Jakarta – Indonesian police arrested more than 200 protestors in separate demonstrations marking International Women's Day on Monday, witnesses said,

In the first sweep policemen and policewomen rounded up 59 women protesting against violence against women and other human rights abuses outside the local office of the United Nations, witnesses said.

There was no violence as the police bundled them into buses. They were driven off singing protest songs. Police said they had not applied for a permit to demonstrate.

Earlier the women, most of them students, and a few men had tied purple ribbons onto the arms of the riot police stationed in front of the UN building on Jakarta's Thamrin boulevard.

In the second protest the military hauled in some 150 students and other protesters at the back entrance of the Defence Ministry.

"Stop the violence against women ... investigate all the cases of violence against women in Aceh, Ambon and East Timor," the group said in a statement, referring to troubled areas where many rapes are blamed on the military.

The protesters, who also object to the military's role in politics, were peacefully rounded up by some 300 troops and loaded onto four military trucks. "Revolution, revolution till we die," the group of men and women chanted as they stepped into the trucks.

Earlier Monday a separate group of some 100 women migrant workers staged a noisy protest in front of the Ministry for Women's Affairs demanding better protection for housemaids and domestics working in foreign countries.

Banging pans and other kitchen utensils, they waved placards reading "We need protection, we're not slaves!" and "Unite migrant workers."

The protest was organized by the domestic servant section of the Union of Indonesian Migrant Workers.

The group said in a statement that domestics working overseas were the group most susceptible to exploitation and violence.

The situation is aggravated by the government's "ignorance" of their problems, with officials often dismissing them with degrading comments, the group said.

Indonesians working in foreign countries, thousands of them in the Middle East, are mainly manual workers or domestics.

The protest coincided with an international seminar on businesswomen and entrepreneurship, which was opened by President B.J Habibie.