Aidi Yursal & Dessy Sagita, Medan – Calls for an Aceh-style crackdown on the punk community have spread to neighboring North Sumatra, but authorities in Medan are taking a more tolerant approach than their counterparts to the north.

Some residents of Medan said on Monday that groups of youths sporting a trademark punk look – nose and ear piercings and colorful, spiky hair – had become a "sickening" nuisance plaguing the city's streets.

Hamid, 54, said the youths were a particular annoyance at traffic intersections where they often begged or busked for money. "If you don't give them anything, they bang on your window," he said. "At some intersections, they even scratch your car."

Henry, 48, another resident, said he had recently been cursed out after refusing to hand over change at an intersection.

Hamid said the groups of punks had become an "eyesore" across much of the city, in part because of their public displays of affection. "Sometimes you see them in pairs like a couple on a date. This is clearly a disturbance to public order and becomes a spectacle for the public," he said.

Henry said the punks needed to be taken off the streets by the Medan Police and the city's Public Order Agency, or Satpol PP.

Surya, 50, said the punks making a nuisance of themselves were not Medan natives. "They come from outside the province and they sleep on the streets here," he said, adding that they needed to be removed by the authorities.

But Tasfen, the Satpol PP officer in charge of street children, said his office had no immediate plans to crack down. "Throughout 2011 we carried out frequent raids against these punks and street beggars and took them to the local social affairs office for guidance counseling, but we have no plans to do that yet this year," he said. "We have no right to arrest them, only keep them in order."

The agency's hands-off approach comes in stark contrast to that of the police and public order officers in Aceh, who courted international outrage last month for their arrest and forced "re-education" of dozens of punks who had arrived in Banda Aceh for a concert that had previously been approved by the authorities.

The "re-education" involved shaving off the youths' hair, forcing them to undergo military training and even holding their heads underwater.

Arist Merdeka Sirait, chairman of the National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas Anak), decried the growing campaign to discriminate against the punks, saying their lifestyle choice was an expression of the youths' creativity and imagination.

"What makes the punk community any different from any other art community, like jazz or dangdut or rock?" he said. "For people to start calling on Satpol PP to crack down on punks is going too far and infringes on their rights. Who's to say that someone who listens to punk music is a bad person?"

[Additional reporting from Antara.]