MORE THAN 2 MILLION WORKERS STRIKE IN INDONESIA

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- More than 2 million factory workers went on a one-day strike across Indonesia on Wednesday to demand better benefits and protest the hiring of contract workers, union officials said.

Hundreds of thousands of laborers from more than 700 companies in 80 industrial estates also took to the streets to demonstrate, national police spokesman Col. Agus Rianto said.

About 200,000 workers marched in the industrial city of Bekasi, just outside Jakarta, while waving flags and chanting "Workers unite! We can't be defeated!"

The workers want an increase in the minimum wage, health insurance and social security for all employees and a revision of government policies that allow companies to hire temporary workers without benefits, said Yoris Raweyai, chairman of the Confederation of Indonesian Workers' Union.

"We warn the government that we can do worse to the country's economy if they continue ignoring our three main demands," said Said Iqbal, a protest organizer from the Indonesian Workers' Assembly.

Indonesia's Constitutional Court ruled in January that hiring contract laborers is unconstitutional and violates workers' rights.

The government is still drafting a revision of the labor law following the ruling, which may be finished by the end of the year, said Suhartono, spokesman for the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry, who like many Indonesians uses only one name.

He said he believes the number of strikers was lower than union estimates, but did not provide a figure.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called the strike unfortunate because it could discourage foreign investment, his spokesman Julian Pasha said.

Factory workers in Indonesia earn an average basic salary of just over $120 a month. The economy grew 6.5 percent last year, the fastest pace since the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, and the cost of living has been increasing, making it harder for workers to pay for food and basic necessities.

Protests are common in Indonesia and are generally peaceful.

Indonesia airline boom raises new safety questions

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Dozens of fledgling airlines that have sprung up to serve Indonesia's island-hopping new middle class could jeopardize the archipelago's recently improved safety reputation, aviation experts say.

The trend threatens to erode higher standards established during what one analyst called a "tremendous amount of soul searching" by major carriers and the government after 2007, when frequent crashes prompted the European Union to ban all Indonesian airlines from landing on its runways for two years.

With growth rates of nearly 20 percent per year, Indonesia is one of Asia's most rapidly expanding airline markets, but the country is struggling to provide qualified pilots, mechanics, air traffic controllers and updated airport technology to ensure safety. And with so many new, small carriers, it's hard to monitor all their standards.

"We are not ready for this boom," said Ruth Simatupang, an Indonesian aviation consultant and former safety investigator.

Indonesia's two largest airlines - national carrier Garuda and rapidly expanding boutique airline Lion Air - haven't had a fatal accident in five years and eight years, respectively. But small passenger and cargo carriers plus military aircraft have kept the frequency of crashes to about once every two months, according to statistics compiled by the Aviation Safety Network.

Just how fast Indonesia's airline market is growing came under a spotlight with Wednesday's deadly crash of a Sukhoi Superjet-100 plane during a demonstration flight. While both the plane and the pilot were Russian, the flight was packed with representatives of local airlines that the manufacturer hoped would purchase the jetliner.

The number of air passengers in Indonesia jumped by 10 million in a year to 53 million in 2010, according to the government statistics agency, and the upward trend continued last year.

"Infrastructure hasn't kept pace with the growth of the airlines," said Shukor Yusof, an aviation analyst in Singapore for Standard & Poors.

He said the government needs to "spend a vast amount of money" to expand safety monitoring for the new carriers and invest in airport runways and technology. He added that the relative ease with which new airlines can be established, though tightened in recent years, has been a concern in the aviation community for years.

In the past five years, Indonesia has added 36 new passenger and cargo airlines, bringing the total to 86 - many of them small carriers serving outlying islands where the only travel alternatives are ferries.

Feeding the demand for new air routes are Indonesia's population of 240 million, its geography of 18,000 islands and an economy that grew at a 6.5 percent clip last year, creating a larger middle class eager to travel.

"Indonesia is a natural market for growth," said Brendan Sobie, chief Southeast Asia representative for the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation. "It's one of the world's biggest populations and one of the world's most underserved markets for airlines."

Transportation official Herry Bakti Singayuda insists that Indonesia's rapid airline growth is still compatible with safety.

"We evaluate the operators," said Singayuda, who directs the Air Transport Department under the Ministry of Transportation. "We control that growth based on their capability, their facilities and personnel."

He added that the government has expanded flight schools, hired new inspectors and added 10 regional offices to keep up with the new airlines.

Yusof agrees the government and major carriers have markedly improved safety standards in the five years since the EU blacklist, which followed fatal crashes by Garuda and now-defunct Adam Air in 2007.

The government responded with a raft of new regulations and training schools, while Garuda invested millions of dollars to train staff and upgrade its fleet. Lion Air, which recently placed the largest-ever order for Boeing aircraft - 230 planes listed at some $22 billion - has also sought to improve safety, though it took a blow when several of its pilots were arrested in recent months with illicit drugs.

"Garuda and Lion Air have done a tremendous amount of soul searching in terms of safety and in bringing in experts ... to help them clean up their act," Yusof said. The newer airlines, however, may need more scrutiny.

Smaller airlines serving the domestic market may have less money to invest in training and hiring qualified pilots and mechanics, said Simatupang, the Indonesian aviation consultant.

"There are a lot of new pilots whose flying hours don't meet the minimum standards, but because the operators need them, they use them sometimes," she said.

Like Yusof, Simatupang called on the government to do more to regulate the new airlines.

"I always say to the government, please do the new infrastructure and safety regulations first," she said. "And then allow the airlines to expand."

