By Stefanno Sulaiman and Ananda Teresia
JAKARTA (Reuters) -Student groups met two senior ministers late on Thursday to press their complaints after more than a week of sometimes violent protests over lawmakers’ bonuses and police tactics used against demonstrators.
Crowds – led by students, workers and rights groups – took to the streets in the capital last week against MPs’ housing allowances. Unrest spread across the country after a police vehicle hit and killed a motorcycle taxi driver at one rally.
The students, who had demanded a meeting with President Prabowo Subianto, said they had set out their case, but made no mention of any new concrete concessions from the government.
State Secretariat Minister Prasetyo Hadi, one of the ministers at the meeting, said the government would study the students’ demands, without going into further detail.
“We urge the government to immediately reform the police as part of its commitment to uphold civil supremacy,” Handy Muharram, the head of Islamic Students Associations, told reporters after the meeting.
Rights groups say 10 people have died and more than 1,000 been injured in clashes with security forces and other unrest.
Other student bodies criticised the meeting, and another on Wednesday with parliamentarians, saying they had produced nothing and were unrepresentative.
Tiyo Ardianto, a student leader at Gadjah Mada University who was invited to the meeting but refused to attend, called it “political symbolism”.
Ridho Dawam, a student leader from Pasundan University in Bandung, the site of confrontations between protesters and police earlier this week, said the groups involved had not represented the broader student movement.
Earlier, Indonesia’s senior minister on legal affairs, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, said that the officers involved in the death of the taxi driver could face criminal proceedings following ethics hearings.
Police have already fired the highest-ranking officer inside the vehicle that hit the man, and demoted another officer who drove the vehicle.
Indonesian authorities have detained more than 3,000 people in a nationwide crackdown, New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch said.
“Indonesian authorities should not respond to protests over government policies by using excessive force and wrongfully locking up demonstrators,” Meenakshi Ganguly, the campaign group’s deputy Asia Director, said.
(Reporting by Stanley Widianto, Ananda Teresia, Yuddy Cahya Budiman, and Stefanno Sulaiman; Editing by Saad Sayeed and Andrew Heavens)
