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From
the October 2001 issue of World Press Review
Dita Indah Sari
Indonesian Labor Leader
Tekla Szymanski
World Press Review Associate Editor
Why would a middle-class Indonesian law student, who, in her own words,
would have been happy to be a kindergarten teacher, feel compelled
to become a radical trade union leader? Why would she risk being jailed,
sexually abused, beaten, and harassed, all in the quest of fighting
for democracy, against poverty and injustice in her country? Dita
Indah Sari, 28, has a simple answer: “If I stopped I would have
no idea what my life would mean or who I would be.”
Dita, president of the National Front for Workers’ Struggle Indonesia,
was among those who organized the grassroots movement that helped
topple Indonesia’s autocratic ruler Suharto in 1998. “As
Indonesia charts a new course under President Megawati [Sukarnoputri],
young leaders like [Dita] may have to mount the barricades again,”
predicted Satya Sivaraman in an article for London’s Gemini News
Service.
Dita started her activism in 1992 at the University of Indonesia
in Jakarta. She organized student demonstrations for human rights,
led workers in an illegal trade union, debated women’s
rights within the unions, and in 1994 helped launch the Indonesian
Center of Labor Struggle. In 1997, she was sentenced to seven
years in prison for leading a strike of 20,000 workers. She
was released two years later. In Dita’s view, an independent
student movement is critical to building a broader struggle
against dictatorship. The movement is still needed, with a new
political era beginning in Indonesia: Vigilance is important
in building a functioning democracy, she believes. “The
key is patience.” 
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