Indonesian police arrested many others on Wednesday, the day of protests across the country, when union members and others spoke out against a recently passed task creation law, for fear that it would limit workers’ rights.
Indonesia’s parliament passed the law 3 days earlier Monday to avoid such protests, saying it is mandatory to attract investment when the economy faces the prospect of a recession caused by the coronavirus outbreak. Despite the action, the industry union and other organizations announced that the protests until Thursday would continue as planned.
In Jakarta, at least 200 other people were arrested on suspicion of seeking to provoke riots after foreigners joined the student protesters in parliament, according to Yusri Yunus, a police spokesman in the Indonesian capital.
“We believe that there are anarchists,” Yusri said in a statement. “They won an invitation on social media to demonstrate at the House of Representatives building,” he said of those arrested.
Other protesters clashed with police near the compound and attacked a vehicle carrying the detainees, police said, without disclosing details about the number of protesters at the site.
In Palembang, on Sumatra Island, police arrested 183 protesters, the city’s police chief Anom Setyadji said.
“They will face the law. Most of those arrested were students, but we’re still interviewing them,” Anom said, according to CNN Indonesia.
Elsewhere, protesters were injured when police fired rubber bullets at Pelita Bangsa University academics protesting in the commercial city of Cikarang, near Jakarta.
“Six academics are in serious condition. A student is undergoing severe bleeding proceedings,” Spokeswoman Nining Yuningsih University spokeswoman Cnn Indonesia told CNN.
A video shared through protesters on social media showed a motionless student whose bloodied face carried on a stretcher.
Meanwhile, more than 3,000 people returned for a day of protests in Bandung, the third largest city in the country and the capital of West Java province, according to the Associated Press. The troublemakers broke a steel fence in the construction of the provincial parliament and dropped fuel pumps. , which led officials to fire water and fuel cannons, police said.
In Semarang, the capital of Central Java province, protesters demolished the gate of the governor’s complex, the city’s chief of police, Auliansyah Lubis.
“We deplore violence. We suggest that they do not stay in wrongdoing,” Lubis said, adding that an officer was injured in the tumult.
“They’re getting er”
The country’s largest Islamic organization issued aid to protesters.
According to Aqil Siradj, president of Nahdlatul Ulama (UN), the law would be for low-income workers.
“The rich are getting richer and the deficient are becoming deficient,” he said on the organization’s website. “I hope the UN will take a position on the law. Let’s find a sublime solution. “
Union leaders have questioned the law, saying it violates rights and threatens the environment and claimed that the law allowed employers to pay lower wages, fire and rent more easily on short-term contracts without offering benefits.
“The abolition of labor rights, the removal of environmental protections, the privatization of electric power and other provisions of the law, adding education, will have a devastating effect on families and homes, will obstruct the transition to renewable energy and construction electricity prices, “said Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the Indonesian International Trade Union Confederation, earlier this week.
Government response
On Wednesday, government officials tried to dispel concerns, workers’ rights would be protected.
“There are deceptions in the law. I note that the minimum wage is abolished, but economic expansion and inflation are still taken into account, and wages will be reduced,” Airlangga Hartarto, the coordinating minister of the economy, said at a teleconference.
Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar rejected environmentalists’ complaint that the law would undermine environmental protection.
The law eliminates the requirement that companies involve other local people in assessing environmental effects on their operations, leaving responsibilities only to qualified organizations and government agencies, officials said. Investments considered to be low threat would possibly continue without first filing an application. have an effect on the evaluation report.
“The fundamental principles of the environment have an effect on research under this Act do not change. What has replaced the procedures,” he said in teleconference, while arguing that adjustments had been made to simplify advertising licenses.
“The law stipulates that an advertising license may be revoked if the application has legal defects, errors, falsehoods or falsified data,” he said.
More than 3. 7 million Indonesians have lost their jobs due to the side effects of COVID-19, bringing the number of unemployed in Southeast Asia’s largest economy to 10. 6 million, according to the Ministry of Labour. A World Bank report released last month warned that Indonesia’s economy could contract by 2% this year because of its efforts to involve the pandemic.