Chairperson of the Indonesian Center for Labor Struggles and leader of the People's Democratic Party of Indonesia (PRO), Dita Sari was a guest speaker at the International Women's Day march and rally held on 8 March 1995 in Perth, Australia.

She was the first prominent democratic leader to be arrested by the Suharto dictatorship in the wave of repression that began in July 1996. She was arrested 8 July while attending a peaceful demonstration of 20,000 young women workers demanding wage increase and other improvements. She has been an outspoken defender of women's rights in Indonesia as well as a courageous reporter of freedom in East Timor. She was also active in solidarity with Megawati Sukarnoputri in the latter's campaign against harassment by the Suharto dictatorship. Even though from a different political party than Megawati, Dita spoke frequently at public meetings and demonstrations as an act of solidarity with another victim of repression and a symbol of democratic struggle.

Dear Sisters,

I write this letter in a narrow and miserable cell in a gaol in Surabaya. Exactly two years ago I was with you at the IWD rally in Perth. Since then, time has flown by and so many important things have happened in the struggle for freedom in my country.

This regime has chosen me as the lone woman among 15 people on trial for subversion. The People's Democratic Party has many women activists, especially from among the workers. We think that one of the measures of the progress of the movement here is the participation of women activists, both quantitatively and qualitatively. As president of a trade union, 1 personally cannot separate myself from a special solidarity with the women worker activists, even though I am aware too that every activist is tested in the end via their commitment and loyalty and not other criteria.

The regime has struck out at us so that our Party and its mass organizations are covered with bleeding wounds. Everywhere the regime spreads the word that we are the same as the old Indonesian Communist Party, trying to create mass hysteria and to legitimize its repressive action against us. They needed an appropriate scapegoat and they chose the PRD. This is not a government that stands firm on the defense of the people's sovereignty and their economic and political rights. It is a government built on authoritarian foundations in order to defend special economic interests and capital.

In the midst of this disaster, we survive. We have survived well the early period of big organizational disruption. Our women cadres from the students and workers have stepped forward to take leading positions in consolidating the organization. The terrorized workers have freed themselves from fear. And the peasants swallowed up by the repression have begun to rise up again.

And in prison, the flame still burns bright among the cadres. Belief in the justice of our struggle and our deep love for the mass of workers are the two things which keep me going. Of course, there are moments when I experience the bitter pain of losing, of a sense of failure, of loneliness. There are times that I must struggle with myself and accept that I will lose the productive years of my youth. And I think I can handle all this?

Yet the next morning, I always awake in the warmth of sweet memories of struggling together with the workers, the people. There are women in the prison here who were workers too, and each time I look at them, I feel their hands reach out to me to make sure I do not fall.

The emergence of Megawati Sukarnoputri, a woman, as a figure supported by tens of millions of people is a sign of the progress and qualitative advance made by the people's democracy movement and of the movement to end capitalism's use of patriarchy to manipulate us.

Now we wait for the right moment, and prepare our forces, so that we will have an era of democracy where all will have the same rights, where women will have the opportunity to emerge as leaders in all fields.

I truly hope one day to be with you again, as I was two years ago (in Perth) and to discuss with you the economic and political issues affecting women. Your solidarity and international support, from countries where workers are also treated unfairly and women continue to be exploited, strengthens our resolve in the midst of the great losses and oppression of the Indonesian people.

Sisters, I miss you all. I long to be there among you.

March, 1997

Update: On 22 April in Surabaya, the kangaroo court trying the case of Dita Sari handed down a sentence of six years. The prosecution had demanded nine years. Dita's codefendants, Coen Hussein Pontoh and Mohammed Soleh, were sentenced to four years each. Dita and her lawyers immediately denounced the court as a farce and swore to continue the struggle.

In the history of women struggling for change in Malaysia, three separate strands may be discerned: the anticolonial nationalist movements, the labor struggles, and the struggle for women's rights. Of these, by far the most significant and widespread mobilization of women had been in the anticolonial nationalist movements of both Right and Left in the period after World War II.

Nevertheless, women organizing within the right-wing nationalist movement did so within the confines of a subordinate status. The one person who had dared to challenge this—Khadijah Sidek, elected leader of the women's section of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) in 1954—was eventually expelled from the party. She had agitated for greater female representation in decision-making, an independent status for the women's section, a separate women's youth section, and the increased nomination of women to contest in the national elections.

The left-wing anticolonial struggle, as embodied in the All-Malayan Council for Joint Action (AMCJA) and the Pusat Tenaga Rakyat (PUTERA), and its women's wing, the Angkatan Wanita Sedar (AWAS), had raised the issue of women's representation, suffrage, and emancipation from traditional bonds. These organizations were however shortlived, as they were banned by the colonial government in 1948.

Communalism was the order of the day in subsequent Malayan, later Malaysian, politics. Non-communal party politics which focus on social issues were not successful in wooing members. The Independence of Malaya Party, set up in 1951 and open to all races, specifically promised equal opportunities regardless of sex, but was defunct within a year. The Parti Negara, launched in 1954, guaranteed equal pay for equal work and equal opportunities for women, but it too was unsuccessful in attracting supporters. Yet another non-communal party, the Pan-Malayan Labor Party, which had a commitment toward ensuring gender equality, including the establishment of a Women's Charter, also did not flourish.

Women's participation in politics, therefore, takes place within ethnic boundaries, and is subject to the strong political forces in the country. The appeal or nonappeal of women's issues, as the case may be, has been bound by these national forces, often communal in nature.