We just wanted to defend our school, student

AntaraA blogger claiming to be a student from SMA 6 high school in Mahakam, South Jakarta has written her version of events surrounding the assault on journalists at her school on her blog monkeydonkeyrules.blogspot.com.

The blogger, writing under the name Indraswari Pangestu, wrote that some journalists came on Monday morning to ask the school management to take responsibility over the incident where some students allegedly grabbed a video cassette from a Trans7 journalist recording a brawl between SMU 6 and SMU 70 students on Friday last week.

She said one journalist climbed on to her school building and students and teachers shouted at him asking “Where are your ethics?” and telling him to come down. The journalist started to talk back and threatened them saying “Don’t talk to me about ethics” and “Watch out, I can sue you.”

“I know the work of journalists is protected by the 1999 Press Law but what about our rights to have a calm environment in which to be educated?” she wrote.

She said they just wanted to defend their school which was being disturbed by a journalist.

She went on to say that a few minutes later some students going in and out of the school were surrounded by journalists and from the crowd she heard a punch and everything turned into chaos.

Some journalists even provoked a teacher saying “How can you let your students behave like that?” and “Please teach some manners to your students”.