Hunger-striking students hospitalized

JAKARTA: Two students from the Jakarta Theology School (STT Jakarta) in Central Jakarta who have been on hunger strike since last week were rushed to the hospital last Saturday.

Fasting student Hazel was brought to the privately owned Cikini Hospital in Central Jakarta, while her colleague Willi was being treated in the privately owned Pertamina Hospital in South Jakarta. Hazel was released from the hospital late in the evening.

Previously, four students from the same college had given up their hunger strike due to their deteriorating health.

The STT Jakarta students' Kelompok Gumul Juang (Immense Struggle Group) has been staging the hunger strike on their campus since earlier this month in protest against what they say is police oppression of the student movement.

It was a follow-up to a clash between the police and students demanding the dissolution of the Golkar Party in front of the party's Jakarta headquarters in Cikini on Oct. 9.

A court later sentenced 84 students to three days in detention, or Rp 25,000 each in fines, following their convictions on charges of assault and trespass as they had attacked a man in the waiting room of the St. Carolus Hospital, Central Jakarta, whom they mistakenly took to be an intelligence officer.

"We protest the action of armed members of the security forces in entering onto the campus and in abducting the students who were being treated in the St. Carolus Hospital so they could be questioned," a leader of the group, Herman Nainggolan, told The Jakarta Post last Saturday.-- JP