‘I Feel It’s Not Just Me in Prison, It’s My Union.’

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/08/05/i-feel-it-is-not-just-me-in-prison-it%e2%80%99s-my-union/

Tim Ryan, the Solidarity Center’s regional director for Asia and Europe programs, recently visited jailed Indonesian labor leader Sarta Sarim. Here is his account of that visit in late July. On July 30, after Ryan’s visit, an Indonesian court found Sarim guilty and sentenced him to three months, which he already had served. He was released on July 31.

It was not the first time I had been in an Indonesian prison nor in this particular prison, in the industrial boomtown of Tangerang, just east of Jakarta.



When I was the Solidarity Center country director in Jakarta between 1997 and 2001, I spent plenty of time in Indonesian courtrooms and prisons because labor activists were regularly intimidated, attacked, arrested and jailed for their union activities. After the dictator Soeharto fell in 1998, and the Indonesian government allowed freedom of association for the first time in 32 years, dozens of independent unions sprang up, and trade unionists were released from prison.

But despite many new freedoms, sometimes the more things change, the more they remain the same. The AFL-CIO blog first posted an appeal on the case of imprisoned Indonesian union leader Sarta Sarim in May. Now in late July, I paid Sarta a visit at the Tangerang prison with the current Solidarity Center Country Director Jamie Davis and center staff.

Sarta was a worker and union chairman in a furniture factory in Tangerang who joined a May Day demonstration earlier this year as it passed the plant. Later that evening, police came to his house, arrested him, and took him to the police station. When he refused to sign a false confession saying he “organized“ the demonstration, the police induced other detainees to beat and kick him until he vomited blood. Under duress, Sarta finally agreed to sign a “confession.“

The police and prosecutors claimed that Sarta intimidated security guards at another factory along the demonstration route, urging workers from that factory to come out and join the march. He was charged under two Dutch colonial-era laws, including acting unpleasantly. It’s a sad but predictable fact that in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, once they became independent, authoritarian governments retained hated colonial-era laws that were used to keep the subject population in thrall. Sarta’s mood is better than when our staff visited him a week after he was put in prison in May. It’s possible that he will be released after his next hearing sometime in August, as the prosecution said they would ask for a four-month term, which will be up by the time of the next hearing. The trial has been a complete farce: Two key prosecution witnesses, including the factory manager, denied that he had threatened anyone. One security guard at the factory Sarta approached laughed when asked if Sarta intimidated him. “How could he intimidate me?,” the guard reportedly said. “He’s just a little guy.”

FULL story at link.