Another demonstration near House building

JAKARTA (JP): Hundreds of students staged a rally near the toll gate on Jl. Gatot Subroto close to the Semanggi cloverleaf in Central Jakarta on Wednesday, demanding the establishment of a national reconciliation council by the House of Representatives.

The students, who came from nine Greater Jakarta universities and who are grouped in the Indonesian Islamic Students Forum (Formasi Indonesia), initially planned to march to the House building to convey their demand.

However they were blocked by traffic police, thereby causing heavy traffic jams on nearby roads for at least three hours.

Toll road lanes heading west were closed off from the front of the police headquarters, forcing vehicles to exit and head down Jl. Surdirman. The resulting congestion left motorists grumbling.

The path of the marching students was later blocked by soldiers at a nearby intersection.

"We planned to meet the House members, but the police insisted that we stop here and only send 10 people to the building," one student said.

After stiff negotiation between students and the military, the students were given 15 minutes to get under the flyover and stay there.

Students, wearing white ribbons around their heads, chanted "one command, one fight" and unfurled posters which read "Reform is polluted, reconcile", "Establish a reconciliation council immediately", "We want to meet Gus Dur, Megawati Soekarnoputri, Amien Rais and Akbar Tandjung".

The police then told the students they would count to 10 and then they had to disperse, but the student jumped the fence between the road and the toll road before the police had finished counting.

The police asked the students to get off the toll road as they feared they would make the traffic worse.

The students, however, strongly denied that they were the cause of traffic congestion whenever they held a protest.

"It's not us who cause traffic jams. We're forced to be here. If only the police would allow us to proceed to the legislature building, then we wouldn't be in the middle of the toll road like this," Armen, one of the students, said.

After reading their demand and singing patriotic songs, the students dispersed peacefully under the watchful eyes of both the police and soldiers. (emf)