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This #WomenHistoryMonth we remember Marsinah, the 24-year old Indonesian factory worker and labor activist whose mutilated body was discovered in a forest after she was murdered on 8 May 1993. She was raped and her life was taken for organizing a strike at the watch factory where she worked in East Java. Her murderers, widely thought to be soldiers, were never brought to justice.

When, in 1993, the government announced a 20% raise in the provincial minimum wage, Catur Putra Surya, the company where Marsinah worked and which had ties to the Indonesian military dictatorship, refused to comply. Despite knowing full well that under the US-backed dictatorship of Suharto her life could be in danger, Marsinah and 500 co-workers walked out on strike. The following day they began a sit-in in the factory and the company opened negotiations, which included Marsinah as a spokesperson for the workers. The company supposedly agreed to their demands.

Yet 13 of the workers were later called to the District Military Command, where they were forced to sign resignation letters. Marsinah, known to always try to help out her colleagues, headed to the military office to try to find out what happened to them and then she disappeared herself.
Her body was found days later. She had been kidnapped, brutally tortured, beaten, raped with a blunt instrument and killed.

Marsinah has since become a symbol and inspiration for the workers’ struggle in Indonesia and her death drew both national and international attention to the Suharto right-wing dictatorship's brutal repression of workers.

"Workers haven’t got any justice from the government. Workers have to unite their power, they have to unite, disregard individual interest, and put forward the interests of the workers and the masses."

Rest in power, Marsinah (10 April 1969 – 8 May 1993)
#workingclasshero #marsinah