By Will Dunning There has been a huge upsurge in the number of labour disputes and strikes in Indonesia's major industrial cities in 1994. The independent union SBSI has come under extreme pressure from the authorities.
Another independent union, the PPBI (Centre for Indonesian Workers Struggle) has also emerged.
Many of the SBSI's important leaders have been jailed, the union's bank accounts frozen and visitors to the SBSI office harassed. The SBSI has kept its office open but its regional development has been stunted. One of its central leaders Muchtar Pakpahan has recently had his jail sentence increased by the Inworkers enter Solidarity with East Timorese struggle is working class task cantly, it calls for the military to year. This means that there were The Warton Four, put on trail for "going equipped too commit criminal damaged" at the BAe site in Warton, Lancashire, walked free from the court room at the end of January as the case against them collapsed.
At the end of the prosecution case at Preston crown Court the judge John Appleton ruled that three of the defendants had no case to answer. BAe then advised the prosecution that they wanted the case against Chris Cole not to continue.
The Four, Katherine Whitham, Rachel Julian, Michael Bane and Chris Cole had planned to use the trail to put BAe on trial for "conspiring to commit genocide with the Indonesian regime in East Timor."
Honke Campaigning at Warton Such a strategy clearly placed BAe in a difficult position. They had no desire for the facts of the matter to be brought out in court in the full glare of publicity. Had the trial gone ahead the defendants were to bring forward John Pilger as a key witness.
The ruling can only further turn the screw on BAe and open the way to mass action against BAe sites.