Marsinah lived in Surabaja
A shanty town by the Java Sea
She watched the big ships sail to the ocean
Dreamed one day she would be free
Marsinah worked with nimble fingers
Assembling watches to earn her pay
Don’t talk now, the guards are coming
A dollar reward for a ten-hour day
There’s tears in the seams of your Levi jeans
And blood on your Nike trainers
Marsinah said, “It’s a yellow union
Bought and sold for foreign gold
West meets East with a loaded pistol
And they go to the boss with a begging bowl”
At sewing class on a Sunday morning
In whispered voices plans are laid
“How can we live on such little wages?
We are strong, we are not afraid”
There’s tears in the seams of your Levi jeans
And blood on your Nike trainers
Marsinah said, “It’s time for striking
We drink water, they drink wine
Suharto’s thugs will not divide us
We stand firm on the picket line”
They came in the night to take Marsinah
They tortured her, she would not yield
They racked her flesh with electric currents
And dumped her body in a paddy field
The workers toil in Surabaja
And the big ship loads for the open main
Marsinah’s voice calls across the ocean
Bangkit La! We rise again!
Bangkit La! We rise again!
Bangkit La! We rise again!
A shanty town by the Java Sea
She watched the big ships sail to the ocean
Dreamed one day she would be free
Marsinah worked with nimble fingers
Assembling watches to earn her pay
Don’t talk now, the guards are coming
A dollar reward for a ten-hour day
There’s tears in the seams of your Levi jeans
And blood on your Nike trainers
Marsinah said, “It’s a yellow union
Bought and sold for foreign gold
West meets East with a loaded pistol
And they go to the boss with a begging bowl”
At sewing class on a Sunday morning
In whispered voices plans are laid
“How can we live on such little wages?
We are strong, we are not afraid”
There’s tears in the seams of your Levi jeans
And blood on your Nike trainers
Marsinah said, “It’s time for striking
We drink water, they drink wine
Suharto’s thugs will not divide us
We stand firm on the picket line”
They came in the night to take Marsinah
They tortured her, she would not yield
They racked her flesh with electric currents
And dumped her body in a paddy field
The workers toil in Surabaja
And the big ship loads for the open main
Marsinah’s voice calls across the ocean
Bangkit La! We rise again!
Bangkit La! We rise again!
Bangkit La! We rise again!
Contributed by Donquijote82 - 2015/2/1 - 22:47
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Wild Geese
On May 2nd 1993, workers at the PT Catur Putra Surya plant in Indonesia, a factory in an Export Processing Zone, went on strike demanding a wage rise of 20%. On May 7th, the body of one of the organisers, Marsinah, was found in a paddy field. She had been tortured and brutally murdered for her trade union activities. It is widely believed that the Indonesian military were responsible for her death