law in the UPS dispute over working conditions, while truck driver members have staged a massive week-long stoppage against firms imposing part-time working. CHINA faced no less than 10,000 examples of strikes, slow-downs, collective appeals, demonstrations, parades or protests during 1993, according to Minister of Labour Li Boyong. "Enterprises with joint foreign and local capital are particularly problematic".
Beijing bureaucrats abolished the right to strike in 1982.
By K Govindan A MASS strike of workers and a demonstration in the city of Medan. northern Sumatra, turned into an anti-Chinese riot last week.
20,000 factory workers marched on April 14 and over 50,000 the next day. This followed the first nationwide general strike, on Feb 11, since the military seized power in the bloody coup of 1965.
The general strike and a series of small activities have been led by the Independent Labour Welfare Union (FBSI) ployers and the military.
According to Sunarti of the FBSI, the demand of the Medan protests are:
* a daily minimum wage of 7,000 rupiahs (£2), instead of the present 3,800 rupiahs;
* better working conditions including,an end to military interference in labour disputes;
* an independent investigation into the death of labour activist, Rusili.
The protest exploded into attacks on the shops, homes and property of the ethnic Chinese minority. While Chinese form only 3% of Indonesia's 185 million people, they dominate the economy from petty trading to regional giants.
One leaflet in circulation read, destroy the Chinese who completely colonise our lives.
"They are rapists, murderers and robbers who plunder the country's money that belongs to us, oppress the workers and humiliate the workers'.
The Chinese have been a convenient scapegoat for Indonesia's economic ills. The wealthiest like Liem Sioe Liong have prospered with close links with the military and the President's family.
Yet it is the politically weakest Chinese who suffer popular resentment, not the big capitalists and their powerful patrons.
The FBSI has been quick to distance itself from the leaflet, suggesting it could be the work of agent provocateurs.
*The pamphlets are not ours', said Sunarti, 'we never distributed them. There must be third parties who have been using our protest for their own interests'.
A new generation of militants has come forward after thirty years of repression. In which direction will they take the Indonesian workers' movement?
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 61, April 30, 1994, Page 13