New trend on the move -- Going incognito
New trend on the move -- Going incognito
JAKARTA (JP): The daily student demonstrations across the
nation have inspired certain parties, including security forces
and state employees, to hide their identities for different
reasons.
Many state employees, who have been accused of playing a part
in bringing the nation to the brink of bankruptcy through
corruption, only wear their uniforms at work.
They hastily remove any telling sign of where they work
whenever they have to leave the office.
In an attempt to avoid trouble on the streets, red number
plates, which identify a vehicle as belonging to the government,
are often changed with black plates to identify the vehicle as a
private one.
In some cities, top government officials have temporarily left
their luxury cars at home and are being driven about in Kijang
vans, the standard vehicle for middle-class Indonesians.
As part of their jobs in apprehending possible rioters among
protesters, security forces have been instructed to set up a
special team whose duty is to penetrate the demonstrations.
So far, only a few of them have been recognized by protesters,
who apparently hate the presence of the infiltrators.
The latest case was recorded Thursday when intelligence
officer Second Sgt. Teguh Rochman, 27, from the Jakarta Military
Command was badly beaten by dozens of students at the Rawamangun
Teachers Training Institute in East Jakarta.
The plainclothes officer was caught red-handed by protesting
students as he tried to sneak into the rector's building.
The officer was found with a fake student identification card,
a blank student card, a pistol, a walkie-talkie, a tape recorder
and several notes in his possession.
He was forced to apologize in front of a sea of students, who
were yelling at him.
On the same day, student protesters rallying on the streets of
Jember, a small town in East Java, were attacked with sharp
weapons by a group of mysterious men driving by in three cars and
three motorcycles.
Some of the students, who were marching to Muhammadiyah
University from IKIP PGRI Teachers Training Institute, were badly
wounded.
Local police chief Lt. Col. A. Madjid Tawil said he was
surprised by the mysterious attack and vowed to investigate it.
"Please do not instantly have negative thoughts about the
security forces," he warned, asking the students to learn
something from the incident.
But the tension in the continuous antigovernment rallies have
also affected innocent victims, such as Momon Karyana, a tofu
seller in the West Java capital of Bandung.
The 27-year-old street trader, who usually runs his business
on Bandung Institute of Technology's campus on Jl. Ganesha,
suffered serious wounds to his face and genitals after being
beaten Thursday evening by students, who thought Momon was an
undercover officer.
"I was confused at the time and even more confused when the
students accused me of being an intelligence officer," Momon told
reporters in the emergency room of the Hasan Sadikin hospital.
"They just dragged me down to the campus and forced me to
admit to their accusation," Momon explained.
Antara quoted the trader as saying he was spoken to abusively
and badly beaten by the students.
"I couldn't believe that the students, who are said to be
expressing people's agony, are now violating people like me,"
Momon said.
The student demonstrations, which often end in clashes with
security forces, have also left at least six reporters injured.
Three reporters were injured in Bandung and one in Jakarta,
Surabaya and Samarinda respectively.
The first five journalists claim they were beaten by security
officers. The one in Samarinda, identified as Bakrie Djafar from
Forum Keadilan weekly, said he was attacked by protesters. (bsr)