Police take six students in anti-Golkar protest
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)