Moeldoko Reacts to Police Brutality Cases in Students' Protest

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Presidential Chief of Staff Moeldoko confirmed that police members who physically abused protestors in the nationwide students’ protest will be punished.

“We will evaluate the crucial elements that led to such instances,” said Moeldoko at the Presidential Chief of Staff on Wednesday, September 25.

He reminded that President Joko Widodo or Jokowi has clearly called law enforcers to work professionally and proportionally in handling demonstrators.

“Proportional means measured, professional means a law enforcer is able to conduct their work under existing standard operating procedures,” he said.

However, Moeldoko seemingly played down the repressiveness of police members in handling protests and addressed it back to fatigue and policemen “running out of patience.”

He argued that this sense of fatigue from both sides of the spectrum magnified into uncontrolled anger.

Moeldoko’s statement comes after several instances of police brutality were caught by eyewitnesses and uploaded to the internet and social media platforms.

Two notable cases happened in a raw video recording of police members brutally abusing one individual wearing official campus attributes in Medan. Meanwhile, the violence continued in the Jakarta Convention Center (JCC), Jakarta, where a protestor was beaten by dozens of police members wearing full riot gear. The journalist who recorded it even received threats from one member of the police.

FRISKI RIANA