Students protest army intervention

YOGYAKARTA: About 300 Gadjah Mada University students staged a protest yesterday about the military's forcible dispersion of a peaceful demonstration on the campus on Nov. 7.

The students demanded rector Soekanto Reksohadiprodjo explain why he allowed the military to enter the campus grounds. The Nov. 7 demonstration, which was dispersed five minutes after it began, demanded greater freedom for the mass media.

On Nov. 7, the demonstrators handed out leaflets about their criticism of the 1994 banning of the Tempo, Detik and Editor news weeklies, the recent revocation of the recommendation for D&R magazine's chief editor by the Indonesian Journalists Association, and the killing of Bernas daily's reporter Fuad Muhammad Syafruddin.

"How could you ask outsiders to beat your own students? You should have protected us," a student shouted, when their rector come to meet them yesterday.

Soekanto denied he had invited the security officers. "It was this leaflet that invoked them," he said. (23/08)