read interview at: http://www.igc.apc.org/solidarity/atc/82Dita.html
> Copyright © 1999 by Against the Current
> An Interview with Dita Sari
>
> Interviewed by Emily Citkowski
>
> IN A SURPRISE move by the Indonesian government, jailed labor
> leader Dita Indah Sari was released from Tengerang prison Monday,
> July 5th. Dita was jailed in May of 1997 for leading a strike of
> 20,000 workers. She was originally sentenced to six years, reduced
> on appeal to five.
>
> Dita was recently elected president of the newly formed trade union
> organization FNPBI (National Front for Workers Struggle Indonesia),
> a coalition of progressive unions. She plans to continue her work
> as a labor organizer. Last winter, Dita rejected the government's
> offer to release her if she agreed to cease all political activity.
>
> Since her release, Dita has been a very busy woman. She has
> resumed her work as a union activist as the president of the FNPBI;
> she has been bombarded with press conferences and interviews; and
> she has visited numerous friends and family, including her niece
> who was born while she was in prison.
>
> We tried to go to a mall where she used to shop, but when we got
> there, we saw that it had been burned out in the riots in May `98.
> She had missed the downfall of Suharto and the chaos that ensued
> afterwards.
>
> After three years in prison, the freedom to make the seemingly
> mundane day to day choices most of us take for granted-what to eat
> for dinner, or what movie to see-can be a heady experience. Dita
> admitted to me that it was really strange to wake up one day and be
> told, out of the blue, to pack your bags and leave the life you had
> been living for three years. Not that she was complaining, it was
> prison after all.
>
> On July 27, Dita led a demonstration of workers from the FNPBI with
> students from KOMRAD and the KPUI (two of the student groups
> involved in the ongoing democracy movement). A dynamic speaker, as
> she spoke to the demonstrators about the need to increase wages,
> end the contract work system and abolish the dual function of the
> military in society ("dwifungsi"), it was hard to believe that she
> had been removed from the struggle for three years.