Brawls between students from different schools are unfortunately not uncommon in Jakarta and Indonesia. Much more serious than playground roughhousing, these fights often involve deadly weapons like machetes and sickles, and on a few tragic occasions turn fatal.
On February 14, a bloody inter-school brawl broke out on a flyover in Pasar Rebo, East Jakarta, during which one student died from his injuries. Some video footage of the fight recently went viral online, shedding some light on just how brutal these brawls can be.
Warta Kota has a censored version of the video, but we must warn you that it still contains graphic content and may be disturbing to some viewers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKeYWgmJ_6I
If you can’t bring yourself to watch the video, it shows two groups of students – many of whom are armed with machetes – charging at each other on the flyover bridge. One student was hacked with a machete and had his head stomped while he was lying on the ground, after which the brawl stopped and he was carried away from the scene, leaving a pool of blood.
While the fight took place, multiple people could be seen watching from the higher ground of an adjacent bridge, many of them recording the action on their phones (and many uploading their videos to social media immediately after).
The Jakarta Metro Police confirmed that the brawl took place on February 14 and involved students from SMK (Vocational School) Adi Luhur and SMK Bunda Kandung. The student who was killed was 17 years old.
“We took the victim who was left on the road to Kramat Jati Hospital, but he died on the way there,” said Jakarta Metro Police Spokeman Argo Yuwono, as quoted by Okezone last Friday.
Argo added that the authorities are now searching for the other students involved in the fight, but no arrests have been made.
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