Universities sign pact to stop student brawls
Universities sign pact to stop student brawls
JAKARTA (JP): Police and military officers witnessed the
managements of two privately-owned universities sign a pact
yesterday to put an end to brawls like that involving their
students on Wednesday.
One item of the agreement, signed by Yeldy Kandou from the
Maritime Academy of Indonesia (AMI) and Adrianus Siregar from the
Christian University of Indonesia (UKI), not Catholic University
of Indonesia as reported yesterday, stipulates that the
management boards of both universities will punish all students
who participated in the fight.
Both sides agreed to temporarily suspend the academic
activities at the schools for three days. The educational
activities will resume on Monday.
Under the agreement, the management of the AMI maritime
academy, whose students were believed to have sparked the
incident, agreed to replace the property of the UKI Christian
university, which was damaged in the incident.
The academy agreed to repair the damaged signboards of UKI's
schools of law and political science and to finance the
replacement of all objects vandalized during the attack.
The Wednesday afternoon brawl at the UKI campus at Jl.
Diponegoro 82-86 in Central Jakarta was allegedly initiated by a
group of AMI students, who attacked UKI students and damaged
university property.
The attack left at least eight students injured and 31 parked
vehicles, the law school building and a number of computers
damaged.
"Both sides will do a financial assessment of the damaged
items," the agreement said.
No clashes
The agreement signed yesterday requires both parties to take
action to control their student bodies in order to prevent
similar incidents in the future.
Among the witnesses of the pact signing were the chiefs of the
North Jakarta and South Jakarta police precincts, the commanders
of the military posts in those mayoralties and City Police
spokesman Lt. Col. Bambang Haryoko.
Wednesday's brawl lasted well over two hours. It took the
arrival of anti-riot police and military personnel to restore
peace.
The police briefly detained some of the students to check
identification, but nobody was arrested.
City Police Chief Maj. Gen. Mochammad Hindarto said the cause
of the attack "is just narrow-minded friendship".
Based on preliminary investigations, police found that the AMI
students decided to attack the other university to take revenge
for a friend, who was stabbed by someone in front of the UKI
campus two days earlier, Hindarto said after attending the 44th
anniversary of the National Marine and Air Police Force.
"The AMI students were totally in error because the suspect
was not a UKI student," he explained. "And taking a revenge is
not part of our culture."
In line with the agreement, dozens of police and military
personnel have been deployed to both campuses to safeguard the
situation for the time being.
"We have to anticipate the possibility of another attack from
either side," Hindarto said. (bsr)