Huge numbers of troops, tanks, rocket launchers, armed motor-cycle troops blockaded the University of Indonesia on Sunday June 21 to stop a rally of factory workers and students at the university.

An estimated 10,000 workers were scheduled to rally at the campus in an action coordinated by the University of Indonesia Peoples Struggle Command Post (PPR-UI) and the Workers Committee for Reformation Action (KOBAR). According to a KOMPAS newspaper report, PPR-UI spokesperson, Dogi, said that the rally of Jabotabek [the industrial era outside Jakarta] was a well planned event with no likelihood of any unwanted excesses.

Another PPR-UI spokesperson, Reiner, stated that the military had also dispersed gatherings of workers in the Jabotabek area as they prepared to travel by bus into the city. An ASIET activist on the scene also reported that the PPR-UI marquis that had been used as an assembly point by students since May 20 was also removed.

The head of the labour division of the Indonesian Legal Aid foundation (YLBHI), Teten Masduki and the Jakarta labour division head, Surya Tjandra, said that the use of force against the students and worker gatherings could not be defended, either from a human rights or from a public order pint of view. KOMPAS reported them as agreeing that this method was a specific feature of the operations of the New Order.

Togap Simanungkalit, chairman of the Indonesian Prosperity for Workers Union (SBSI), in a written press statement quoted by KOMPAS stated that the SBSI "knows nothing about this action" and was not participating in the workers rally at the University.

In a separate press conference, General Chairman of the SBSI, Mochtar Pakpahan, announced that the SBSI would hold an action on Wednesday 24 June to "request that the government carry out national reconciliation to discuss the reformation agenda and to hold a special session of the Peoples Consultative Assembly".