Jakarta – Two provincial leaders of the opposition Indonesian United Democracy Party (PUDI) were arrested when Indonesian security forces raided a branch of the small party in Malang, East Java, a report said yesterday.
Malang police and the military raided Pudi's Malang branch on Monday, arresting the chairman, Mr Mochamad Faik, the secretary, Mr Nurussulhi Nawawi, and three other members, the Jawa Pos daily said.
The daily said that the party leaders were detained for holding secret meetings involving representatives of several organisations and student activists.
The security team confiscated books and newspaper clippings, an air rifle, a machete and posters of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, Pudi chairman Sri Bintang Pamungkas, Indonesia's founding president Sukarno and opposition figure Megawati Sukarnoputri.
Pamungkas, who launched Pudi in 1994, is currently on trial accused of trying to undermine the authorities through his activities within the party.
The Pudi leader, a vocal MP who was ousted from his parliamentary seat in 1995 by his own party when he was with the Muslim-oriented United Development Party, is already serving a 34-month jail term for insulting the Head of State.
Jawa Pos said the Malang Pudi branch had invited several youth and student organisations to attend a meeting in the weekend.
Police were quoted by the daily as saying they suspected the gathering was to organise a demonstration but they did not elaborate.
Some 100 student activists in nearby Surabaya, the capital of East Java province, on Monday staged a protest to demand that prices of basic commodities be lowered.
Meanwhile, reports said yesterday that the jailed leader of the People's Democratic Party (PRD) had denied military accusations that his radical party was responsible for a crude bomb that exploded in an apartment in Jakarta.
"I will take the blame if they can prove the PRD's involvement," PRD leader, Mr Budiman Sujatmiko, was quoted by the Jakarta Post daily as saying. Sujatmiko, serving a 13-year sentence for subversion, said he had never met the suspect detained in connection with Sunday's explosion in a low-income apartment complex here.
"We are opposed to anarchy and terrorism. In our struggle, we have always used peaceful means, many of them in the form of mass mobilization," Sujatmiko said from the Salemba Penitentiary in Central Jakarta.
The daily quoted military officials as saying that publications about local riots and international terrorism were found in the apartment of Agus Priyono, the man being held.