Jakarta police commendable

JAKARTA: Jakartans should be proud of the discipline and behavior displayed by police during Monday's operation to remove asylum seekers from the Arya Building, used by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), an executive of the UNHCR Jakarta office said on Tuesday.

"The police behaved with a restraint which is to be envied by other countries in the world. Their patience and tolerance to abuse and violence was commendable" John Campbell, a security adviser to the UNHCR Jakarta office, said in a statement.

Some 150 asylum seekers, mainly from the Middle East, tried to resist being returned to their temporary shelters after staging a sit-in at the building beginning on Friday.

It was only after considerable efforts by the senior police officers to encourage the asylum seekers to leave voluntarily that the police took action, Campbell said.

"The police officers were without body armor or helmets or weapons other than batons, which were not used at any time," he said, adding that they went to great lengths to resolve the problem peacefully. --JP