Indonesia terror suspect's saga suggests SE Asia terror ties to al-Qaida fraying

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- A top Indonesian terror suspect captured in the Pakistani town where Osama bin Laden was later killed insists he was unaware of the al-Qaida leader's presence there, according to the video of his interrogation obtained by The Associated Press.

Alleged master bomb maker Umar Patek also described his frustration in re-establishing militant ties in his quest to go to Afghanistan and fight American soldiers. After flying on his own to Pakistan, he waited there for months before a years-old militant contact finally came for him.

His remarks, if true, would further bolster evidence that Southeast Asia's Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist movement, responsible for the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, is now largely cut off from its long-standing al-Qaida sponsorship, thanks in part to a relentless crackdown that has largely decimated their ranks.

Patek, whose trial resumes Monday in Jakarta for his alleged role in the Bali bombings that killed more than 200, was one of the last few remaining ranking Jemaah Islamiyah militants still on the run when Pakistani intelligence agents arrested him a year ago in the northwestern town of Abbottabad.

Although Jemaah Islamiyah is past its prime it is not vanquished, said Sidney Jones, a noted terrorism analyst from the International Crisis Group.

"Islamist radical groups in Southeast Asia, particularly those in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia have been damaged but they are still dangerous," she told the AP.

"They can stand their own ground. They are not linked to al-Qaida in any traditional way, but we have seen new waves of groups - to which al-Qaida is not connected at all - emerge and become more of a threat in Indonesia," she said. "However, the Indonesian police in particular is managing the threat very well."

Four months after Patek's arrest, U.S. Navy SEALS flew into Abbottabad and killed bin Laden.

Patek's arrest from a safe house so close to bin Laden's hide-out initially triggered speculation the terrorist leaders of al-Qaida and Jemaah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia were more connected that had been thought. Some Indonesian government officials had also hinted at a link.

U.S. and Pakistani officials said that Patek's presence in Abbottabad was a coincidence - and Patek's own words seem to support that view.

The 30-minute video of the interrogation by Indonesian police in September on his return home shows the 45-year-old insisting he was in Pakistan on a personal mission to go to Afghanistan with his wife and conduct jihad there.

A smiling Patek, dressed in a white robe and a gold-white striped skull cap, says in the video: "This was a personal mission of mine to journey to Afghanistan. No one ordered me to, and I wasn't out to build a new network."

"It was pure coincidence that I was in the same town as Osama bin Laden ... It had to be God's will."

"All the time I was there, I stayed inside the house. In fact, I never left my room," said Patek, who is accused of making the massive car bomb that struck two nightclubs on Bali's famous Kuta beach, killing 202 people, mostly tourists.

Patek admitted to building the bomb during an earlier interrogation in Pakistan immediately after his arrest. He could face death by firing squad if convicted of various terrorism-related charges.

A top intelligence official in the Philippines cautioned that it was too early to conclude that Patek did not plan to hook up with bin Laden in Pakistan, given that only al-Qaida had the resources Patek needed to pursue plans of setting up a new militant training camp, as he was suspected of seeking to do.

The official noted that most captured terrorists try to mislead investigators to protect themselves, their comrades and future plots.

Patek had shown intense passion for jihad, or holy war, in his homeland and in the southern Philippines, and it was strange that he would suddenly decide to go to an unfamiliar destination like Afghanistan, said the official, who was closely associated with the manhunt for Patek.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of a lack of authority to talk to reporters

Just before the 2002 bombings, Patek left Bali and went to a Muslim-dominated region of southern Philippines.

He told interrogators he came back several times from the Philippines to Indonesia to attend to family matters before deciding to travel to wage jihad in Afghanistan, flying first to Pakistan in August 2010.

"Some say I had fled ... that's not true. I never fled. I just migrated, merely to wage a holy war to help fellow Muslims who are oppressed in their lands ... in the Philippines and Palestine," Patek said in the video interrogation, this time with a straight face.

"If I knew how to go to Palestine, I might have gone there. But because I didn't know how, I (intended to go) to Afghanistan through Pakistan."

Patek told the interrogators that he wrote to a years-old email contact of a Pakistani militant named Badar, whom he apparently had never met, asking for help to go to Afghanistan.

Relying on such an old contact suggests Patek had been unable to forge any new jihadist ties in recent years. It was a far cry from the early 2000s, when Jemaah Islamiyah was believed to have received funding and operational support from al-Qaida, and some JI leaders were believed to have close relations with al-Qaida leaders from their days in militant training camps in Afghanistan.

He'd originally gotten Badar's email address by his fellow radical, Imam Samudra, one of the masterminds of the Bali bombings, when both were in the Philippines. Samudra was convicted and executed in late 2008.

Patek said approached a Pakistani shopkeeper, Nadeem Akhtar, who helped him get a Pakistani business visa through his connections in the embassy in Jakarta.

Akhtar was deported from Indonesia on August 27, 2010, for overstaying his visa. Three days later, Patek and his Filipino wife followed, using forged passports and stayed in Akhtar's house for two months. He later moved to the town of Multan to learn honey production and also got a visa extension for another three months.

During his five month stay in Pakistan, Patek said, he didn't do anything except trade in honey while waiting for his militant contact, Badar, who finally came to pick him up from Multan.

Badar and another man who identified himself as Haidar, took Patek and his wife to Abbottabad in January 2011, he said. It is unclear which of Pakistan's Islamist militant groups Badar and Haidar were part of.

They stayed in Haidar's parents' house in a room on the upper floor while waiting for the next stage of their journey to Afghanistan.

Nine days later, a squad of heavily armed Pakistani intelligence agents raided the house and captured Patek after shooting him in the thigh.