Two hunger-striking students hospitalized

Two hunger-striking students hospitalized

JAKARTA: Two students from the Jakarta Theology School (STT
Jakarta) in Central Jakarta who have been on hunger strike since
last week were rushed to the hospital last Saturday.

Fasting student Hazel was brought to the privately owned
Cikini Hospital in Central Jakarta, while her colleague Willi was
being treated in the privately owned Pertamina Hospital in South
Jakarta. Hazel was released from the hospital late in the
evening.

Previously, four students from the same college had given up
their hunger strike due to their deteriorating health.

The STT Jakarta students' Kelompok Gumul Juang (Immense
Struggle Group) has been staging the hunger strike on their
campus since earlier this month in protest against what they say
is police oppression of the student movement.

It was a follow-up to a clash between the police and students
demanding the dissolution of the Golkar Party in front of the
party's Jakarta headquarters in Cikini on Oct. 9.

A court later sentenced 84 students to three days in
detention, or Rp 25,000 each in fines, following their
convictions on charges of assault and trespass as they had
attacked a man in the waiting room of the St. Carolus Hospital,
Central Jakarta, whom they mistakenly took to be an intelligence
officer.

"We protest the action of armed members of the security forces
in entering onto the campus and in abducting the students who
were being treated in the St. Carolus Hospital so they could be
questioned," a leader of the group, Herman Nainggolan, told The
Jakarta Post last Saturday.-- JP