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'It's my right to meet him': Families face hardship in search of arrested students
Ahmad's younger brother Raka went missing for days after a protest in Jakarta ended in clashes on Tuesday last week. He eventually found his brother in police's custody, but then he faced difficulty when he tried to meet with him.
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The Jakarta Police said on Wednesday last week that they had arrested 94 people following Tuesday’s protest. (Shutterstock/-)
A
hmad, not his real name, 38, had run out of ways to look for his 21-year-old brother, whose whereabouts had been unknown since a protest in front of the House of Representatives compound in the capital ended in clashes on Tuesday last week.
He last heard news of his brother, Raka, also not his real name, on Tuesday evening, just hours after Raka had departed alone from Bogor, West Java, to join other university students in the demonstration.
Raka made his last phone call to one of their cousins at about 8 p.m. when he was at Palmerah Station across from the House complex. “My brother told our cousin not to pick him up at the station [in Bogor] because he was trapped and couldn’t go home,” Ahmad told The Jakarta Post.
What happened in the following days for Ahmad was an endless quest going back and forth from Bogor to Jakarta to look for his missing brother.
Ahmad said his family had visited four different hospitals ─ just in case his brother was injured ─ but to no avail. They also went to the Jakarta Police headquarters, but the police refused to disclose any information until 12 p.m. on Thursday, he said.
He then reported the case to the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), which together with a number of public advocacy groups, including the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta), had opened a complaint center for those looking for family members or friends who went missing after Tuesday’s protest.
Both Ahmad and Kontras were convinced that Raka had been detained by the Jakarta Police, but the police’s lack of transparency had made it difficult for Ahmad to get confirmation.
