Police scare Bengkulu residents

Police scare Bengkulu residents

BENGKULU, Bengkulu: The presence of some 133 Mobile Brigade police (Brimob) in plantations around Linau, Maje district in South Bengkulu scared hundreds of local farmers, causing them to flee the protected forest in panic.

Linau resident Marfin said Thursday that all villagers were so scared to see police personnel in full combat gear that they hid themselves in bushes, with their wives and children.

"I was so scared because it seemed to me that they came down here to fight insurgents or underground movements though we have no rebels here," Marfin was quoted by Antara as saying.

Bengkulu police spokesman Adj. Comr. Dedi Jumadi said Thursday that the police were there to safeguard thousands of cubic meters of trees felled from protected forests in the province. --Antara