Solidarity to the Charleston 5 from the Maritime Union of Indonesia
June 5, 2001

Dear comrades,

We from SBMNI, the Maritime Union of Indonesia, have read your report on the Charleston 5 with amazement and anger. We thought such practices of repression are only characteristic of countries like Indonesia, but it seems that the bosses and the state even in the US still try to ignore fundamental workers rights and attack the unions. We denounce such brutal acts of violence, the more since we too are daily confronted with such practices.

Globalization is driving our economies more and more together. Because of that an injury to you is an injury to us. So we wish you a combative action on June 9 and a victory to the Charleston Longshoremen!

We hope that in the future our unions can develop a regular exchange of information and solidarity to build the workers movement, and especially the maritime unions, on both sides of the Pacific. For the moment we are working on a report about our young but fast growing union. In the near future we will send you this report and some pictures as a first step in our solidarity links.

Selamat solider, our solitary greetings,
SBMNI

Yours in solidarity,
Wim Benda, 
Belgian labor activist in Indonesia