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YAKARTA: Tear fuel was fired near the presidential palace in Jakarta on Thursday afternoon, where protesters gathered to protest the new task-building law.
A crowd hit the streets on the third day of heated protests against Monday’s general task creation law, which they said would favor businesses and investors at the expense of workers.
Chaos erupted at 2 p. m. when protesters tried to break a police barricade guarding West Merdeka Street, home to major government offices.
They threw stones and the police responded with tear gas, sending them to safety. A police post set it on fire.
Some protesters burned tires, smashed bus stops and dismantled walls of a structure site, while others were noticed breaking bricks and concrete into smaller pieces to be thrown at police.
At four o’clock in the afternoon, more tear fuel was fired when police tried to steer the protesters away from their original positions.
Some protesters fled as police sirens rang in the distance.
Earlier, more than 1,000 protesters demonstrated near the parliamentary complex in Jakarta at noon.
Protesters arrived on motorcycles and blocked Jakarta’s Gatot Subroto Street, but were blocked by a bunch of policemen armed with tear fuel and full combat equipment.
There was a confrontation with some protesters yelling at the police, asking them to open their barricades. Others chanted “Long live the workers,” among other slogans, as they honked their horns and turned their motorcycles.
After a 10-minute standoff, protesters agreed to move on to the close of the Jakarta Convention Center.
They disbanded about 40 minutes after police ordered them to leave on the grounds that the demonstration had violated the physical distance rule to avoid COVID-19.
Elsewhere, there have been reports in the media of similar demonstrations across the country that have resulted in violence.
Hundreds of arrests were also reported, adding those who attempted to break through police barricades and defied orders to disperse.
On Thursday morning, a strong security presence was observed near the parliamentary complex and around the presidential palace, with thousands of officials heavily armed with insurrection clothes and armored cars waiting. The streets and roads surrounding the two sites were also barricaded with barbed wire and concrete. Barriers.
Police have also deployed a lot of officials in Jakarta’s border areas to prevent other Jakarta outdoors from joining the protests.
M. Iyut Bastcho of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions told the NAC on Thursday afternoon that many protesters were blocked while police had completely closed Cikarang, a commercial domain 20 km east of Jakarta’s capital.
He expressed his sadness because the bill passed on Monday despite widespread rejection.
“(Indonesian President Jokowi still has the opportunity to do the right thing and veto the law and prevent it from enacting.
“Pay attention to people’s desires. But we’re pessimistic that he will,” he said.
In the future, Mr. Bastcho said that the unions would challenge the law before the Constitutional Court.
<< We have defied the old labor law thirteen times and some (attempts) have succeeded. And the old law is bigger than the new law. We are sure that the Constitutional Court will repeal the law or some of the articles that violate our rights as workers," he says.
450 PEOPLE NABBED: POLICE
Jakarta police arrested 450 other people at Thursday’s protests.
Jakarta police spokesman Yusri Yunus told CNA that some 20 of them had tested positive for COVID-19 and would be quarantined.
“Jakarta is still under the PSBB (large-scale social restrictions). We have to dissolve them. We can’t another group. Jakarta already has 1,000 instances a day,” he said of police’s resolve to fire tear fuel at protesters.
Yunus said police believed those arrested were not academics or workers, however, schoolchildren and other unemployed people who infiltrated the protests to create chaos and unrest.
“We don’t know if they were mobilized or paid. We don’t know what his motivation was to sign up for the protests,” he said.