BY PETER BOYLE
At 6pm on Saturday June 9, 24 hours after the detained foreign participants at the Asia Pacific People's Solidarity Conference were first brought to Jakarta's central police HQ, the remaining 30 foreign detainees were allowed to leave. However, our passports were kept by the police and we were instructed to report back to the police HQ at 10am the following Monday.
The prospect of a shower, change of clothes and two nights and a day of relative freedom was very welcome.
The conference organisers provided us with a bus to our hotels and they had recovered most of our luggage from the conference site. Some detainees were hungry as the police had provided only one meal during those 24 hours (though our lawyers were able to purchase some snacks for us). Some opted for an early night while others couldn't resist going out for a drink.
During our day of freedom we were constantly watched by (not-so) secret police who noted down our comings and goings and our visitors. We didn't let them cramp our style. On Sunday night we took the conference organising committee out to dinner and later took over a small bar from its usual sleazy clientele.
The next day, just before we returned to police HQ, our spirits were lifted by the strongly supportive editorial in that day's Jakarta Post. "Democracy in peril!" it warned.
The paper reported that the director general of Indonesia's immigration department had said his department had nothing to do with the police raid, had received no report on the status of the foreigners attending, and doubted we had violated the visa rules. He pointed out that foreigners visiting Indonesia for special events such as conferences and business meetings were eligible for the visa-on-arrival facility.
Indeed, the multi-purpose "short-stay pass" that most of us had been issued on arrival in Indonesia states only two conditions: 1) we were not allowed to work and 2) the pass was not extendable beyond 60 days. Only one of the detainees, Farooq Tariq from Pakistan was actually on a "tourist visa" because that was all that was available to him. Another detainee had a visa that specifically allowed him to work as a volunteer for an Indonesian labour rights organisation.
It was becoming clearer that the real criminals were the police and the militia thugs who, as the Jakarta Post editorial pointed out "did not only seem to have the tacit approval of the police, but they finished off the police's job in dissolving the gathering".
"Like the raid itself, the use of thugs by the police and military to do its dirty job was normal practice during the Soeharto era", the editorial continued.
When we returned to police HQ, our lawyers demanded that the police give us copies of the short statements we had been made to sign. The police refused this elementary right. Instead, they showed us a copy of a letter that they were sending to the immigration authorities recommending that we be charged with violating our visa conditions. When our lawyers objected, one police commander began shouting at us that we were in police HQ and he gave the orders!
Since we were getting nowhere with the police, we agreed to board a police bus for the immigration department, authorising our lawyers to try to collect copies of the documents later.
The atmosphere at the immigration office was a lot more relaxed and our spirits were high. But the secret police had a few more tricks up their sleeve. They had set up their finger-printing and photographing kits in the immigration office and tried to trick us into consenting to be photographed and fingerprinted on the pretence that this was standard immigration department policy. Our lawyers refused on our behalf and the police had to pack up their gear.
Senior immigration officials took over and began returning passports to the detainees. Pierre Rousset (a research officer in the European Parliament) from France, Maire Leadbeater, a Greens' local councillor from New Zealand, and US citizen Paul D'Amato left to catch pre-booked flights. The rest of us resolved to leave together when all the passports were returned.
At about 1pm, after seven passports had been returned the processing came to a sudden halt. A group of police officers who we recognised from previous days had marched in and demanded to see the immigration department chiefs. We heard from the news reporters that the director general of the immigration had scheduled a 2pm press conference at which he was expected to confirm that we had breached no immigration rules and that the police were wrong to arrest us.
We waited tensely while negotiations took place behind closed doors. Our Indonesian friends brought in drinks and snacks and handed us conference T-shirts that had been saved from Friday's raid and militia attack. International and local media journalists took advantage of the break to do interviews and file stories. One Indonesian TV journalist apologised for our treatment by the police and said that many Indonesians were deeply concerned about four-year-old Zoe's detention.
The immigration chief's press conference took place at 3pm and it was announced that 29 of the remaining detainees had done no wrong and would have their passports returned immediately. But Farooq Tariq was singled out to be deported, though they gave him four days to leave on his own accord. This was seen as a face-saver for the police commanders.
After the press conference our passports were promptly returned and we were told we could leave or stay in Indonesia as we wished.
We left the immigration department flashing victory signs to the media picket and boarded a bus for the Legal Aid Institute of Jakarta (LBH). We were singing all the way and waving to the bemused crowds on the streets.
At the LBH offices a press conference was held. Kelik Ismunanto, director of INCREASE, and LBH lawyers Surya Candra and Daniel Panjatian slated the police for their anti-democratic actions. They said they were investigating suing the police commander for our wrongful detention. The detainees thanked their conference organisers and the lawyers for their incredible support and pledged to more vigorously take up the cause of democracy in Indonesia in our own countries. Visit <http://www.asiet.org.au> for full coverage.