Police Keep Prabowo Mob at Bay With Water Cannon, Tear Gas

The Jakarta Globe, Aug 21, 2014


Jakarta. Police fired water cannons and tear gas on a mob of supporters of losing presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto attempting to storm the Constitutional Court on Thursday as the judges began reading out their verdict in the candidate’s challenge to the results of the July 9 election.

The crowd of several thousand threw rocks and tried to break through the barricades set up by police at the southern end of Jalan Medan Merdeka Barat in Central Jakarta at 2:30 p.m., half an hour after the reading of the verdict began, prompting police to use tear gas canisters and water cannons to disperse the crowd. There were also reports of police firing rubber bullets into the crowd, but police have denied this.

The measures sent the demonstrators scrambling, with some fleeing the scene on their motorcycles and rented minivans and buses.

The clash also left several in the crowd injured. They were whisked away by others in ambulances brought by the pro-Prabowo crowd. Several people in the crowd reported seeing a woman get hit with a rubber bullet in the cheek and a man shot in the back of the head.

Police said they were aware of reports that two people were injured but could not confirm.

“We’re checking where they were taken to, but no one died,” Insp. Gen. Dwi Priyatno, the Jakarta Police chief, told the Jakarta Globe.

He also denied that officers had fired rubber bullets, saying they had only used tear gas and water cannons.

Police have arrested four people alleged to have incited the crowd into trying to breach the barricade.

“We also seized three cars,” Dwi added, referring to the heavy-duty troop carriers that the crowd had brought with them. It remains unclear where they obtained the military-issue Unimog trucks from.

Order was restored after 15 minutes when supporters were pushed back all the way to the intersection of Jalan M.H. Thamrin and Jalan Medan Merdeka Selatan.

Many of the demonstrators chose to head home after the incident, leaving around 600 people still at the scene.

At 3 p.m. some supporters tried to fire up the remaining demonstrators to continue to press forward, with a rumor going around that the Constitutional Court had declared Prabowo the winner of the election.

But that failed to generate much support, with fewer than a hundred people regrouping in front of the police barricade.

There were also signs of infighting among the crowd, with members of various factions blaming each other for the fracas.

The reading of the verdict began at 2 p.m. The judges are said to have compiled a 3,000-page ruling after more than two weeks of hearings in which Prabowo’s team contended that rival Joko Widodo won the presidential election on the basis of massive fraud.

The court, which will only read out 300 pages of the ruling, is widely expected to dismiss the allegations and confirm Joko’s victory.

The Jakarta Globe will update the story as it develops.



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