Protesters picnic outside Indonesian Parliament on national holiday
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University students holding posters during a protest demanding the release of demonstrators detained during the widespread protests.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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JAKARTA - There were small, peaceful protests outside the Indonesian Parliament on the afternoon of Sept 5, following more than a week of sometimes violent demonstrations, as the Muslim-majority country celebrated a holiday marking Prophet Muhammad’s birthday.
Students gathered for a “picnic protest”, with poetry and book readings as they criticised politicians’ benefits and called for the release of detained protesters and a withdrawal of military personnel from civil security duty.
“We have a picnic together, show our expression creatively, innovatively… we don’t just shout angrily, but we have a cool, creative approach to express our anger,” Mr Vincent Thomas, a student leader from Padjadjaran University, said in a speech broadcast on Kompas TV.
Last week, protesters including students, workers and rights groups took to the streets of Jakarta to protest killed a motorcycle taxi driver
Jakarta police spokesman Ade Ary Syam Indradi told reporters that 1,371 personnel, including from the police and the military, were deployed across the capital on Sept 5.
Kompas reported that in Solo, central Java, more than 500km east of Jakarta, students handed out groceries and conducted free health screenings as part of their peaceful protest.
On Sept 4, student groups met Cabinet ministers to press their complaints over lawmakers’ perks and police tactics used against demonstrators.
Student representatives also met with some parliamentarians earlier in the week, but have so far not been successful in their demands for a meeting with President Prabowo Subianto.
Rights groups say 10 people have died and more than 1,000 have been injured in clashes with security forces and other unrest.
The authorities have detained more than 3,000 people in a nationwide crackdown on the protests, the New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch said. REUTERS
