UI student faces charges for burning party flags

Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A freshman of the University of Indonesia's mathematics and natural sciences school was detained by the police on Friday morning for allegedly burning the flags of major political parties last Wednesday.

Edward Noya, 18, is facing multiple charges under the Criminal Code. He is accused of destroying the property of others and is being charged under Article 170, which carries a maximum five-and-a-half years in prison.

He will also be charged with interfering with the elections, obstructing traffic and with setting a fire that could have endangered others.

Edward was apprehended by city police for questioning at 2 a.m. while on his way home from a friend's 22nd birthday party at Bengkel Cafe, which is next to the Jakarta Police Headquarters in the Central Business District,.

"We were on our way home to Depok when three Kijangs stopped us. Several men got out of the vans and told us to join them for 'a trip'," birthday boy Erik Akbar told reporters on Friday.

Erik said the 15 students refused to get in the vans, but the men, who did not identify themselves as police officers, forced them to accompany them to police headquarters.

"The police kept us upstairs (in the general crimes department) for three hours and did not let us buy medicine for our friends, who were ill," Erik said.

The police later freed 14 of the students.

On Wednesday, some students gave speeches at the university's Salemba campus, Central Jakarta, where they later burned flags of the Golkar Party, the United Development Party (PPP) and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), condemning the "products of the authoritarian New Order regime".

On Friday, police spokesman Sr. Comr. Prasetyo said the police had detained only Edward based on photographs and a video recording of the event, which showed Edward burning the flags.

"The arrest was in line with legal procedure, as the officers obtained an arrest warrant before detaining the students. But as they wanted to make sure that it was Edward on the video, the officers showed the warrant to Edward upon arrival at headquarters," Prasetyo claimed.

"So it was not a kidnapping," he added, in response to the students' claim that the police had abducted them.

As an act of solidarity, about 30 students, including some of the initially detained students, staged a protest in front of the police headquarters on Friday afternoon, demanding Edward's release.