PT Caltex workers go on strike
On November 21, 3000 workers at PT Caltex Pacific Indonesia in Pekanbaru, in the South Sumatra province of Riau went on strike to demand a 360% increase in wages and benefits.
Recently PT Caltex has been hit by a series of actions by local people demanding jobs. On November 20, operations had to be temporarily halted after hundreds of angry locals set fire to oil pumps.
According to the Detik news service, workers are accusing the company of wage discrimination between local and foreign employees.
On November 23, PT Caltex threatened not to pay the striking workers and refused to negotiate until they return to work.
Rights violations increasing under Wahid
Activists say that the number of human rights violations have increased since the "reformist" government of President Abdurrahman Wahid came to power just over a year ago.
According to the Commission on Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), in 1998 (under presidents Suharto and Habibie) there were around 59 official cases of human rights violations by the military. The figure went up to 85 in 1999 (under presidents Habibie and Wahid) and reached 63 cases from January to August.
Kontras deputy coordinator, Ikravany Hilman, said that in the past three years, the army committed 131 gross human rights violations out of 207 human rights violations. Of the abuses committed by the military, torture accounts for 117 incidents, extra-judicial killings 40 cases, arbitrary arrest 23 cases, intimidation 23 cases and robbery and destruction of property 17 cases.
The general secretary of the National Human Rights Commission (Komnasham), Asmara Nababan, told the Asia Times that such violations have tended to increase since Suharto's overthrow.
"The Wahid administration does not have the necessary political power to stop violence and human rights violations by the Indonesian military and it is time for the government to seek international assistance", he said, adding that farmers and workers have suffered the worst violations.
However, Kontras chairperson Munir is confident that people will eventually reign over the military. "Every day now, people in several places in Indonesia, including people at the grass roots level, set up military watches to control the military and check their human rights abuses. This is, I think, the embryo of a movement, the next movement."
Mass grave unearthed in Central Java
The remains of 24 communists slaughtered after former president Suharto and the military seized power in 1965 have been recovered from a mass grave in a Javanese forest.
The finds in Wonosobo, Central Java province, were made at the instigation of relatives of the men and women who disappeared on March 3, 1966. As many as one million communists and left-wing sympathisers were killed and thousands more interned without trial between 1965-66.
The South China Morning Post quoted relatives demanding that such finds must become part of a formal investigation by Komnasham. While admitting there were "gross rights violations at the time", Komnasham officials have said that any probe into the killings must first be cleared through parliament and that "Indonesia may not be ready for this yet".
The investigation was organised by the Indonesian Institute for the Study of the 1965-66 Massacre, formed by former communists, political prisoners and human rights activists.
Union leader sues police
Indonesian Prosperous Labour Union (SBSI) chairperson, Muchtar Pakpahan, filed a lawsuit on November 23 against national police chief General Surojo Bimantoro and East Kalimantan police chief Inspector General Togar M. Sianipar over the recent arrest of the union's leading official in the province.
According to the Jakarta Post, the suit alleges the November 12 arrest of Wuaya Kawilarang, the SBSI coordinator for East Kalimantan, was illegal. Pakpahan is seeking his immediate release, US$266,000 in compensation to be paid to the union and a public apology.
Pakpahan said Kawilarang was being charged with inciting workers to go on strike at the PT Kaiko oil mining company and attempting to resist law enforcers, which is punishable by a maximum sentence of six year's jail.
He said that during the strike, police fired rubber bullets at the strikers and following Kwilarang's arrest, Sianipar threatened to eliminate SBSI entirely from East Kalimantan, claiming the organisation disrupted peace and order in the province.
[Visit Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor's web site at <http://www.asiet.org.au> for more news updates.]