The Perpustakaan Jalanan Bandung (Bandung Street Library) community is a group of book lovers who meet up on weekends to share their books with fellow readers in Taman Cikapayang in Bandung’s Dago neighborhood. Seems like a positive, wholesome activity for young people, right?
Well, for some reason, armed soldiers from the local Siliwangi Military Base felt the need to forcibly break up the group’s gathering last Saturday night. Even worse, the organizers of the Street Library group claim the soldiers violently attacked their members.
The incident took place at about 11pm on Saturday. Indra, one of Perpustakaan Jalanan Bandung’s organizers, said they were meeting as usual when suddenly several trucks and cars filled with members of the military, who were out of uniform but still carrying weapons, arrived on the scene and immediately forced the group to disperse.
“They hit three people, one was hit in his stomach, another was hit in the back of the head,” Indra said yesterday as quoted by Tempo.
According to Indra, the soldiers had no reason whatsoever to attack them, as they were doing nothing illegal, they were in a public space and they were not disturbing the public in any way.
A spokesperson for the Siliwangi Military Command, Colonel M. Desy Arianto, admitted that soldiers from his base did break up the group. But he said it was done on the assumption that they were a motorcycle gang gathering that was disturbing the public.
“If there is a get-together late at night, we are concerned that it is an indication of negative things going on. [Their story] doesn’t make any sense, why would they be reading books when it was so dark out?” Desy asked.
The military spokesperson also denied the claims that the soldiers were violent, and that if anybody feels like they were attacked, they could report it the military police.
