Business First, Freedom Second

Only a week before Bill Clinton was due to arrive in Indonesia for a state visit, a court in the northern city of Medan sentenced labor leader Muchtar Pakpahan to three years in prison. Pakpahan is the sixth official of the Indonesian Prosperity Trade Union to be convicted in connection with workers' riots that wrecked several factories and blocks of shops in Medan earlier this year. Sixteen of his colleagues are still on trial in what looks to many like an attempt to bust a union that the authoritarian Indonesian government views as dangerously independent. U.S. officials "deplored" Pakpahan's sentence and said Clinton would discuss the case and other "problems in the human- rights area," including the closure of three influential publications, with Indonesia's President Suharto this week.

The Medan court's timing probably was not coincidental, and it highlights the difficult balance Clinton is determined to maintain on his trip to Asia, which centers on a summit meeting in Bogor, Indonesia, of the 18-nation Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation group. Clinton's commerce-oriented policy pits his drive for good relations and ever increasing trade with the nations of Asia against his avowed concerns for human rights. As a candidate, he jabbed at George Bush's China policy, saying the U.S. has "a higher purpose than to coddle dictators and stand aside from the global movement toward democracy." Last May he effectively amended that, detaching the issue of human rights from the annual review of free trade with China. The best way for the U.S. to advance freedom in China, he said, was through efforts "to intensify and broaden its relations" with Beijing.

Before taking off last week for Manila en route to Indonesia, Clinton again expressed his confidence that he could have it both ways. "I don't think we have to choose," he said, "between increasing trade and fostering human rights and open societies." He would be frank about differences on these issues "as well as our potential partnerships with the Chinese, with the Indonesians and with others," he said.

The diplomatic discussions in Bogor are not the only framework for the debate on trade and human rights. It has spread into the boardrooms of major U.S. corporations, onto factory floors in Asian countries and back to the counters at American shopping malls. International human-rights organizations are pressing multinational corporations to speak up for their workers abroad, and executives are considering codes of good labor conduct. Many Americans, now accustomed to boycotting lettuce, grapes and tuna fish for humanitarian and ecological reasons, are shifting their scrutiny to the conditions under which their running shoes and their kids' toys are produced. Those conditions often include a sweatshop pace, low wages, long working hours and little freedom for workers to organize or speak their mind.