T

he Jakarta Education Agency says it supports the police and school management to take firm action against students who were involved in the recent beating of a sophomore at a state high school in South Jakarta.

"The school management must refer to their school's regulations, which they have announced to students and parents, in taking necessary measures to settle the problem," the agency's spokesman Yusen Hardiman told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

"However, if the police also see this *bullying case* as a criminal act, the school is supposed to let them handle it."

On Tuesday, Ade Fauzan Mahfuza, 16, a tenth-grader at the high school in Kebayoran Baru, was taken to Pertamina Hospital after dozens of his seniors attacked him for crossing a "restricted" hallway located in front of a classroom for senior students.

According to Ade, on Tuesday morning he walked across a corridor in front of the twelfth-grade classroom to collect a book he had left in one of the classrooms, where he had taken a mid-term exam the day before.

According to the school's unwritten "tradition", only twelfth-graders are allowed to walk across the lane, popularly known as the "Gaza Strip".

During class break, several twelfth-graders found Ade and asked whether he had walked across the lane that morning. Two of them suddenly slapped his face and left.

But it was not over.

After school finished, a dozen twelfth-graders waited for Ade in front of the school where they physically provoked and humiliated him.

The junior forced himself to fight back, but the seniors hit him until he was unconscious.

Ade's friends then rushed him to a nearby clinic in Jl. Wijaya before finally taking him to Pertamina Hospital for emergency treatment.

He received six stitches in his mouth and had sustained several injuries to his head and arms.

Marlin Angraini, Ade's mother said she was shocked about the incident. Worried for her son's safety, the mother of two said she would move him soon to another school.

"Ade is afraid his seniors or the schools alumni will do the same thing again," she told vivanews.com.

Marlin has also reported the case to the Kebayoran Baru Police sub-precinct, but the case has yet to be investigated.

On Friday, the school management announced they had questioned three students, Rm, Ihm and Yok, for allegedly plotting the bullying.

However, as of Sunday, there was no clear explanation about how they would be reprimanded.

School bullying and violence among students has become a major problem in Indonesia, specifically in big cities like Jakarta, where many schools have a strong tradition of bullying.

In South Jakarta, for example, school brawls between some state high schools have occurred for more than 20 years, while in 2007, a student from a state high school in Jakarta suffered fractures after being beaten up by his seniors.