AFP | Police arrested more than 100 protesters in the Indonesian capital Saturday after some burnt tyres and threw molotov cocktails during a rally over fuel price rises, police said. Indonesia hiked the cost of fuel by nearly 30 percent from Saturday in response to soaring global oil prices, and a ballooning subsidy bill, leaving hard-pressed households facing even more economic woes.<\/p>\n
“More than 100 people have been detained for questioning,” a police officer identified only as Ari told AFP.<\/p>\n
He said that hundreds of students staged the rally early Saturday in front of the National University in South Jakarta over the price rise decision.<\/p>\n
“Protesters have thrown small fuel bombs (molotov) towards the police and burned tyres on the streets,” he said.<\/p>\n
Police also arrested about 26 protesters who rallied outside the presidential palace at midnight on Friday, when the price rise came into effect, Detikcom News Website reported.<\/p>\n
A police officer said protesters had no permit to stage a rally there.<\/p>\n
In Bandung city in West Java, 1,000 protesters from hardline Muslim group Hizbut Tahrir held a protest Saturday morning to condemn the government’s move on prices, local ElShinta radio reported.<\/p>\n
Many ordinary Indonesians say higher fuel prices combined with the recent surge in the cost of food will put an intolerable strain on family budgets.<\/p>\n
The price hike sparked protests across the sprawling archipelago of 234 million people when it was flagged earlier this month by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.<\/p>\n
The government defended the decision on Friday, saying in a statement that even with the hike, fuel was still subsidised and “lower than in poor countries such as East Timor.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AFP | Police arrested more than 100 protesters in the Indonesian capital Saturday after some burnt tyres and threw molotov cocktails during a rally over fuel price rises, police said. Indonesia hiked the cost of fuel by nearly 30 percent from Saturday in response to soaring global oil prices, and a ballooning subsidy bill, leaving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[64],"class_list":{"0":"post-3579","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-latest-news","7":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}