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JAKARTA - AT LEAST 31 Indonesian students face charges for their role in a violent protest that followed a controversial fuel price hike by the government, a national police spokesman said on Sunday.
Police arrested 166 people protesting Saturday at a campus in South Jakarta.
During the demonstration, protesters burned tyres and threw molotov cocktails at police, National Police Spokesman Abu Bakar Nataprawira said.
Some 31 of the 150 students arrested have been named 'suspects,' meaning authorities will begin the process to formally charge them, Nataprawira said, adding that potential charges include using violence and resisting officials.
Most of the protesters have been released, he added.
Jakarta hiked the subsidised gasoline price by 33.3 percent to about 6,000 rupiah (S$0.88) a litre on Saturday despite widespread opposition.
The move has sparked protests across Indonesia in the past weeks.
Lawmakers criticised the police storming of the South Jakarta campus on Saturday.
House Speaker Agung Laksono, speaking in Lombok island east of Bali, called for an investigation.
'If police are at fault, they should be punished. If the students are at fault, they should be punished,' Laksono said, according to the Detikcom online news service.
Ridha Saleh, a deputy chairperson of the National Commission on Human Rights, said he visited the protest site and police may have manhandled some demonstrators.
He said his group will meet Monday to set up a team to probe the incident.
Millions of Indonesians live on less than two dollars a day and protesters say higher fuel prices, combined with the recent surge in the cost of food, will be too much for family budgets.
The last fuel price rise in Indonesia was a 126 percent increase in 2005, setting off mass demonstrations but no long-term unrest. -- AFP
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