University closed after seven hurt in mass brawl

Andi Hajramurni, The Jakarta Post, Makassar, South Sulawesi

The State University of Makassar (UNM) in South Sulawesi was closed for three days starting Wednesday, after seven people were injured in a mass brawl involving hundreds of students from different faculties.

The closure was aimed at clearing up the campus, located on Jl. Daeng Tata in the province's capital of Makassar, and at preventing the clash from spreading, UNM rector Idris Arief said.

Police, who arrived on the scene one hour after the clash erupted, fired warning shots in the air to stop the brawl between students from the language and arts faculty and those from the faculty of engineering.

At least one student, identified as Andi, was arrested briefly for questioning at the Makassar police station for carrying a dagger during the scuffle.

However, police later released him after Andi's classmates from the language and arts faculty protested the arrest. Andi denied the weapon belonged to him.

The scuffle began at 10 a.m. local time with the opposing groups of students attacking each other. Many were carrying weapons such as badik (Makassar traditional dagger), arrows, knives and rocks.

Witnesses said that the fight was apparently in retaliation of an attack against the secretariat of the engineering student association earlier, at 1.30 a.m. on the same day, by an unidentified group of people.

Victims accused their classmates from the language and arts faculty of perpetrating the attack, following the alleged blackmailing and beating of those students by their rivals from the engineering faculty.

The rector and other university leaders could not disclose the motives behind the two incidents, and said they had left the case in the hands of the police.

Two of the seven injured students, Sumirah from the language and arts faculty, and Fransiskus from the engineering faculty, were rushed to a nearby hospital for sustaining serious wounds.

The five other victims were identified as Ikram, Basuki Rahman, Arsyad, Anwar and Andi, who suffered minor injuries.

The mass brawl was not the first to take place at the university. The laboratory building belonging to the engineering faculty was set ablaze when a similar brawl broke out two years ago.