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Massive Anti-U.S. Protests at Indonesian Parliament Gates
JAKARTA, Oct 10 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Burning U.S. flags, attacking a McDonalds restaurant and possibly other U.S.-owned companies in Indonesia, the closure of Caltex in Riau islands, and the massive protest on Wednesday did not augur well for politics in the archipelago.
On Wednesday, a news agency said, 10,000 students and other activists rallied against the U.S. A smaller crowd had gathered at the U.S. and British Embassy compounds, but was soon forced to leave.
They joined a large crowd that had gathered at the Indonesian parliament, the DPR, where several of them successfully broke open the gates of the building in noisy protests.
On Tuesday, students in Makassar, South Sulawesi and Surabaya, East Java, defied a government ban and burned U.S. flags.
However on Wednesday, other students and protesters used U.S. flags as a means of protest "against the continued aggression against a Muslim country".
British flags met the same fate, being burned and stepped upon by angry mobs of youngsters wanting to release their anger at the U.S. and the U.K.
If "We cannot get them in our hands, we destroy their sovereign flags," one demonstrator said.
Wednesday was a day of massive protests in Jakarta and Riau islands, in particular.
Thousands of students and anti-U.S. demonstrators rallied in Jakarta promising they would cause trouble if the government did not hear their pledge in favor of Afghanistan.
The regime of President Megawati Sukarnoputri, two months old and still in a teething state, is now faced with an unprecedented state of affairs that has sapped its morale and could cause a premature downfall.
This is possible since, in Indonesia, street protests have been the key factor in causing the collapse of three regimes since the start of the reform movement in the late 1990s.
The same students caused the downfall of the brutal Suharto regime in 1998.
His successor, B. J. Habibie, suffered the same fate after a series of massive protests against his government.
Abdurrahman Wahid, the first democratically elected president in the age of reform, was derailed from power by legislators following protests against his rule.
The potentially explosive situation in volatile Indonesia is due to U.S. strikes against Afghanistan as students are urging the U.S. to end their attacks immediately.
A delegation of students successfully handed a letter of protest to the U.S. embassy here, sources said in Jakarta.
The same source, close to the students, said the massive protest in Jakarta served a double purpose. Besides protesting against U.S. attacks on Kabul, the students also protested against the dropping of cases against the fugitive son of General Suharto, Tommy Mandala Putera Suharto.
Analysts in Jakarta say the two issues will be hard for the Megawati regime to handle, and that Indonesia may have entered a new era of demonstrations that could turn violent in the long run.
In the meantime, the anti-U.S. protest took a less serious turn on Monday when protesters covered a McDonalds restaurant signboard with a black cloth; doing the same to a Kentucky Fried Chicken signboard.
In Yogyakarta, some 300 protesters from various student organizations continued with anti-U.S. protests Tuesday.
The protesters, from the Indonesian Muslim Students' Action Front (KAMMI), the Justice Party's Youth Front, Anti-America and Zionist Movement (GAZAK), and the Al-Qairat group, rallied at the provincial legislative assembly compound.
They shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great) and other slogans, carried banners reading, "Afghanistan under attack,
jihad will ensue!" "Muslims are not terrorists", "Bush is the real terrorist", and "God**** the USA."
A protester from GAZAK said his group was ready to travel to Afghanistan to help Afghans fight against the U.S. and its allies.
In Medan, North Sumatra, student protests colored the city Tuesday.
The students, tightly guarded by police, marched to the local office of TVRI state television where they delivered speeches for about 45 minutes.
With additional reporting by Kazi Mahmood
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