One steamy Thursday morning we rumbled out of Jakarta on the slowest, oldest rattletrap bus I’d ever seen. Which in Indonesia, is saying something. We were headed for an Asia Pacific Solidarity Conference. Few of us knew our exact destination though, because the conference we’d registered for didn’t yet have a police permit and security was tight.

It turned out to be a golf club in Sawangan to the southwest. The club was very pleasant indeed. The food was terrific. The first afternoon brought a spectacular and rather beautiful electric storm.

A series of sometimes stormy debates continued into the next day, but the repressive forces of the state kept their distance, and we began to relax a bit about security. Then halfway through Friday I left the auditorium. Before I came back, armed police had arrived from all direction, and a tense confrontation was underway.

The conference still lacked a permit, and the police were saying we 40 or so foreign participants had misused our visas, pretending to be tourists when we were really there for a political event. They demanded we climb onto open trucks. But at the urging of our hosts, we refused.

We sat around the tables; the Indonesian participants clustered around us. When the cops tried to pull us out of the tangle, the organisers argued: These are foreign citizens, you can’t treat them like that.’ Wide-eyed young cops, used only to mistreating their own citizens, let go of us and the stand-off continued.

The Indonesian comrades began singing the left anthem Darah Juang, Blood of Struggle. I knew the chorus but had never sung it in circumstances like these.

We held out for an hour, before finally climbing onto the trucks which rolled back into Jakarta, sirens blazing. On the streets, people stared at these foreigners assembled on police vehicles. We spent the journey tearing our address books into confetti which blew in our wake. The cops would find no clues.

As we began approaching the centre of town, the guy next to me spied a signboard he could half read with his phrase-book: ‘Selamat datang – we’re welcome,’ he laughed. I laughed louder: the sign said Selamat Datang di Polda Metro Jaya. Welcome to the police station.

***

They took our passports and put us in the Crisis Room – the sign was in English. The authorities had used this place to plan security during massive demonstrations outside the 1998 parliamentary special session. Here we would spend 24 hours.

Diplomatic staff started to appear, including a tense man from the Australian consulate who was very, very anxious to get us out of Indonesia. At first I assumed he was concerned for us.

Local and international media began arriving next. Soon our faces popped up on Jakarta TV. The rank and file police in the station were agog -- what had they got themselves into? Through our one cell phone held by Belgian comrade Jean Duval, calls came in from around the globe. Protests were underway internationally. Far to the south, true to form, Australia’s Foreign Minister was backing the cops.

Our leader through most of this was the well known solidarity activist Max Lane. Max had once been cultural councillor in the Australian embassy, and had the best tactical sense and experience for this situation. He was brilliant. But his high blood pressure began to affect him, and I was asked to take on the negotiating role because I could speak the language. I was just getting my head together to do this when the police brought in finger printing gear and cameras.

Our Legal Aid lawyers warned this could set a bad precedent for local people. OK, we refused to be fingerprinted or photographed. The consulate man was beside himself. You have to cooperate, he harangued, the police are within their rights, the stakes are too high. When we stood our ground he looked daggers at the lawyers. What was with this guy, I began to wonder. He had just finished yet another hysterical warning when suddenly the cops packed up their apparatus and took it away.

They had bitten off more than they could chew. Expecting a rabble of scared foreigners, they found themselves confronting several dozen experienced political activists, not unfamiliar with the inside of police stations. Apprehensive, sure; but we didn’t panic and we knew how to fight.

***

The cops began taking statements from us through an interpreter, but our people refused to sign Indonesian-language transcripts they couldn’t read. One frantic officer burst out angrily: ‘We Are The Indonesian Police, We Are Here To Help You!’ Thank-you, constable. I plunged into negotiations, and eventually realised what the solution was. I would translate the statements myself. And check the transcripts.

Eventually the process sped up and we relaxed. This was political and would be resolved higher up; the ordinary cops were just going through the motions, and the foreigners could all have got out in a few hours. But one of the Indonesian organisers had been arrested with us. We demanded in vain that they let him leave with us. By this time we’d heard ghastly reports that back at Sawangan, the police had let fanatical religious youth attack the conference organisers with swords. We didn’t trust them not to bash this guy if we left him behind.

So most of us spent the night in the Crisis Room, on benches and tiled floors. Staying the night made it seem more dramatic, almost like a state of siege – later in Australia someone would describe it as a ‘hostage situation’. Err, not quite. We could have gone to hotels. We weren’t facing the fearsome treatment Indonesian activists lived with all the time.

And the next evening, Saturday, we did leave, on instructions to come back Monday morning. You should have seen us in the bars that night! The police still held our passports, however, and we figured they’d boot us out of the country.

But in next morning’s Jakarta Post the Immigration Department slammed the police. It seemed the foreigners had used the correct visas after all! I began to suspect we’d won the political battle. The Indonesian comrades met with us, full of apologies for the collapse of the conference. We took them to dinner, full of thanks for their help and admiration for their courage.

Monday morning arrived. We boarded that same shaky bus, and once entered the cop shop. We smiled to police who we remembered from Friday, but they glared at us. The police force had lost face. Back in the Crisis Room, we endured a pointless tirade from a senior officer we’d never seen before.

Then they sent us to the Immigration Department, where we got our passports back. By late afternoon I was in a taxi heading off to a meeting of trade unionists. In a day or two I was on a train out of town. I looked over my shoulder for much of the next two weeks, but the drama was over.

I still wondered why that consulate guy had been so frantic. Then came the announcement: President Wahid, who had cancelled more than one visit to Australia, was finally on his way to Canberra. Maybe they’d been terrified those bloody minded lefties in the Crisis Room would bring on a diplomatic disaster. Hey, what a tempting thought.