Dita Sari: 'I am so optimistic'
By Jill Hickson
Dita Sari, Indonesia's only woman political prisoner, was arrested while leading a 20,000-strong workers' demonstration in the industrial city of Surabaya on July 8, 1996. She was tried in 1997 for subversion and jailed for five years.
As well as organising workers, students and the urban poor to demand their rights, Dita helped set up the People's Democratic Party (PRD), which was illegal under the Suharto regime. Even after the fall of Suharto and the un-banning of the PRD, however, Dita and her comrades remain in jail.
In August I visited Indonesia to collect material for a film I am making on the political situation there. During my stay I visited Dita in prison three times and secretly filmed an interview with her.
Dita is currently in the West Tangerang Women's Prison on the outskirts of Jakarta. She was moved there after international protests about the conditions in Malang Prison, where she contracted typhus in November 1997.
Dita is following the events outside her prison walls with enthusiasm and wondering when she will be released so she can participate more in the struggle for democracy in her country.
At the time of her arrest, she was the president of the illegal trade union, the Indonesian Centre for Labour Struggle (PPBI), which is affiliated to the PRD. The PRD was blamed by the Suharto government for the riots that occurred in July 1996.
The government held show trials in early 1997 in which the PRD members were found guilty of subversion and sentenced to between 18 months and, for PRD chairperson Budiman Sujatmiko,13 years in jail. The PRD was banned, along with its affiliated organisations such as the PPBI.
Since then, new workers' organisations have sprung up throughout Indonesia. Some grew out of the PPBI and are affiliated to the PRD, such as KOBAR (Workers' Committee for Reform Action).
During of my visits with Dita, a delegation of 10 workers from the local factories in Tangerang were also visiting her, to ask for advice about a strike they were involved in which resulted in 300 sackings. They said they also wanted to keep her morale high.
Rumours have circulated for months that Dita will be released any time now. In early September, however, the commander of the jail announced that Dita's foreign visitors must now apply through "official" channels to see her. This indicated that the regime is worried that Dita is receiving too much international attention and intends not to release her but to clamp down harder on her.
It has reason for concern. Just in the week before the announcement, Dita was visited by the US attaché, who presented Habibie with a petition from members of Congress calling for Dita's release; a representative of the International Labour Organisation, keeping her informed of its international campaign to secure her release; Matt Robson, a New Zealand Alliance MP campaigning for the NZ government to take up her case; and seven members of a Japanese non-government organisation which has linked up with the Free Dita Sari campaign being run by the Bodyshop in Japan. That campaign is being run jointly with Amnesty International, for whom Dita is a prisoner of conscience.
Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor, of which I am assistant national coordinator, has been campaigning in Australia for the release of Dita since her arrest in 1996. ASIET has produced a booklet on her activities and launched a petition calling on the Australian government to take up Dita's cause and pressure the Indonesian government to free all the political prisoners, including East Timorese leader Xanana Gusmao.
Dita told me that the new Indonesian government of B.J. Habibie is "Suhartoism without Suharto, the old people but with new clothes".
She said: "We have to accept Habibie only as a transitional leader. In this time of transition we must prepare ourselves to push the reform movement as much as possible to obtain certain new legislation, new elections and changes that will create a more democratic state. After the fall of Suharto, this is our duty.
"The May demonstrations [which ousted Suharto] were very spontaneous. Now the students must organise themselves so they can continue in a more professional way, with organisations reaching out to other sectors — the workers, the urban poor — to make alliances with them."
Asked about the role of the military and its head, General Wiranto, in the May events, Dita said: "After Suharto resigned on May 21, Wiranto promised that he and all of ABRI [the armed forces] would protect Suharto and his family. The military made a concession [accepting] Habibie. It's not that the military wanted to be with the people, but it made a political concession.
"Second, they [Suharto, Habibie and the military] still think that the dual function of the military must be maintained. The military doesn't want to retreat from the political arena. The political concessions given by Habibie to Wiranto [included] putting some generals in certain strategic positions so that Wiranto could 'guide' the reform process. He is not 'the general of the people' like they [the media] said."
I asked Dita if the rumour was true that, since the jailing of the PPBI's general secretary, Ignacio, and herself, the PPBI has ceased to exist. She said: "We still have our underground organisers and we still have our underground movement.
"They [the government] said we are illegal, that we are communists. They can say anything, but we had already built our underground method, so we can defend ourselves in every kind of situation.
"After July 1996, when I was in jail and Ignacio was in jail and Wilson [another PRD leader] was in jail, we were down, they were really going after us. But our underground methods are allowing us to organise workers, one factory by one, and by committees."
When asked why she thought the Habibie government has not released all the PRD members in prison, Dita answered: "This government is trying so hard to again have the trust of the world and also of the [Indonesian] people. They think that if they let us go we will organise again, mobilise the masses again, make demonstrations again on the street.
"They are afraid that the stability of this country will be spoiled by our demonstrations, by our mass mobilisations. So they think that it's better to keep us in jail so they can save their credibility outside.
"In simple words, they are afraid of the mobilisations of the workers and students together, and they know we can do that; we already did that. That's why they put us in jail, and that's why they don't want to let us go."
Dita pointed out, however, that the release of the political prisoners also depends on the extent of international pressure on the Habibie regime. "Wilson and Ken Budda are already released ... [the regime] wants to see what we will do with four members released. It's just one step because they are so afraid."
Commenting on the struggle for freedom for East Timor, Dita argued that Habibie has had no choice but to offer the concession of "special status" because he is under enormous international pressure and needs to gain more international support.
She added: "Habibie has to look for the middle way. He cannot accommodate anti-integration opinion and hold the referendum as soon as possible, but he must accommodate the international pressure. The 'special autonomy' for East Timor is just a political manoeuvre, not genuine or because he respects self-determination for that nation."
Asked what she thinks is the next step forward for the democracy movement, Dita said: "The time is right to create a democratic coalition. They [the media] say the reform movement in Indonesia is not strong enough to overcome the Habibie government because the movement is not united, consolidated or strong enough.
"They say that we haven't had a good political and economical agenda, that we have political and ideological differences. Well, maybe [we do] in tactics and strategy, but through a democratic coalition we can overcome that and start to make a new agenda, a new political program so that we can be strong enough to face Habibie and go through this transitional time.
"We have already set up KEPAL, our committee to prepare for the legalisation of the PRD and now that [PRD leader] Andy Arief is free, and Jati and Wilson are outside, I feel so optimistic. After their release, I thought that's OK, they don't have to release me. We have two hands [and] one hand is already out there, so it's OK if I get released in 2001. We will continue; the PRD will keep on growing, doing what they should do outside.
"Now, many of our activists, our organisers, are very confident of our party because we have already gone through the worse. We learned our lessons very well and we have proven to the people that what is in our manifesto, our program, is completely right."
[This is abridged from the filmed interview with Dita. The full interview is available on video, with footage from the August 17 (Indonesian Independence Day) demonstration outside Cipinang Prison, where other PRD members are jailed, along with Xanana Gusmao, edited in. To order copies, contact ASIET at PO Box 458, Broadway NSW 2007, phone (02) 9690 1032 or e-mail <asiet@peg.apc.org> or visit.]