BY SEAN HEALY
MELBOURNE — "The most important thing I can tell people in Australia is that this fight against the World Economic Forum is not just of concern to people in this country; it concerns people everywhere, all over the world", said Romawaty Sinaga, the international officer of the Indonesian National Front for Workers Struggle, stressing her organisation's support for attempts to shut down the WEF's summit, which begins on September 11.
Sinaga, who will speak on the S11 Alliance's opening platform, told Green Left Weekly, "The people who will gather at this forum, the owners of the big companies, don't just operate in Australia. They operate in Indonesia also, and in many other countries, and everywhere they do the same thing: they exploit workers."
The militant Indonesian union federation has been in the thick of industrial struggles against several of the multinational companies that will have representatives at the Melbourne summit.
She rejected emphatically the claims of WEF spokespeople that protesters would only hurt workers by blocking the opportunities for investment and trade needed to generate prosperity.
"We get offered low wages, our freedom of association is restricted, we can't express our ideas, the military intervenes against us", Sinaga said bitterly, "because these are what investors demand as conditions for their investment. As for prosperity, the number of poor in Indonesia has gone from 50 million in 1997 to 80 million now."
Sinaga sees hope in a "rising awareness in Australia about the real problems of the world and of the Third World", although she believes that awareness must spread further, especially in the union movement.
"I see that people here are not only talking about themselves, not only protecting themselves", she said, "but are looking at the life of the whole people and are already trying to protect the rights of people from other countries.
"This protest is not just about Australia; it is not about defending the borders. It's about capital, which operates without borders and which exploits people all over the world. That is what we need to stop.
"We wish we could do more to help this protest. We wish we could send some Indonesian workers to participate", she said, "but hopefully a message of solidarity will be a start".