A protester with a rolled up poster. Photo: Roni Bintang |
Obey Allah or Die
Indonesia's "moderate" Islam is on display.
(Sydney Morning Herald) - The streets of Jakarta erupted into violence on Friday night leaving one dead and multiple people injured as police clashed with demonstrators following a rally of about 150,000 people demanding the arrest of the city's Chinese Christian governor.
Jakarta police spokesman Awi Setiyono said one person had died from asthma and at least 12 police officers and four protesters were injured in the protests.
The protest was largely peaceful during the day however the mood soured after clashes between police and demonstrators on Friday night culminated in police using tear gas to disperse the remaining crowd outside the presidential palace.
Demonstrators threw stones and vehicles belonging to the police paramilitary force BRIMOB were set on fire.
Aerial view of Muslim groups protest against Jakarta's governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama. Photo: Reuters/Beawiharta |
The head of the Islamic Students' Association (HMI), Mulyadi P Tamsir, denied the group started the fight with police, saying they had been planning to leave at 6pm but were hemmed in.
"There were around 1000 HMI members," he told Fairfax Media. "We were sitting about 30 to 100 metres from the broken barricade, we backed away immediately after the tear gas shooting. My eyes hurt, my face was hot, we scrambled for water to wash our faces. We backed away immediately. I don't have any reports yet if any of our members were hurt. It was a peace action, we stuck to that."Mr Mulyadi said the fight had been initiated by a group next to them. "There was a small incident in the afternoon, some garbage, not tires, were burned, but it was put out immediately. It was a peace action."
The rally, spearheaded by the militant Islamic Defenders Front, came about because Muslim hardliners want Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, widely known as Ahok, to be jailed for allegedly insulting the Koran.
About 20,000 police and military personnel secured the route of the demonstration in Central Jakarta amid fears it would be hijacked by extremists keen to foment violence.
Simultaneous protests took place in other Indonesian cities including Medan and Bengkulu.
"Arrest and try Ahok and his cronies dead or alive," read a sign suspended from Istiqlal mosque, the largest mosque in South East Asia.
Several embassies, including those from Australia and the US, had warned their citizens to stay away from the protests, and some schools in the capital closed.
Ahok is being investigated by police for alleged blasphemy after he appeared to suggest in an edited video transcript that voters were being deceived by a verse in the Koran.
Read More . . . . Muslim protesters chant slogans near burning police trucks during the clashes. Photo: AP |
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