Indonesian legal aid visit Sydney: Dismantling crime at PT

Indonesian Solidarity Sydney, 11 th November 2011

Erna Ratnaningsih is a human rights lawyer and a director of Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (or LBH) established in 1970 to provide legal assistance to poor people in Indonesia. LBH has 70 office branches in several cities across Indonesia from Aceh to Jayapura, West Papua.

On 9 November, a group in solidarity with Freeport workers was having a public discussion with the title "Dismantling crime at PT Freeport, the mining corporations and the State against the People" at LBH's office in Jakarta, when several police from Brimob (police brigade) fully armed with automatic weapon arrived to intimidate the discussion and surrounded the LBH office.

It is also one more clear piece of evidence that Yudhoyono's administration is more willing to use the security approach to return Indonesian democracy back towards the Suharto era. While world leaders, include in Australia, praise President Yudhoyono as improving human rights and democracy in Indonesia, the police and army impervious to the law when it comes to their own human rights abuses and the military reform in Indonesia has come to a standstill .

Ms Ratnaningsih is also an expert on industrial dispute regulation in Indonesia on which LBH and several civil society organisations in Indonesia have collaborated to assist Freeport workers on strike more than 8 week now.

Ms Ratnaningsih is in Sydney from 14th to 15th November and will be happy to talk to the media on a number of related topics: the Freeport strike; the situation of unions in Indonesia, religious intolerance and civil liberties. You can contact Erna through Eko Waluyo on 0416 809 107.

ENDS

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