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JAKARTA: Thousands of protesters set fire to barricades and police posts in the Indonesian capital on Thursday (Oct. 8) as opposition to a controversial new investment law mounted that critics say will harm labor rights and the environment .
Tens of thousands of people have protested in cities across the archipelago since the approval of the bill on Monday, which seeks to attract foreign investment by cutting red tape around fiscal, labor and environmental regulations.
However, labor activists and environmental groups have criticized the legislation and Amnesty International has called it “catastrophic” for workers.
Nearly 13,000 police officers deployed Thursday to block access to government buildings in central Jakarta failed to prevent protesters from heading to the heart of the capital.
The protesters set fire to barricades and set fire to several bus stops and police traffic posts.
A man throws a bicycle into the fire during a nationwide strike against a new law that critics fear favors investors at the expense of labor rights and the environment in Jakarta on October 8, 2020 (Photo: AFP / Adek Berry).
Police had banned the protests on the grounds that it could spread the coronavirus. So far, at least 300,000 people have been infected in the world’s fourth most populous nation and more than 11,000 have died.
However, experts believe that the true figures are much higher, but hidden by a lack of evidence.
PROTESTERS WITH CORONAVIRUS
Jakarta police spokesman Yusri Yunus said around 1,000 protesters had been screened since they were detained on Thursday.
Some “34 of them are reactive for COVID-19,” he said, adding that they would be isolated and retested.
Workers and students also clashed with the police in Makassar, Medan, Malang and Yogyakarta.
“We want the law to be canceled,” Muhammad Sidharta told AFP in Bandung, West Java, adding that the regulation “hurts the Indonesian people, not just workers like me.”
Although enforcement is sometimes spotty, Indonesia has strict labor laws, particularly involving foreign companies.
A protester flees tear gas fired by police during a nationwide strike against a new law that critics say favors investors at the expense of labor rights and the environment in Jakarta on October 8, 2020 (Photo: AFP / Adek Berry).
Edi, who like many Indonesians has only one name, said he joined the protests in Makassar on the island of Sulawesi because the law affected him as a worker.
“Previously, we already had regulations on the minimum wage, but still many companies did not comply with them,” he said.
“The new law removes the regulations on that and companies will arbitrarily determine wages.”
Indonesians also expressed their anger online, with hackers blocking access to the parliament website and changing its name to “Council of Traitors”.
They also created an account on the Indonesian e-commerce platform Tokopedia and put the parliament “up for sale” for a pittance, according to media reports.
