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Students demand Suharto goes on trial

Source
Agence France Presse - September 9, 1998 (abridged)

Jakarta – Some 100 students demonstrated outside the attorney general's office here Wednesday demanding that ousted Indonesian president Suharto answer allegations in court of amassing billions while in power.

The students also called for the resignation of Attorney General Andi Ghalib, who is in charge of a government inquiry into the wealth allegations. "We are here to demand that Suharto be brought to court and his wealth probed thoroughly," one of the protestors, 20-year-old Pipin said.

"Probe Suharto's Wealth," "Probe the General's Money Abroad" and "Ghalib – Suharto's 'New Order' Crony," read signs carried by the students who blocked traffic outside the office. The attorney general in the afternoon allowed 10 student representatives to enter the office but the result of the meeting was not immediately known.

Suharto appeared on television Sunday to deny allegations carried by the US magazine Forbes that he had accumulated four billion dollars during his 32-year rule which ended in May. In the telecast the ageing ex-president also challenged anyone to find "one cent" of his personal money in foreign bank accounts.

Ghalib said after the broadcast the government probe was continuing but he believed Suharto. "Political conspiracy between the attorney general and the government must be eradicated," said 22-year-old law student Endra. "He did it (the television broadcast) to make himself look innocent and to gain the public's sympathy.

"But I don't think it's working because the people already feel cheated by him," said Jaya, 20, in a protest guarded only by about a dozen local police who were mainly managing the traffic.

An association of street musicians held a rally in another part of the town to demand that prices be cut and that security authorities return 14 activists missing since earlier this year.

Some 85 guitar-carrying street musicians from the Forum for Reformative Art demonstrated at a roundabout in central Jakarta, singing songs amid the passing traffic as about 30 soldiers remained on standby.

The forum in a statement called for a full inquiry into the abduction of activists, a halt to the policy of abduction and violence, lower prices and freedom of expression for artists. "The main thing that we want is that the 14 missing activisits be returned, dead or alive, and that Prabowo be taken to the military tribunal," said Mohamad Yamin, 27, the field coordinator of the forum.

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