Police take six students in anti-Golkar protest

JAKARTA (JP): At least six university students, including a female, were arrested by police shortly after they began to disburse from an anti-Golkar Party rally near the Jakarta Convention Center (JCC) in Central Jakarta.

Two male students were severely beaten by the police, leaving them bleeding from noses, mouths and ears.

None of the policemen, including those at the scene, were willing to explain the reason for the sudden attack on the students; nor would they reveal where the seven were being taken.

The arrested students were part of some 200 protesters from two student organizations, Forkot (City Forum) and Jarkot (City Network), protesting at the JCC gate on Jl. Gatot Subroto, a main thoroughfare.

The prestigious convention center was the venue for Golkar's three-day leadership convention, which finished on Thursday.

Golkar was the ruling political party during former President Soeharto's 32 years of presidency and the opening was attended by long-time party notables and Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri in her capacity as chairperson of Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan).

After waiting for the students to congregate at the main gate, the leaders began the rally at 2 p.m. with typical rhetoric. Some stragglers marching to the rally point removed Golkar yellow flags -- bearing the party's banyan-tree symbol -- from poles placed along the freeway fence in front of JCC.

The students piled the flags in the middle of Jl. Gatot Subroto access road and set them on fire, causing a traffic jam during the city's evening rush hours.

No police officers were seen at that time.

"Reform means nothing without Golkar's dismissal," a protester shouted from the top of a rented mikrolet public minivan, adding that Golkar was responsible for the widespread practice of corruption in the country.

Other students on top of a rented Metromini public minibus joined the clamor.

Some street children, about 10 years old, joined the students, helping to bring down the Golkar flags.

Some JCC employees wearing white uniforms, like kitchen staff, apparently learning of the absence of security officers, gathered near the gate with sticks in their hands as if ready to defend their work place.

Several minutes later, for no clear reason, the workers went back inside the building even though the police were still not on site.

At 3:15 p.m. some students tried to open the gate while others began pulling at the fence separating JCC from the toll road.

"We did that in case the police arrived and we had to run across the toll road," one of the student told The Jakarta Post at the scene.

Fifteen minutes later the students succeeded in opening the gate. However, they made no move toward the building where Golkar's leaders were still meeting.

A few minutes later an unidentified person burned a pile of Golkar flags, placed at the gate earlier, and the protesting students immediately withdrew from the scene and began to disperse.

The students claimed they did not know who the man was. But it seemed that the students had been tipped off that police officers were about to arrive.

About five minutes later, a troop of some 150 policemen from the nearby Jakarta Police headquarters arrived at the scene and calmly put out the fire.

The students had already left the scene with some of them already on the other side of the road at Jl. Bendungan Jatiluhur when the police ran after them by tearing down the freeway's fence.

The captured female student, Indah, who claimed to be a second year student of National University (Unas) in South Jakarta, looked upset when photographers began taking pictures of her while being guarded by police personnel.

"I'm not a prisoner! I'm not a celebrity!" she said covering her face with a small towel. (08)