Institute for advocacy.
The director of the Surabaya Legal Aid Institute, Indro Sugianto, criticized the military's intervention in labor disputes. He said workers are always disfavored and employers failing to live up to labor standards are rarely punished.
Indro said that there were employers who failed to abide by the government regulation on minimum wage levels, and the government just turned a blind eye.
"If the government considers labor disputes as political problems, nothing will be settled. On the contrary, it will add to the complexity of the problems," he said.
Armed Forces spokesman Brig. Gen. Amir Syarifuddin described the industrial strike as "very emotional". He said the demonstrators meant to discredit the military.
"There is no need to take seriously what this small group of people did. They have been anti-military from the outset," he said.
In Jakarta, the chief of the Democratic People's Party, Budiman Sudjatmiko, bluntly acknowledged that his "party" had led the industrial action in Surabaya.
Criticizing what he referred to as "military brutality" during the protests, Budiman restated the student activists' demand for the need to overhaul the political system to allow democracy.
He charged that the Armed Forces' intervention in labor disputes aims at suppressing the people's basic right to organize and participate in the political decision-making process. (15/pan/imn)